JOEL ROSE, HOST:
The fight over President Trump's drive to reshape the nation's capital landed in an unlikely place this week - a public golf course in Washington, D.C. East Potomac Golf Links is the kind of place where almost anyone can afford to play a round, on the banks of the Potomac River with views of the Washington Monument. But President Trump has bigger ambitions for East Potomac. He has talked about transforming it into a championship course. Golfers here are worried.
ROCK HOWARD: This course has quite a bit of history. And to see it destroyed is just a loss of history.
ROSE: Rock Howard from Fort Washington, Maryland, is a regular at East Potomac.
HOWARD: It's fairly reasonable to come out here and play. I don't know if these changes are going to make it unreasonable to play for the regular people to come out and play golf.
ROSE: A group of concerned golfers and nonprofits sued to block changes to East Potomac Park. Lawyers for the Trump administration assured a judge in July that there was no plan to start work on the course. But questions about the future of East Potomac suddenly seem more urgent now after the Trump administration chopped down more than 400 trees at East Potomac last weekend with little notice. That did not sit well with the federal judge overseeing the case.
RACHEL TREISMAN, BYLINE: She said the - basically, the exact thing that I told you not to do is what you're doing. And that, I think, probably understandably made her really angry.
ROSE: That is NPR's Rachel Treisman, who has been covering the East Potomac story along with the broader fight over President Trump's effort to put his stamp on the nation's capital during his second term - from the helipad in front of the White House to the reflecting pool near the Lincoln Memorial to the ballroom that's rising from the site of the former east wing of the White House. Rachel and I talked in East Potomac Park as golfers teed off and planes departed from nearby Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.
TREISMAN: This is all coming around the same time that people have watched places and parts of D.C. that they really love be changed or caught up in a fight over potential change. This lawsuit over the East Potomac was filed in February just a few months after the east wing of the White House was demolished without congressional approval and without a ton of notice.
As we've seen with the trees being cut down, people are sort of worried that if they don't stop things before they start, they might lose them forever. People feel kind of powerless to stop it. Courts are sort of the main vehicle, and that's why people are watching so closely how many trees get cut down with how many minutes of notice because I think their guard is up given what else is happening across the capital.
ROSE: I wanted to get a sense of how all of these projects fit together. So after our visit to the golf course, Rachel and I headed a few miles up the road to the Lincoln Memorial. We could see the green hills of Arlington National Cemetery across the river in Virginia. And in between - the site of the towering, triumphal arch that President Trump wants to build.
TREISMAN: The arch is a matter of creating something new in an otherwise intentionally empty space, whereas a lot of the other examples we've seen with the east wing and, to some degree, the golf course, too, is a question of getting rid of a space that already exists that people really care about. So in this case, we've also seen protests and lawsuits, but it's about people who don't want the space to be changed, who don't want to see something new built here. And that's worth noting too, that some officials and lots of people are not necessarily inherently opposed to the idea of an arch that honors the 250th or honors veterans and service members. They're just saying this isn't the right spot for it.
ROSE: And how quickly all this is moving?
TREISMAN: It's moving really fast. There's a number of federal hurdles that something like this would need to clear because of where it's located on federal land and right here on the Mall in particular. There's two different federal arts commissions that need to sign off. One of them gave final approval in May to the design, and the design wasn't even finished.
But big picture, the reason that Vietnam veterans are suing over this and the reason that a lot of Democratic lawmakers are opposed is because the president never got approval from Congress. Whether or not you'll ever golf on that course or drive past this arch, it raises bigger questions about process and respect and transparency that they say all Americans should care about.
ROSE: People from all corners of the country make their way to the grand marble steps of the Lincoln Memorial to read the words of the Gettysburg address on the wall inside. And it's not hard looking out at the Washington Skyline to feel swept up in something greater than yourself.
KELLY UPCHURCH: All I can say is it's been probably 40 years since I've been here, and walking in and seeing these monuments made me cry.
ROSE: Kelly Upchurch had just stepped outside of the Lincoln Memorial.
UPCHURCH: Abraham Lincoln and just the whole - what he pulled together, his speech that he wrote over there, what we fought for...
ROSE: She says these monuments represent what the country stands for, and that may explain why so many Americans have big feelings about Washington's skyline. Some support President Trump's proposed changes to the capital, like Paula Baldwin of Texas and Nick Churchill of Michigan.
PAULA BALDWIN: I like it being freshened up. I do. I like it. He's got four years to get it done, whatever he wants to do. This is his four years, so...
NICK CHURCHILL: It's fine by me. I say, build the monuments, and hey, people will come see them. I don't think he's doing everything selfishly. I think it's just for the people of America.
ROSE: But Wayne Brown of Texas and Audrey Gaither of Mississippi say Trump is moving too fast.
WAYNE BROWN: It seems to me that he's just deciding by himself without any kind of input from the rest of the government on what's happening. And, you know, that doesn't seem right to me.
AUDREY GAITHER: He's on his rampage, and he wants to change things to be remembered. And I think he's doing it just to have his name out there, with no regard to the American people. It's all about him.
ROSE: The plan for the triumphal arch will go before a key planning commission next month. The judge in the East Potomac case is set to hold a hearing on Monday, even as lawyers for the Trump administration are pushing to have the judge disqualified, citing her, quote, "histrionics." But the pivotal moment for President Trump's push to reshape Washington may come in a few weeks with the midterm elections that will decide control of Congress.
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