Question: When the government has fixed a date to close a park and a court has found that the plan behind the closure exists, what remains for a judge to decide?

Answer: Whether the date arrives. On Thursday, November 5, the plaintiffs in the East Potomac case asked Judge Ana C. Reyes for a 14-day temporary restraining order, or alternatively a 14-day stay under 5 U.S.C. § 705, against the closure of East Potomac Park on November 15. The court has set a motion hearing for 10:00 a.m. on Friday, November 13, in Courtroom 12, with the government’s response due Monday, November 9, and the plaintiffs’ reply due Tuesday, November 10. The argument will happen two days before the closure it concerns.

The week also gave the Kennedy Center case a hearing date. On November 4, the day after the status conference, Judge Christopher R. Cooper set a conference for 2:00 p.m. on November 19 in Courtroom 27A on the government’s motion to dissolve the injunction, and in the same set of orders directed the parties to meet and confer on the discovery disputes that remain, including the presidential-communications privilege, and to file a joint submission by November 12. On Friday the government filed its reply, 26 pages, with a new declaration from the Center’s executive director. Its argument is that the Board’s two-year closure was reasonable and that the plaintiff has misread the consultant’s numbers.

At the D.C. Circuit the Epstein appeal got a calendar. The clerk’s order of November 5 sets the government’s opening brief for December 15, the appellee’s brief for January 14, the reply for February 4, a deferred appendix for February 11, and final briefs for February 25. In the district court in Phang, quiet since mid-October, the parties filed a joint notice on Monday in which the government reports that its foreign-language review has begun and asks the court not to set a deadline for production, while the plaintiff asks for one.

Three dockets now have a date this page can name, and the dates point one way. In the golf case the court will hear argument before the closure. In the Kennedy Center case it will hear argument on whether the injunction should end. At the circuit the appeal will be briefed on a schedule the clerk set. In the district court in Phang the plaintiff is asking for the same thing: a day certain.

The week’s filings

Forty-four entries landed across the five dockets. Thirty are in the golf case, and they tell one story in three parts: the government answering the court’s questions, the parties arguing over what notice the injunction requires, and the plaintiffs moving to stop the closure. Seven are in the Kennedy Center case, including a 26-page reply filed at the end of the week. Four are in the media case, two of them filed on Saturday. Two are in the district court in Phang, the first entries there since mid-October. One is at the D.C. Circuit, and it is the briefing schedule.

The golf case reads forward best. Monday’s filings answered the three questions the court put at the October 30 hearing. Whether a contract exists with Tom Fazio or his firm: the government says it asked and believes none does. Whether the deliberative process privilege protects the date on which tree removal and a Fazio design entered the submission to the National Capital Planning Commission: the government says it does, and the plaintiffs answer that the plan is final and the date is a historical fact. And whether the parties could agree on the scope of the notice requirement: they could not agree on the premise, though they agreed on five clarifications to the language.

Thursday’s motion is the event, and the amicus filings show what the closure would end. The competing proposals are the part a reader should not skip, because they show two parties arguing past each other about the same paragraph of the same order.

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.

  • November 3: two minute entries recording a status conference held before Judge Cooper, reporter Lisa Moreira.
  • November 4: four minute entries: a status report order; an order directing the parties to meet and confer on all remaining discovery disputes, including those over the presidential-communications privilege, and to file a joint submission by November 12 identifying the disputed objections; an order setting a hearing for 2:00 p.m. on November 19 in Courtroom 27A, in person, on the motion to vacate the injunction at ECF 88; and a duplicate label for that hearing.
  • November 6: ECF 115, Defendants’ reply in support of their motion to dissolve the preliminary injunction, 26 pages, with the November 6 Floca declaration, an exhibit to it, and the Jankowski declaration and exhibits.

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

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

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

A note on coverage of the golf feed. It retained entries only from November 2 onward, so it cannot prove the week complete: ECF 119 through 122, which sit between last week’s ECF 118 and this week’s ECF 123, do not appear, including ECF 121, the government’s response on the deliberative process privilege that ECF 125, ECF 127 and ECF 140 all cite. That response is described here from the filings that quote it, and not from the document itself. Everything else listed above was read from the document or, where the document is sealed or absent from the feed, from the docket line.

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

Where the case stands: the League and two regular players sued on February 13, 2026, over the redevelopment of East Potomac, and Judge Reyes granted a preliminary injunction on October 26 after the Park Service felled hundreds of trees. The order bars cutting, topping or substantially pruning any tree in the park without a court order, with an exception for an imminent threat to public safety that 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, among them who authorized the action, who will carry it out, and the agency’s reason. The government appealed on October 28, moved on October 29 to stay the injunction pending appeal, and said in a notice filed under the injunction that it would close the park south of Buckeye Drive, including the course, on November 15.

Monday’s notice on the Fazio contract is four pages, and its answer is narrower than its framing. The court had asked at the October 30 hearing whether any contract exists with Tom Fazio, Gavin Fazio or Fazio Design, and said what it thought of the earlier denial: “I just don’t find that credible.” The notice says that after consulting the Office of the White House Counsel, and “based on that consultation, and an otherwise diligent inquiry,” counsel “reasonably believes that no contract exists between Tom Fazio, or Gavin Fazio, or Fazio Design and the United States for work to design or otherwise renovate the East Potomac Golf Course.” It does not say what was searched to reach that belief. It does argue, at some length, that the question should not have been asked: discovery is improper in an APA case, the White House is not an agency, and a court ordering discovery into White House affairs raises separation-of-powers and executive-privilege problems. The court had asked a factual question and received a legal objection wrapped around a qualified answer.

The privilege exchange is the week’s most consequential pair of briefs, and it is about a date. The court ordered the government to brief whether the deliberative process privilege protects the day on which tree removal or a links-style design was first added to the NCPC submission. The government’s response, filed November 2 and not in the feed, argued that the information is, in the words the plaintiffs quote, “clearly both predecisional and deliberative,” and renewed its objection to extra-record discovery. The plaintiffs answered on Tuesday that a date is a fact, that the plan is final, and that the privilege does not shelter misconduct the court has already found. The government replied on Thursday that the plaintiffs conflate two different things: the bad-faith finding that justified extra-record discovery, and the misconduct that can pierce the privilege, which requires conduct “severe enough to qualify as nefarious or extreme government wrongdoing.” Drafting decisions about which trees to remove and which course to build, the reply says, “are not misconduct” at all.

The reply’s timeline argument is the one worth keeping. The court found that final agency action occurred “at some point well before October 15, 2026,” and the reply uses that finding to put the NCPC submission, which was not finalized until October 30, outside the record a reviewing court may consider. Read one way, that is ordinary administrative law: review what the agency had before it when it decided. Read another way, the government is saying that the decision became final before the document that describes the decision existed, which is the shape of the case the plaintiffs have been pleading since February. Both readings are now in the record, and the court has not chosen between them.

The notice requirement produced the week’s oddest exchange, because the parties agree on the words and disagree about what they are doing. On Tuesday the government asked for no notice requirement at all, and in the alternative for a partial stay of the order as it applies north and west of Buckeye Drive, a stretch of park that includes the Long Bridge project, an AT&T antenna, a maintenance yard and the tennis center. It proposed six specific edits. On Wednesday the plaintiffs accepted five of them: inserting “thereafter” after “24 hours” so the safety exception plainly allows acting first, adding “southeast of Buckeye Drive, SW” to the paragraph about irreversible modifications, rewording item (3) about who authorized the action, striking item (4) about everyone who will carry it out, and striking the paragraph requiring notice if any entity or individual seeks to change the park. They also said what the agreement is not. The government calls the edits a partial stay; the plaintiffs call them clarifications and oppose any stay of any part of the order. The distance between those two descriptions is the whole dispute: one side is narrowing an injunction it wants gone, the other is tidying an injunction it wants kept.

Thursday’s motion is short and its memorandum is not. The motion asks for 14 days, either as a temporary restraining order under Rule 65(b) or as a stay under 5 U.S.C. § 705, and it rests on four claims: that the closure implements the Washington National Plan without the environmental review NEPA requires, without the historic-preservation review the NHPA requires, arbitrarily and capriciously under the APA, and in violation of the Park Service’s Organic Act. Its opening sentence is the case in miniature: “Despite their reliance on a pretextual safety rationale, Defendants concede the closure of East Potomac Park will serve ’to implement the President’s direction’ to close the Park ‘in order to renovate and rebuild’ the Golf Course.” The two inner quotations come from filings the government made in this case.

Two amicus filings frame what the closure would take. The Washington Area Bicyclist Association’s brief, dated November 2, argues that the park’s loop is the recreational resource Congress protected, that the October 9 categorical exclusion “contemplated removal of 529 trees” and the operation exceeded that count by roughly 200 smaller trees, and that a categorical exclusion written for routine maintenance cannot cover this. On Friday the Hains Point Runners and Cherry Blossom, Inc., the organization behind the annual ten-mile race, asked for leave to file a supplemental brief on the seawall. Their point is specific: the government’s closure rests in substantial part on the condition of the seawall, and closing the park would eliminate the perimeter roadway, including Ohio Drive, that the race and everyday runners use. The plaintiffs consent; the defendants take no position.

The calendar is now the case. The government’s response is due Monday, the plaintiffs’ reply Tuesday, the hearing Friday at 10:00 a.m. in Courtroom 12, and the closure Sunday, November 15. Two other deadlines sit inside that window: the proposed preservation order, now due November 9, and the briefs on the sealed filing at ECF 130, due November 12.

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) at ECF 88 and for partial summary judgment at ECF 89. Discovery closed October 23. Beatty opposed the motion on October 30 in a 51-page brief and asked to put the executive director on the stand. Until this week no hearing had been set on the motion to dissolve.

Tuesday’s status conference was on the motion to compel, not the motion to dissolve, and the orders that followed on Wednesday are the week’s real news. The court directed the parties to meet and confer on all remaining discovery disputes, including those over the presidential-communications privilege, and to file a joint submission by November 12 identifying the disputed objections. A second order set the November 19 hearing on ECF 88. The docket entries are all this page has; they say the court intends to hear the dissolution motion in person rather than on the papers.

Friday’s reply is the government’s last word before that hearing, and its structure is a concession followed by a reframing. It does not deny that the August 20 JLL plan put the added cost of phasing at $41 million. It says the plaintiff has compared the wrong numbers. JLL’s $41 million, the reply argues, is a construction-cost overrun in a scenario in which no performance-venue or office improvements occur; Delta’s $303 million is an all-in figure that includes them and is benchmarked against outside industry data. The direct comparison, it says, is JLL’s roughly $100 million overrun, and an all-in four-year project under the JLL analysis would cost about $360 million against Delta’s roughly $566 million. It also says the JLL plan itself “recommends the two-year closure approach as the most responsible stewardship of the congressional appropriation,” and that JLL’s June letter told the Center in bold text to stay the course.

That is a serious answer, and it changes the question the November 19 hearing will answer. Last week the question was whether the Board was told that phasing would cost twice as much while its own consultant found a $41 million premium. This week the government says the premium was real but measured something narrower than the Board’s decision, and that the consultant’s own recommendation matched the Board’s vote. If the court accepts that, the plaintiff’s central factual claim loses its force. If it does not, the reply has conceded the number and disputed only its meaning, and the two readings will sit side by side in the record for the court to choose between.

The safety record gets its fullest treatment yet, and it is the part of the reply that reads least like lawyering. The government says the executive director first saw a Walter P Moore draft on September 3 reporting that corroded soffit-panel supports, on panels hanging 60 feet up and weighing about 2,500 pounds each, required immediate replacement. It says a portion of the Grand Foyer ceiling weighing about 150 pounds fell onto a public passageway below, and that the director drafted a letter to the Board on September 9, never sent, saying the litigation could not “engineer away falling concrete” or “failing electrical vaults.” It also says something the plaintiff will want to test: that last week the director told staff the Center had finalized its review of the safety emergency and would plan “a phased approach to occupancy” that would open the Hall of States, the Hall of Nations and the Roof Terrace Level.

Read beside the Board’s vote, that announcement is a tension, not a contradiction. A building can be unsafe for two years of construction and still be safe enough to walk through in parts after an emergency review. But the government’s case for a total closure rests on the proposition that the safety problem cannot be managed piece by piece, and its own executive director has just described managing it that way. How the court resolves that will depend on evidence the public can read only in part: ECF 113, the sealed filing that the docket describes as the August 2026 JLL plan, and the privilege log behind the discovery fight.

On privilege, the reply makes a narrow point that matters for November 19. The plaintiff said at the November 3 conference that the withheld documents are core to her theory. The reply answers that her only argument about those communications concerns Secretary Lutnick’s influence on Delta’s work, and that the court can resolve the motion without privileged evidence. It also defends the President’s fundraising for the Center, with citations to prior Kennedy Center and Lincoln Center gifts, on the ground that a donor’s expectation of recognition is ordinary nonprofit practice. The joint submission will show how much of the privilege fight the court wants briefed before it rules, and whether the November 19 hearing reaches the withheld material at all.

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. On October 28 a panel denied the stay and referred Phang’s motion to dismiss the appeal of the September 16 order to the merits panel. The district court’s orders were left in place, and the government’s obligation to review foreign-language documents continued.

The clerk’s order of November 5 answers the question this page left open last week, which was when the merits would be briefed. The schedule runs from December 15, when the government’s opening brief is due, to February 25, when final briefs are due, with the appellee’s brief on January 14, the reply on February 4, and a deferred appendix on February 11. The consolidated appeals, 26-5299 and 26-5334, are both on it.

Two consequences follow. The motion to dismiss travels with the appeal rather than ahead of it, so the question whether the September 16 enforcement order is appealable will be answered by the same panel that hears the merits, after full briefing. And the schedule is long enough that the appeal will not decide anything before the district court has had months to act on the review it ordered. Whatever the circuit holds, the record of compliance will be made in Judge Sullivan’s courtroom first.

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. The government answered on September 24 and appealed. On September 21, in the order denying a partial stay, the court required a joint notice within three days of the circuit’s ruling. The circuit ruled on October 28, so the notice was due that weekend.

It arrived Monday, and it is the first sign of life on this docket in three weeks. The government reports that it “has begun its review of records that were previously tagged as foreign language documents,” that it is reviewing for responsiveness and will then redact under the attorney review protocol and the statute, and that it proposes to file another update in 30 days. It asks the court not to order production of all foreign-language documents within a set timeframe, and it rejects the plaintiff’s account of the past year: status reports, it says, are not an invitation to interrogatories, neither a litigant nor the court can direct how an agency allocates its resources, and it “expressly rejects all allegations of ‘past noncompliance.’”

The plaintiff’s recommendations are a compliance regime in five parts. Complete the review within 30 days of the circuit’s decision, which she dates to Friday, November 27. Produce documents on a rolling basis as review proceeds, because the court has twice ordered production and not merely review. Answer four baseline questions by November 6: how many records were tagged as foreign-language, when the review began and how far it has gone, how many people are working on it and how many hours a week they commit, and how the department ensures accurate first-level review of records in languages its reviewers may not read. File weekly status updates with six counts, from documents reviewed to documents withheld on a basis the statute does not enumerate. And give immediate notice if the department concludes it cannot meet the deadline. ECF 63 is the proposed order that would say so.

Nothing in the docket shows a ruling on any of it. The three decisions that have waited since September, the motion to postpone the record at ECF 51, the motion for judgment on the pleadings at ECF 52, and the plaintiff’s request to move her response, are still undecided. What changed this week is that the court now has both parties’ positions on the only question that matters operationally: whether the review the circuit refused to pause will have a deadline.

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 nine training videos, withheld in full under four exemptions. Judge Howell denied expedited processing on July 1, 2026, a ruling about speed rather than about the videos, and the government moved for summary judgment on October 2.

The court granted the plaintiff four more days on November 2 and issued an amended schedule. The opposition and cross-motion arrived Saturday, and they make three arguments in an order chosen to force a choice. First, the search was inadequate: “By FBI’s own admission, it never conducted a search for records responsive to this request.” The FBI’s declaration says all nine videos were found in a July 29, 2025 search conducted for another requester and stored in an administrative file, so no further search was needed. The plaintiff answers that the declaration never says when that determination was made, and that the file may not contain videos created later, including one processed in a separate FOIA case that appears to date from October 2025.

Second, the statute forecloses the withholdings. The Epstein Files Transparency Act permits five categories of withholding, and the plaintiff argues that a later and more specific statute displaces FOIA’s exemptions for records within its scope, leaving only victims’ personal information protected. On that reading, the law-enforcement-technique exemption, the attorney-client exemption and the privacy interests of FBI personnel and third parties merely mentioned all fall away.

Third, if the statute does not control, the government still has not shown that it released every segregable part. The plaintiff has made concessions to narrow the fight: it will not contest redaction of names, phone numbers and email addresses, or of investigative documents that appear in the videos as examples. It will not accept obscured faces or altered voices unless the court rules for the government on the statutory question, and even then it proposes alternatives, including closed captions already required by regulation. The cross-motion also presses the fee waiver the FBI never granted.

The government’s reply is due under the amended schedule, whose dates the feed does not carry. This is the quietest of the five dockets and the one where a single ruling will settle a concrete question: whether a disclosure statute’s list of permitted withholdings replaces the exemptions an agency would otherwise cite.

What the coverage showed

One account of the week could be retrieved and read. WTOP reported the golf motion on November 5 under the headline “Preservation group seeks to block Nov. 15 closure of East Potomac Park”, by Tamika Cody. It is accurate on the essentials: the 42-page filing, the request for a temporary restraining order and a 14-day pause, the November 15 closure, the seawall rationale, the October 26 injunction and the roughly 430 trees cut in October, the November 13 hearing, and the November 9 and November 10 deadlines. It reports the plaintiffs’ argument that the safety rationale is a pretext and that the park should not close before environmental and historic-preservation review.

What it does not carry is the part of the week that makes the motion stronger than a disagreement about safety. The government’s own November 2 notice says that, after consulting the White House Counsel, it believes no contract exists with the Fazio firms, which is the answer to a question the court asked because it did not believe the earlier denial. The same week’s filings show the government arguing that the date on which the plan entered the NCPC submission is privileged, and arguing that redesigning a golf course is not agency action at all. Neither appears in the account, and both are in the record a reader can open.

Three other accounts appeared in search results, from the Washington Post, WUSA9 and Law&Crime. All three returned 403 to an automated fetch, so this page did not read them and does not characterize them. That is a statement about the checker, not about the reporting.

What to watch next week

Monday, November 9. The government’s response to the motion for a temporary restraining order, and the proposed preservation order now due under the court’s November 2 extension.

Tuesday, November 10. The plaintiffs’ reply in support of the motion.

Thursday, November 12. The joint submission in the Kennedy Center case identifying the discovery disputes and privilege objections that remain, and the briefs on the sealed filing at ECF 130 in the golf case.

Friday, November 13, 10:00 a.m. The motion hearing before Judge Reyes in Courtroom 12. Two days later the park is scheduled to close.

Sunday, November 15. The closure date the government gave in its October 28 notice, and, as WTOP reports, the date the President has said rebuilding begins.

Thursday, November 19, 2:00 p.m. The hearing before Judge Cooper in Courtroom 27A on the motion to dissolve the Kennedy Center injunction. The court will have the reply, the joint submission and, if it grants the request, live testimony from the Center’s executive director.

Friday, November 27. The deadline the plaintiff asks the court to set for completing the foreign-language review in Phang.

Monday, November 30. The plaintiffs’ response to the government’s summary judgment motion in the golf case.

Tuesday, December 15. The government’s opening brief at the D.C. Circuit in the Epstein appeal.

Pending, any day: a ruling on the golf stay motion, which the government asked for by November 4 and which the court has not issued; a ruling on the Kennedy Center request to hear the executive director live; and in the district court in Phang, the three decisions that have waited since September and any order on the November 2 notice.

The thing to hold on to when reading next week’s version of this page: this week the government told one court that the date the plan entered the submission was privileged, told another that the consultant’s numbers meant something other than they appeared to, and told a third that the review it had resisted had begun but should have no deadline. Each answer was narrower than the question. Each bought time. On November 13 and November 19, two judges will decide how much of it they are willing to buy.

Sources

  • Beatty v. Trump, No. 1:25-cv-04480 (CRC). CourtListener docket. Source of the November 3 status conference, the November 4 orders on the discovery disputes and the presidential-communications privilege, the November 12 joint submission, and the November 19 hearing on ECF 88.
  • 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 November 2 through 4, the November 9 preservation order, the November 12 briefing on sealed Dkt. 130, the November 5 and November 9 and November 10 NCPC deadlines, the November 13 motion hearing in Courtroom 12, the November 30 summary judgment response, the deposit of the bond, and the sealed documents at ECF 130, 136 and 137.
  • 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 24 or ECF 25.
  • Phang v. Blanche, No. 1:26-cv-01417 (EGS). CourtListener docket. Source of the filing list and of the absence of any order on ECF 51, ECF 52, ECF 56 or the November 2 notice.
  • Phang v. Blanche, Nos. 26-5299, 26-5334 (D.C. Cir.). Katie Phang v. Todd Blanche, D.C. Circuit docket. Source of the clerk’s order of November 5 and its briefing schedule: appellant’s brief December 15, 2026; appellee’s brief January 14, 2027; reply February 4, 2027; deferred appendix February 11, 2027; final briefs February 25, 2027.
  • Defendants’ Reply in Support of Their Motion to Dissolve Preliminary Injunction. (2026, November 6). Defendants’ Reply in Support of Their Motion to Dissolve Preliminary Injunction, ECF 115. Beatty v. Trump, No. 1:25-cv-04480 (CRC) (D.D.C.). Source of the November 6 Floca declaration and the Jankowski declaration, the JLL and Delta cost comparisons, “recommends the two-year closure approach as the most responsible stewardship of the congressional appropriation”, “available through September 30, 2029”, “purchases less permanent work”, the Walter P Moore draft, the 2,500-pound soffit panels, the 150-pound section of the Grand Foyer ceiling, “engineer away falling concrete”, “failing electrical vaults”, “a phased approach to occupancy”, “the Hall of States, Hall of Nations, and the Roof Terrace Level”, and the account of the November 3 status conference.
  • Defendants’ Notice Regarding East Potomac Golf Course Design. (2026, November 2). Defendants’ Notice, ECF 125. D.C. Preservation League v. Department of the Interior, No. 1:26-cv-00477 (ACR) (D.D.C.). Source of “I just don’t find that credible”, “based on that consultation, and an otherwise diligent inquiry”, “reasonably believes that no contract exists between Tom Fazio, or Gavin Fazio, or Fazio Design and the United States”, and the arguments that the White House is not an APA agency and that discovery into White House affairs raises executive-privilege concerns.
  • Plaintiffs’ Response to Defendants’ Response to the Court’s Minute Order. (2026, November 3). Plaintiffs’ Response, ECF 127. D.C. Preservation League v. Department of the Interior, No. 1:26-cv-00477 (ACR) (D.D.C.). Source of “clearly both predecisional and deliberative” as the plaintiffs quote ECF 121, and of the argument that a date is a historical fact the privilege does not reach.
  • Plaintiffs’ Opposition to Motion for Stay Pending Appeal. (2026, November 3). Plaintiffs’ Opposition to Motion for Stay Pending Appeal, ECF 128. D.C. Preservation League v. Department of the Interior, No. 1:26-cv-00477 (ACR) (D.D.C.). Source of “thin[ning] trees”, the NCPC submission as Exhibit 1, the account of the October 31 meet-and-confer, and the argument that the objection to the ten-day notice was mooted by the November 15 announcement.
  • Defendants’ Notice of Proposal. (2026, November 3). Defendants’ Notice of Proposal, ECF 129. D.C. Preservation League v. Department of the Interior, No. 1:26-cv-00477 (ACR) (D.D.C.). Source of the request that no notice requirement be imposed, the alternative request for a partial stay as to the area north and west of Buckeye Drive including the Long Bridge project, the antenna, the maintenance yard and the tennis center, and the six proposed edits.
  • Plaintiffs’ Notice of Proposal. (2026, November 4). Plaintiffs’ Notice of Proposal, ECF 133. D.C. Preservation League v. Department of the Interior, No. 1:26-cv-00477 (ACR) (D.D.C.). Source of the five agreed clarifications and the plaintiffs’ refusal to describe them as a stay.
  • Plaintiffs’ Motion for a Temporary Restraining Order or, Alternatively, a 14-Day Stay Under 5 U.S.C. § 705 Against Closure of East Potomac Park. (2026, November 5). Plaintiffs’ Motion for a Temporary Restraining Order, ECF 139. D.C. Preservation League v. Department of the Interior, No. 1:26-cv-00477 (ACR) (D.D.C.). Source of the 14-day request, “Despite their reliance on a pretextual safety rationale, Defendants concede the closure of East Potomac Park will serve ’to implement the President’s direction’”, “in order to renovate and rebuild”, and the NEPA, NHPA, APA and Organic Act claims.
  • Defendant’s Reply to Plaintiffs’ Response to Defendants’ Response to the Court’s Minute Order. (2026, November 5). Defendant’s Reply, ECF 140. D.C. Preservation League v. Department of the Interior, No. 1:26-cv-00477 (ACR) (D.D.C.). Source of “nefarious or extreme government wrongdoing”, “such drafting decisions are not misconduct”, the “well before October 15, 2026” timeline argument, and the reply to the estoppel point.
  • Defendants’ Motion for Extension of Time. (2026, November 2). Defendants’ Motion for Extension of Time, ECF 124. D.C. Preservation League v. Department of the Interior, No. 1:26-cv-00477 (ACR) (D.D.C.). Source of the November 9 extension for the proposed preservation order.
  • Defendants’ Notice of Document Filed Under Seal. (2026, November 3). Defendants’ Notice of Document Filed Under Seal, ECF 131. D.C. Preservation League v. Department of the Interior, No. 1:26-cv-00477 (ACR) (D.D.C.). Source of the sealed filing at ECF 130 and its redacted exhibit.
  • Brief of Amicus Curiae Washington Area Bicyclist Association in Support of Plaintiffs. (2026, November 2). Brief of Amicus Curiae Washington Area Bicyclist Association, ECF 135. D.C. Preservation League v. Department of the Interior, No. 1:26-cv-00477 (ACR) (D.D.C.). Source of “contemplated removal of 529 trees” and the approximately 200 additional smaller trees.
  • Motion for Leave to File Supplemental Brief of Amici Curiae Hains Point Runners and Cherry Blossom, Inc. (2026, November 6). Motion for Leave to File Supplemental Brief, ECF 141. D.C. Preservation League v. Department of the Interior, No. 1:26-cv-00477 (ACR) (D.D.C.). Source of the amici’s interest, the seawall rationale they address, and the consent and no-position responses.
  • Joint Notice. (2026, November 2). Joint Notice, ECF 62. Phang v. Blanche, No. 1:26-cv-01417 (EGS) (D.D.C.). Source of “has begun its review of records that were previously tagged as foreign language documents”, the request for a 30-day update rather than a production deadline, “expressly rejects all allegations of ‘past noncompliance’”, the November 27 deadline, rolling production, the four baseline questions, the weekly status updates and the six counts.
  • Notice of Proposed Order. (2026, November 2). Notice of Proposed Order, ECF 63. Phang v. Blanche, No. 1:26-cv-01417 (EGS) (D.D.C.). Source of the proposed order filed with the joint notice.
  • Plaintiff’s Memorandum in Opposition to Defendant’s Motion for Summary Judgment and in Support of Its Cross-Motion for Summary Judgment. (2026, November 7). Plaintiff’s Memorandum in Opposition, ECF 24. MSW Media, Inc. v. Department of Justice, No. 1:25-cv-02518 (BAH) (D.D.C.). Source of “By FBI’s own admission, it never conducted a search for records responsive to this request”, the July 29, 2025 search for another requester, the argument that the statute displaces FOIA’s exemptions, the concessions on redaction, and the fee-waiver argument.
  • Cross Motion for Summary Judgment. (2026, November 7). Cross Motion for Summary Judgment, ECF 25. MSW Media, Inc. v. Department of Justice, No. 1:25-cv-02518 (BAH) (D.D.C.). Source of the relief the plaintiff requests.
  • WTOP News. (2026, November 5). “Preservation group seeks to block Nov. 15 closure of East Potomac Park”. Tamika Cody. Coverage of the motion, cited here as coverage, with the record at ECF 139.
  • Huffman, P. (2026, October 31). Docket Report: October 31, 2026. The carry-forward posture for all five dockets: the October 26 injunction and opinion, the briefing history, the closure notice, the stay motion and the state of the circuit appeal.

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