A federal judge in Washington argued that the Interior Department chopped down hundreds of trees at the East Potomac Golf Links in an effort to move quickly on President Donald Trump’s vision for a course redesign, countering the agency’s own reasoning for the removal.

The Interior Department and National Park Service have maintained that they removed more than 400 trees from the golf course in an effort to implement recommendations from a 2019 Cultural Landscape Report, which found that the growth of additional trees on the property has “altered the feeling of the course” to a parkland-style golf course, when it was originally intended as a links-style course.