A federal judge weighed into a dispute over Donald Trump’s controversial plans to revamp a historic Washington DC golf course on Monday, warning the president’s administration to tread carefully as it also dumped “toxic” rubble from the demolished White House East Wing there.

District court judge Ana Reyes likened the saga to an episode of the hit television comedy Parks and Recreation during an emergency hearing in the capital to hear an application for a temporary restraining order filed by the DC Preservation League.

“I’m no Amy Poehler,” she said, referring to the show’s lead actress, who played a character blindly supportive of government initiatives regardless of their merit.

Reyes ultimately decided to let maintenance work continue at the waterfront East Potomac golf links, a public course, but warned of “serious consequences” if the Trump administration moved ahead at speed with its reported redevelopment plans.

The Washington Post said on Saturday it had obtained a fundraising document showing Trump’s intention to “dramatically remake parts of Washington’s waterfront”, including creating an exclusive championship course and building a “national garden of American heroes”.

The superintendent of the National Mall and Memorial Parks for the National Park Service (NPS), Kevin Griess, told the court that no major renovation work was planned for the coming days, contrary to a report published on the news website Notus on Friday that said the course would close after Sunday’s final tee time.

But he conceded that a “safety assessment” was under way, prompting Reyes to caution the government that it must provide reasonable notice if it planned to close the course, cut down more than 10 trees or send in any construction equipment.

“Let’s just say, given some issues around the District recently, I would have a particular concern that we not act first and ask forgiveness later,” Reyes said, according to the Post.

“Because that’s not going to be acceptable, and I want you to make sure that that’s fully communicated. If anything like that happens, there are going to be serious consequences.”

Reyes was referring to other recent incendiary construction initiatives by the Trump administration, including the demolition of the White House East Wing in October to make way for a new $400m ballroom.

Rubble from that project dumped at the East Potomac course tested positive for lead, chromium and other toxic metals, the Post reported Monday, citing soil data “above laboratory reporting limits” published recently by the NPS.

The toxic soil story was first published in January by the podcast Pablo Torre Finds Out, which won a Pultizer prize on Monday for reporting on another topic.

Monday’s hearing was the latest development in a battle over the future of East Potomac, one of three municipal courses in Washington DC that Trump seized in December by terminating a 50-year lease held by the non-profit National Links Trust, which denied a claim it had allowed the links to deteriorate.

That same month, the president confirmed to the Wall Street Journal that he had set his sights on transforming the courses. “If we do them, we’ll do it really beautifully,” he told the newspaper.

Tom Fazio, who has designed four Trump courses, visited the East Potomac site under an alias in late 2025, Golf Digest reported, suggesting that redevelopment plans were already in place long before the lease was terminated.

Reyes appeared to agree with that summation during the remote hearing on Monday. “Something is happening,” Reyes told government attorneys, according to Golf Digest.

“I don’t know what it is. I trust that you don’t know what it is. [But] when you have a pledge going out with pictures, asking people for money, we’re pretty far down the road, OK? So I think there’s been more happening. I think it’s been further along than has been identified in the pleadings to date.”

The DC Preservation League first sued in February and made an emergency application for a temporary restraining order on Saturday after reports of East Potomac’s imminent closure were published.

“This is supposed to be open to the public and accessible to the public of every different background, and we wanted to keep it that way,” the league’s executive director, Rebecca Miller, told CBS News.

Miller also challenged the NPS position that soil sampling from the East Wing rubble had been misinterpreted.

“In an earlier filing on the ballroom, they contended that one of the reasons they had to demolish the East Wing was because it was full of contaminants, and now they’re saying, ‘Well, there’s no contaminants,’ or, ‘Nothing to see here,’” she said.

“This is something that’s used by the public and children and could be really hazardous.”

The Guardian has contacted the White House, the NPS and Department of the Interior for comment.