The Trump administration just cut down a century’s worth of history at D.C.’s government golf course

Workers removed more than 500 trees at a Washington, D.C., golf course over the weekend that President Donald Trump is working to remodel, and it happened like many of his other design projects in town: suddenly and without permission. Preservationists asked a judge Sunday to halt the Trump administration after it removed 529 trees Saturday at East Potomac Park, a golf course managed by the National Park Service, and on Monday, a judge called the removal “inexcusable.” The course is home to elms, oaks, pines, and willows, as well as some of the 3,000 Japanese flowering cherry trees gifted by the government of Japan in 1912. Together they told the story of golf’s rise in America from a mostly treeless game on the U.S. coasts to a sport known for its big, lush vegetation. Now, just like that, a century’s worth of landscape design history has been torn up. [Photo: Aaron Schwartz/Getty Images] The removal happened “faster than anticipated,” according to the lawsuit, and the Trump administration didn’t meet its obligations under the National Environmental Policy Act, attorneys representing the D.C. Preservation League and a pair of local golfers said in a filing seeking an emergency ac…