Question: What happens when a federal court finds, as a fact, that the plan the government told it did not exist does exist, and that the reason offered for the work was not the real one?

Answer: The government files a notice confirming the plan, with a date for the closure and the name of the designer. On Monday, October 26, Judge Ana C. Reyes granted a preliminary injunction in the East Potomac golf case, and the opinion released with it makes two findings. The first is that “the Washington National Plan exists,” defined as “a plan to destroy the current East Potomac Golf Course and to replace it with a modern, championship-style course designed by Tom Fazio.” The second is that the government’s stated justification for the tree removal, compliance with the 2019 Cultural Landscape Report, is “pretextual,” and that the tree work “is part of the Washington National Plan.” On Wednesday the government filed a notice under the injunction disclosing that it will submit a Tom Fazio rendering to the National Capital Planning Commission on Friday, that the Commission will take it up on December 3, and that the Park Service will close East Potomac Park south of Buckeye Drive, including the course, on November 15, “consistent with the President’s directive.” The same notice reports a new lease, signed October 28, under which the course’s operator stops running it on or before that date. On Thursday the government moved to stay the injunction pending appeal and asked the court to rule by November 4.

Three dockets moved this week, and in two of them the government argued that a decision had not been made. In the District it had. At the D.C. Circuit, in the Epstein files case, a panel denied the government’s motion to stay the district court’s orders and sent the jurisdictional fight to the merits, which means review proceeds rather than waits. In the Kennedy Center case the week produced the closest look yet at what the government calls privileged: a log listing roughly 180 text messages between the Center’s executive director and the Commerce Secretary, and a brief arguing that the board was told a phased renovation would cost twice as much while a consultant’s analysis putting the premium at $41 million sat in management’s hands.

The week’s filings

Thirty-eight entries landed across the five dockets. Thirty of them are in the golf case, and they carry a notice that concedes the case’s central premise, a stay motion, and a hearing that produced a scheduling order. Six are in the Kennedy Center case, and five of those arrived on Friday. One is at the D.C. Circuit, and it is a ruling. One is in the media case about the FBI’s Epstein training videos. The district court in Phang saw nothing for the second consecutive week.

The golf case carries the week, and its filings read best in the order they landed. Monday’s order and opinion are the event. Wednesday’s notice is the concession, and it is short enough to read in a minute: three pages, filed because the injunction required it, describing an NCPC submission, a closure date, a lease and a sea wall. Thursday’s motion to stay is the government’s attempt to put the injunction on hold while it appeals. Friday’s hearing produced a scheduling order that runs into December, and the plaintiffs’ motion to compel, filed at the end of the day, describes a government that would not hand over the NCPC submission it had just told the court about, would not produce it early, and would not join a call with the court to explain why.

East Potomac golf course: D.C. Preservation League v. Department of the Interior, No. 1:26-cv-00477 (ACR), D.D.C.

Kennedy Center: Beatty v. Trump, No. 1:25-cv-04480 (CRC), D.D.C.

Epstein files appeal: Phang v. Blanche, D.C. Cir. No. 26-5299 (consolidated with 26-5334)

Epstein files (MSW Media v. DOJ): MSW Media, Inc. v. Department of Justice, No. 1:25-cv-02518 (BAH), D.D.C.

Epstein files: Phang v. Blanche, No. 1:26-cv-01417 (EGS), D.D.C.

  • Nothing was filed in the window. That is a finding, not a gap, and it is the second consecutive empty week in a case that had moved nearly every week since June.

A note on the golf feed: it retained entries only from October 28 onward, so it cannot prove the window is complete. The October 26 order and opinion were read from their own PDFs, and every filing listed above was read from the document itself or, where the document is sealed, from the docket line. An entry between October 25 and October 27 that the feed has dropped cannot be ruled out, and none of the conclusions below rests on one.

The golf course: D.C. Preservation League v. Department of the Interior

Where the case stands: the D.C. Preservation League and two regular players at East Potomac sued on February 13, 2026, challenging the redevelopment under the National Environmental Policy Act through the Administrative Procedure Act. The government moved to dismiss in April on the theory that no final agency action existed, and in March and again in April the court declined to intervene because the agency was still deciding what it wanted to do. On October 9 the Park Service gave notice that it would begin removing trees the next morning, and on October 10 it felled hundreds. The plaintiffs sought a temporary restraining order, which Judge Reyes granted on October 13. Their motion for a preliminary injunction was heard on October 19 and taken under advisement. It was granted on Monday.

The opinion opens with a sentence that deserves a pause, because it is a trial judge describing what a court does when the executive branch asks it to disbelieve its own principal: “Rarely, if ever, has the United States Department of Justice urged a federal court not to believe the sitting President.” It then sets the record against the assurances. The Deputy Chief of Staff to the Secretary of the Interior, asked whether the course would close on November 15, answered that “the Truth Social post is the only place where I see that.” The Acting Director of the National Park Service, asked whether any plans existed, said “None that I’ve been made aware of.”

The findings that follow are the substance. The Plan exists, and the court’s definition of it is specific: a plan, designed by Tom Fazio, to replace the course with a championship layout. The evidence is a list, and each item is a fact of record rather than an inference: the President’s statements on five occasions, the Secretary’s statements in May and his silence after them, final designs from the architect the Secretary and the President had named, 30,000 cubic yards of soil dumped on the course in preparation, the termination of the operator’s lease, a June tour of the site, and the tree removal itself. On the tree work the court is blunter. The justification offered was compliance with a 2019 landscape report, and the court found that justification “pretextual,” the work “part of the Washington National Plan,” and the plaintiffs likely to succeed on their claim that dividing the project into pieces violated NEPA.

The injunction is broad, and the government’s objection to its breadth is the heart of its appeal. It bars cutting, topping or substantially pruning any tree in East Potomac Park without a court order, except to meet an imminent threat to public safety, which requires notice within 24 hours and a sworn declaration from a senior Park Service employee. It requires ten business days’ written notice before any closure of the course or irreversible modification of the park, with seven particulars: the action’s nature and scope, its start date and why then, everyone who authorized it, everyone who will carry it out, the agency’s reason, its impact, and whether it relates to the Washington National Plan or a Fazio design. It orders the department to notify its employees and the Fazio firms. It requires a dollar bond.

Wednesday’s notice was the first thing the injunction required, and it answers the question at the center of the case. The government will submit a Fazio rendering to the National Capital Planning Commission on Friday for a “World Class, championship-level golf course” capable of hosting “the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship, the Ryder Cup, and the President’s Cup,” for the Commission’s December 3 meeting. It will close the park south of Buckeye Drive, including the course, on November 15. National Links Trust, which has operated the course, signed a new lease on October 28 under which it stops operating East Potomac by that date, and the notice says the closure follows from that: “there will be no company to operate that course.” A crumbling sea wall is offered as an independent reason, one that would require closure whatever the design.

Thursday’s filings put the President’s own account beside the notice. The plaintiffs filed a notice quoting his October 19 post about work beginning “IMMEDIATELY!”, then superseded it within hours with an amended one reporting a post from the night before in which he called the course “highly dangerous, dilapidated, and absolutely disgusting,” described the sea wall and the driving range in detail, and wrote: “We will hold the judge, Ana C. Reyes, fully responsible for anybody who is hurt, or killed, on this very dangerous, dilapidated, and unsightly Golf Course.” The safety rationale in Wednesday’s notice and the conditions described in Wednesday night’s post are the same conditions, described hours apart.

Read against the opinion, the notice is a concession with a caveat. The plan the government told the court did not exist is now a submission to the Commission with a date. The closure the government told the court was not planned is now a lease term and a calendar entry. What the notice preserves is the argument that the closure would happen anyway, for safety. What it cannot preserve is the premise of the stay motion filed the next day, which argues that “redesigning an existing public golf course into a different public golf course is not agency action at all,” and that any proposal “is not yet final because the Park Service has not settled on or approved any such plan.” The Park Service settled on a rendering, a submission date and a designer, and said so in a filing under the injunction.

The stay motion is otherwise a conventional four-factor argument, and its strongest point is the one the opinion leaves open. It says the injunction reaches all of East Potomac Park rather than the ground the course occupies, bars even maintenance pruning, and substitutes the court for the agency as manager, which it says Monsanto forbids. It also argues standing, leaning on the Supreme Court’s recent decision in the National Trust case that aesthetic and historic interests are not injuries. The court answered both below. On standing it found that the individual plaintiffs have it, and that the League lacks organizational standing but has associational standing through a member. On finality it held that the plaintiffs are likely to succeed, because their “characterization” that the plan is final agency action “finds ample support in the record.” Against that, the motion says the government is only “acting as proprietor, changing the design of the product it is offering the public,” which it argues falls outside the APA. Whether the D.C. Circuit sees the boundary the same way is now the question.

Friday’s hearing was on the government’s response to the court’s order to show cause, and it produced a schedule that runs past the closure date. The government must identify everyone who worked on the NCPC submission, brief the deliberative-process question and disclose any Fazio contract by November 2; the parties must propose a preservation order the same day and a revised notice requirement by Tuesday; and the plaintiffs must file any motion about the NCPC submission by November 5. They must also meet in person by 5:00 p.m. Saturday to discuss how far the notice requirement should reach.

The last filing of the week is the one that shows the purpose of the schedule. ECF 116 says the plaintiffs cannot respond to the NCPC submission by November 5 without the submission, that defense counsel declined to provide it, that counsel said the material is “usually provided in the normal course (up to 10–14 days)” and might be public on November 3, and that counsel had no authority either to produce it early or to join a call with the court. So the plaintiffs asked the court to compel production, or an explanation, by 10:00 a.m. Saturday. The document the government told the court about on Wednesday is the document it would not give the plaintiffs on Friday.

The Kennedy Center: Beatty v. Trump

Where the case stands: Judge Cooper’s opinion of May 29 declared the board’s December 2025 renaming void and preliminarily enjoined the March 16 closure decision; his order of September 15 enjoined the August 13 inscription and the “President Donald J. Trump Plaza” renaming. The Board voted to close the main building for two years on August 13 and again on September 15, and moved to dissolve the injunction under Rule 60(b)(5) (ECF 88) and for partial summary judgment (ECF 89). Discovery closed October 23. The building is still closed, and there is still no reopening date.

The privilege log is the week’s most revealing document, and it is five pages. Defendants served it on the last day of the extended discovery period, and it lists nine categories of withheld emails and text threads, all dated between April 23 and September 15, 2026. Two entries carry most of the weight. The eighth is nineteen text messages between Matthew Floca, the Center’s executive director, and Natalie Harp, eleven of them on September 15, the day of the third closure vote and the day before the building shut. The ninth is a thread of roughly 180 messages between Floca and Howard Lutnick, the Commerce Secretary, running from May 30 to September 15, described by the defendants as about “operations, renovation, and other planning related to Kennedy Center Board of Trustees and management matters.” Lutnick is not an officer, employee or trustee of the Kennedy Center, and the notice says so, adding that voluntary disclosure to a third party waives the privilege.

The rest of the log traces a relationship. A May 29 email, sent the day the injunction issued, attaching a memorandum on “operations, statutory duties, and litigation risks” and the Center’s “financial outlook.” A July 30 meeting with the President, followed the same day by a summary document sent to two Commerce Department advisers and an employee of the Executive Office of the President. A seventeen-email thread about Honors planning. The notice’s argument is that the descriptions concede the point the government has been resisting: communications about the “operations” and “management” of the Center, logged as presidential, are the Chairman acting as Chairman, and they bear on whether the September vote was independent or a ratification.

The opposition filed Friday is fifty-one pages and makes four factual claims that would each be enough for a hearing. The first is that Floca hired Delta Consulting in July, told it it would have 60 days, then demanded a recommendation within days, and did not give the trustees Delta’s written report until August 31, eighteen days after the vote it was written to support. The second is an error with a date attached: Delta told the board that closure had to finish within two years because appropriated funds had to be spent by September 2029, and “those funds can be spent through September 2034.” The board, the brief says, never sought legal analysis of that question.

The third is the number this page treated last week as the government’s withdrawn error, and it has changed sides. Delta put a phased renovation at $560 million, and the board was told that phasing “will cost twice as much.” JLL’s updated plan, delivered to management on August 20 and withheld from the board, put the additional cost of phasing at $41 million and found phased renovation “technically feasible.” Last week the government withdrew a sentence quoting the $41 million figure because it came from a report the Board never received. This week the plaintiffs use the same report to argue that the Board was told the opposite of what its own consultant had concluded. The fourth claim is about motive, and its evidence is a text message: “we need to get shut” because “we are burning money.”

The relief the brief asks for is graded. Deny the motion to dissolve. Hear Floca live, for up to 90 minutes, because the documents that contradict his deposition arrived after the deposition ended. And if the court ever concludes that the Center’s finances are as dire as management told the board, appoint an independent monitor or receiver rather than let insolvency excuse the conduct that produced it. The brief’s footnote puts the choice more sharply: closure is “a decision to save the patient by killing him.”

The live-testimony request is four pages and quotes the government’s opposition in full. Defendants say no hearing is needed at all, that any testimony would be “duplicative of extensive record evidence,” and that the burden on Floca, “who is responsible for leading the Center,” would outweigh its value. The request answers with the record: Floca testified at the preliminary injunction hearing in the East Potomac case, Beatty’s counsel cross-examined him there, and the court later relied on that testimony in assessing whether a phased renovation was feasible.

One filing is sealed: ECF 113, a motion for leave accompanied by a document the docket identifies as the August 2026 JLL plan. So the report that the brief says was withheld from the board is now being filed under seal in the case about whether it was withheld, and the public can read the argument about it but not the report.

The week’s one order is a scheduling one, and it is easy to misread. The status conference on November 3 is on the motion to compel, ECF 96. It is not a hearing on the motion to dissolve, which has no hearing set and will be decided on the papers unless the court grants the live-testimony request.

The Epstein files on appeal

Where the appeal stands: the government moved on September 22 to stay the June 25 and September 16 orders and to expedite. Phang opposed the stay and cross-moved to dismiss the appeal of the September 16 order as not appealable. Briefing was deferred pending further order, and the stay motion had been fully briefed since September 29.

On Wednesday the panel decided it. The order is two pages and it does two things. It denies the stay: “The government has not satisfied the stringent requirements for a stay pending appeal.” The reason is narrow and worth quoting, because it turns on timing rather than merits. The government “has failed to show that it is irreparably harmed by merely initiating review of foreign-language documents,” and “production does not appear to be imminent.” Where the government does not dispute its obligation, it would “only produce documents that” it “concludes must be disclosed by law,” and any dispute about redactions “will need to be resolved through further litigation,” which is not present harm. Then it refers Phang’s motion to dismiss to the merits panel, with an instruction to brief those issues rather than incorporate them by reference.

Read plainly, the ruling says the government may keep litigating, and that nothing about the litigation relieves it of the review it was ordered to start. It is not an administrative stay and it does not pause the district court. It also answers a question this page has left open since September: the stay motion was not a placeholder for a ruling that would never come. It was decided, twenty-nine days after the last brief, and it was denied.

What comes next is merits briefing, and the circuit has set no date for it. The motion to dismiss now travels with the appeal rather than ahead of it, so the question whether the September 16 order is appealable at all will be answered by the same panel that would hear the merits.

The Epstein files: Phang v. Blanche

Where the case stands: Judge Sullivan granted a preliminary injunction on June 25, holding that the Epstein Files Transparency Act required disclosure. On September 16 he granted Phang’s motion to compel an answer, denied the government’s motion to stay his deadlines, and set the administrative record: a certified list by October 1, the record to Phang by October 15. The government answered on September 24 and appealed. On October 1 it filed ECF 51, asking the court to postpone the record until its Rule 12(c) motion was resolved, and ECF 52, the motion that would make the record unnecessary. On October 9 the court ordered redacted versions of the handwritten notes behind three FD-302 reports, and the government delivered them by hand on October 16.

The district docket is empty for the second week running. The October 15 deadline for the administrative record passed without an entry recording production. Three decisions have waited since September: the motion to postpone the record, the Rule 12(c) motion that would end the case, and Phang’s request to move her response to it. Nothing in Wednesday’s circuit order changes any of that, and the circuit did not remand or direct the district court to act. So the same asymmetry the appeal produced is now visible from the other side: the appellate court has ruled, and the trial court has said nothing about the record it ordered.

The Epstein files: MSW Media v. DOJ

Where the case stands: MSW Media sued in August 2025 over two FOIA requests, one for grand jury material and one for the FBI’s videos on how to review Epstein records. The grand jury request was dropped; the case now concerns the training videos, which the FBI withheld in full under four exemptions. Judge Howell denied expedited processing on July 1, 2026, which was a ruling about speed rather than about the videos. The government moved for summary judgment on October 2, asking the court to uphold the search and the withholding.

This week the plaintiff asked for four more days. The motion is two pages, it is consented to, and its reason is the ordinary one: counsel has three deadlines and a status conference on the Monday the brief is due. What it proposes is the useful part, because it would set the whole remaining schedule: the opposition and cross-motion on November 6, the government’s reply and opposition on November 24, and the plaintiff’s reply on December 10. The docket does not show a ruling, so those dates are a proposal and not an order.

That is the quietest docket of the five, and it is the one whose merits question is the most concrete: nine videos, made to instruct agents how to handle the files, withheld as internal guidance. Whether an exemption written for deliberative advice covers training material is the kind of question a court answers in a sentence, and it will have the chance in December.

What the coverage showed

Two accounts of the week could be retrieved and read, and both are about the district court filings.

FOX 5 reported the golf injunction on October 27 under the headline “Judge extends court-ordered block on Trump renovation plans for DC’s East Potomac Golf Course”. It is accurate on the relief: the tree bar, the ten days’ notice, the quote about the Lorax, and the collision between the government’s assurances and the President’s posts. It does not report the two findings that make the ruling more than a pause. The court found that the plan exists and that the justification for the tree work was pretextual, and neither appears in the account. Nor does the November 15 closure notice, which the government filed the next day and which turned the injunction’s premise into a docket entry.

FOX 5 also reported the Kennedy Center opposition on October 30, under the headline “Rep. Beatty moves to block renewed Kennedy Center closure effort, alleging concealed evidence”. It gets the core right: the withheld analysis, the $300 million figure the board was given, the request for live testimony, the possibility of a monitor. Two things in it need care. It reports that a hearing is scheduled for November 3 without saying what the hearing concerns; the docket says the conference is on the motion to compel, not the motion to dissolve. And it reports an allegation about donor funds being withdrawn unless the President’s name went on the building. That allegation is not in the fifty-one-page brief, and this page will not attribute to a filing anything it read and did not find there.

The circuit’s order drew coverage this page could not retrieve and read, so it is not characterized here.

Neither district account mentions the other docket, the circuit’s ruling, or the privilege log, which was filed five days before the opposition and is the evidentiary spine of it. That is not a complaint about a television station working three stories on deadline. It is the reason this page exists. In a week when a court found a plan existed and the government confirmed it in writing, the docket records the sequence, and the coverage records the moment.

What to watch next week

Saturday, October 31, 10:00 a.m. The government’s response to the plaintiffs’ motion to compel the NCPC submission, on the deadline the court set Friday. The plaintiffs cannot file their November 5 motion without the document.

Monday, November 2. Five deadlines in the golf case: the dollar bond, the proposed preservation order, the government’s list of everyone who worked on the NCPC submission, its brief on whether deliberative process privilege protects the date on which tree removal or a links-style design entered that submission, and its disclosure of whether a contract exists with the Fazio firms.

Tuesday, November 3. In the golf case, a joint proposal on the notice requirement by 10:00 a.m., or competing proposals on Tuesday and Wednesday. In the Kennedy Center case, the status conference on the motion to compel at 11:00 a.m. in Courtroom 27A. The two are unrelated, and the second is the one where a ruling could release roughly 200 messages.

Wednesday, November 4. The date the government asked the court to rule on its motion to stay the golf injunction. A ruling by then would put the injunction on hold ahead of the November 15 closure.

Thursday, November 5. The deadline for the plaintiffs’ motion and response on the NCPC submission. The government’s reply is due November 6.

Friday, November 6. The government’s reply in support of dissolving the Kennedy Center injunction. After that the court can rule. In the media case, the plaintiff’s opposition and cross-motion on the training videos, if the extension is granted.

Sunday, November 15. The date the government now says the golf course closes. Whether it does is the question the next two weeks answer.

Thursday, December 3. The National Capital Planning Commission takes up the Fazio rendering.

Pending, any day: a ruling on the golf stay motion; a ruling on the Kennedy Center motion to compel and on the request to hear Floca live; and in the district court in Phang, the three decisions that have waited since September. At the circuit, a briefing schedule for the merits.

The thing to hold on to when reading next week’s version of this page: in three cases this week, the government’s position was that a decision had not been made, or could not be reviewed, or should wait. One judge found the decision had been made and said so in seventy pages. Another court declined to pause the review it had ordered. The third now has a log of roughly 200 messages it has been asked to release. The pattern is not defiance of any one order. It is a preference for the position that nothing is ripe, maintained until a document arrives that says otherwise.

Sources

  • Beatty v. Trump, No. 1:25-cv-04480 (CRC). CourtListener docket. Source of the filing list for the week, the October 30 minute order setting the November 3 status conference on ECF 96, the docket description of ECF 113 and its Exhibit H, and the absence of any hearing date on the motion to dissolve.
  • D.C. Preservation League v. Department of the Interior, No. 1:26-cv-00477 (ACR). CourtListener docket. Source of the filing list, the minute entries of October 28 through 30, the circuit case number 26-5374 for the notice of appeal at ECF 105, and the November 30 date for the summary judgment response.
  • Defendants’ Motion to Stay of Preliminary Injunction Pending Appeal. (2026, October 29). Defendants’ Motion to Stay of Preliminary Injunction Pending Appeal, ECF 112. D.C. Preservation League v. Department of the Interior, No. 1:26-cv-00477 (ACR) (D.D.C.). Source of the request for a ruling by November 4, 2026, “redesigning an existing public golf course into a different public golf course is not agency action at all”, “acting as proprietor, changing the design of the product it is offering the public”, “is not yet final because the Park Service has not settled on or approved any such plan”, and the Monsanto and Vermont Yankee arguments.
  • Defendants’ Notice. (2026, October 28). Defendants’ Notice, ECF 111. D.C. Preservation League v. Department of the Interior, No. 1:26-cv-00477 (ACR) (D.D.C.). Source of the October 30 NCPC submission, “World Class, championship-level golf course”, “the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship, the Ryder Cup, and the President’s Cup”, the December 3, 2026 Commission meeting, the November 15, 2026 closure of the park south of Buckeye Drive, “consistent with the President’s directive”, the October 28 lease with National Links Trust, and “there will be no company to operate that course”.
  • Defendants’ Position Statement. (2026, October 28). Defendants’ Position Statement on Plaintiff’s Motion for Extension of Time, ECF 108. D.C. Preservation League v. Department of the Interior, No. 1:26-cv-00477 (ACR) (D.D.C.). Source of the non-opposition to the extension under the October 28 minute order.
  • Memorandum Opinion. (2026, October 26). Memorandum Opinion, ECF 103. D.C. Preservation League v. Department of the Interior, No. 1:26-cv-00477 (ACR) (D.D.C.). Source of “Rarely, if ever, has the United States Department of Justice urged a federal court not to believe the sitting President”, “the Washington National Plan exists”, “a plan to destroy the current East Potomac Golf Course and to replace it with a modern, championship-style course designed by Tom Fazio”, “is part of the Washington National Plan”, “pretextual”, “The Truth Social post is the only place where I see that”, “None that I’ve been made aware of”, “finds ample support in the record”, “I am not the Lorax. I do not speak for the trees”, “It speaks only for the rule of law”, the finding that the government intends to remove 300 additional trees, and the credibility findings on Griess, Lands, Bowron and Wischer.
  • Order. (2026, October 26). Order, ECF 101. D.C. Preservation League v. Department of the Interior, No. 1:26-cv-00477 (ACR) (D.D.C.). Source of the tree bar, the imminent-safety exception, the ten business days’ notice requirement and its seven particulars, the DOI and Fazio notification orders, the show-cause response, and the $1.00 bond.
  • Plaintiff’s Notice Regarding Privilege Log. (2026, October 25). Plaintiff’s Notice Regarding Privilege Log, ECF 111. Beatty v. Trump, No. 1:25-cv-04480 (CRC) (D.D.C.). Source of the service date and nine categories, the roughly 180 messages between Floca and Lutnick, the nineteen messages between Floca and Harp with eleven on September 15, “operations, renovation, and other planning related to Kennedy Center Board of Trustees and management matters”, the May 29 memorandum, the July 30 meeting and summary document, the seventeen-email Honors thread, and the observation that Lutnick is not an officer, employee or trustee of the Center.
  • Plaintiff’s Opposition to Motion to Dissolve Preliminary Injunction. (2026, October 30). Plaintiff’s Opposition to Motion to Dissolve Preliminary Injunction, ECF 112. Beatty v. Trump, No. 1:25-cv-04480 (CRC) (D.D.C.). Source of the 60-day chronology, the August 31 transmission of Delta’s report, “those funds can be spent through September 2034”, the $560 million figure, “will cost twice as much”, the $41 million figure, the increase of “more than $300 million” the board was warned of, “technically feasible”, “we need to get shut”, “we are burning money”, “a decision to save the patient by killing him”, and the request for 30 days’ notice before modifying project plans including any demolition.
  • Plaintiff’s Request for Leave to Present Live Testimony. (2026, October 30). Plaintiff’s Request for Leave to Present Live Testimony, ECF 114. Beatty v. Trump, No. 1:25-cv-04480 (CRC) (D.D.C.). Source of the 90-minute estimate, “duplicative of extensive record evidence”, “who is responsible for leading the Center”, and the account of Floca’s testimony in the East Potomac case.
  • Plaintiffs’ Motion for Order Compelling Immediate Production. (2026, October 30). Plaintiffs’ Motion for Order Compelling Immediate Production of October 30, 2026 National Capital Planning Commission Filings, ECF 116. D.C. Preservation League v. Department of the Interior, No. 1:26-cv-00477 (ACR) (D.D.C.). Source of the November 5 response obligation, “usually provided in the normal course (up to 10–14 days)”, the possibility of public availability on November 3, and the request for relief by 10:00 a.m. on October 31.
  • Plaintiffs’ Notice of Factual Development. (2026, October 29). Notice of Factual Development Regarding Another Social Media Post by the President of the United States, ECF 113. D.C. Preservation League v. Department of the Interior, No. 1:26-cv-00477 (ACR) (D.D.C.). Source of “is scheduled to begin IMMEDIATELY!”, the 6:08 a.m. Eastern timestamp, and the discrepancy between the filing header and the signature block reading October 19, 2026.
  • Plaintiffs’ Amended Notice of Factual Development. (2026, October 29). Amended Notice of Factual Development Regarding Latest Social Media Post, ECF 114. D.C. Preservation League v. Department of the Interior, No. 1:26-cv-00477 (ACR) (D.D.C.). Source of “This Amended Notice supersedes the Notice filed earlier today as ECF 113”, the October 28, 2026 post timestamped 10:43 p.m. Eastern, “highly dangerous, dilapidated, and absolutely disgusting”, “We will hold the judge, Ana C. Reyes, fully responsible for anybody who is hurt, or killed, on this very dangerous, dilapidated, and unsightly Golf Course”, and the attachment of the October 26 post as Exhibit B.
  • Plaintiff’s Consent Motion for Enlargement of Time. (2026, October 30). Plaintiff’s Consent Motion for Enlargement of Time, ECF 23. MSW Media, Inc. v. Department of Justice, No. 1:25-cv-02518 (BAH) (D.D.C.). Source of the four-day request to November 6, 2026, the proposed November 24 and December 10 dates, and “three deadlines and one in-person status conference scheduled for Monday”.
  • Phang v. Blanche, No. 1:26-cv-01417 (EGS). CourtListener docket. Source of the absence of any filing in the window and of any order on ECF 51, ECF 52 or ECF 56.
  • Phang v. Blanche, Nos. 26-5299, 26-5334 (D.C. Cir.). CourtListener docket. Source of the entry list for the appeal, including the denial of the stay motion and the reference of the motion to dismiss to the merits panel.
  • Per Curiam Order. (2026, October 28). Per Curiam Order, No. 2200619. Phang v. Blanche, Nos. 26-5299, 26-5334 (D.C. Cir.). Source of “The government has not satisfied the stringent requirements for a stay pending appeal”, “has failed to show that it is irreparably harmed by merely initiating review of foreign-language documents”, “production does not appear to be imminent”, “only produce documents that”, “concludes must be disclosed by law”, “such disputes will need to be resolved through further litigation”, and the referral of the motion to dismiss.
  • Huffman, P. (2026, October 24). Docket Report: October 24, 2026. The carry-forward posture for the Kennedy Center and Epstein dockets: the operative orders, the close of discovery, the briefing schedule, and the state of the appeal.
  • MSW Media, Inc. v. Department of Justice, No. 1:25-cv-02518 (BAH). CourtListener docket. Source of the filing list and of the absence of any ruling on ECF 23.
  • FOX 5 DC. (2026, October 27). “Judge extends court-ordered block on Trump renovation plans for DC’s East Potomac Golf Course”. Melanie Alnwick. Coverage of the injunction, cited here as coverage, with the record at ECF 101 and ECF 103.
  • FOX 5 DC. (2026, October 30). “Rep. Beatty moves to block renewed Kennedy Center closure effort, alleging concealed evidence”. JT Key. Coverage of the opposition, cited here as coverage, with the record at ECF 112.

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