President Donald Trump faced a legal setback on Saturday when a federal judge temporarily blocked the planned closure of a public golf course and surrounding parkland in Washington, D.C. Among the evidence undermining his Administration’s justification: his own Truth Social posts.
On Oct. 18, Trump announced that the Department of Interior had developed a “plan to build a World Class Championship Golf Course on the site of the current East Potomac Golf Links.” He went on to say that the course would close on Nov. 15 to undergo renovations, which would take 15 months to complete.
In her 30-page decision, District Court Judge Ana Reyes said the post demonstrated that the Administration had formal plans to close and renovate the golf course, even as Department of Justice (DOJ) lawyers maintained in the courtroom that no final redevelopment plans existed.
“These posts present a problem for the Government,” Reyes wrote in the decision. “They indicate that the Washington National Plan is final and that [the National Park Service] will close the Park to implement it.”
She said the posts therefore “favor granting Plaintiffs’ motion for another temporary restraining order.”
Reyes barred the government from closing the park and golf course through Nov. 28, or until further order from the court. Repairs remain permitted under the existing injunction, and the court will continue to assess claims that renovations would make the park less affordable and less accessible for its intended users.
Read more: All the Things Trump Has Put His Name and Face on as President
In October, Reyes signaled growing distrust of the defense lawyers on the case when she ordered an ethics investigation into them. She repeatedly expressed frustration with seeming contradictions between what the President was saying about his plans for the golf course and what DOJ lawyers were telling her in court.
“Judge Reyes has already made clear that she does not believe the Administration’s lawyers’ assertions that they have no final plan to remake the East Potomac golf course,” David Super, a professor at Georgetown Law, tells TIME. “These posts make unmistakably clear that those assertions are false.”
Trump’s posts put DOJ lawyers in an awkward position, he says, and undermine their credibility in court.
“At a minimum, the lawyers should not have asserted that no action was imminent without first receiving a clear commitment from the President that he would cooperate with their strategy,” Super says.
Despite the fact that his Truth Social posts helped inform the latest decision against him, Trump returned to the platform Sunday to attack the judge’s ruling while asserting that his Administration would immediately appeal her “highly destructive and political decision.”
TIME has reached out to the White House for comment on the evolving circumstances of the case.
It is the latest in a series of examples showing that Trump’s social media posts can become courtroom evidence that works against his own Administration.
How Trump’s social media posts become evidence in court
Across both of Trump’s terms, judges have cited his social media posts when assessing his Administration’s motives and the explanations its lawyers have offered in court. The cases those posts have affected span areas including immigration restrictions, military service, federal funding, and food assistance.
Trump’s travel ban: June 2017
During Trump’s first term, it became clear that his social media habits could inform court outcomes when he attempted to defend his proposed travel ban, which prevented individuals from certain countries from entering the United States.
The Ninth Circuit cited Trump’s tweets in its June 12, 2017, decision in Hawaii v. Trump. The President had referred to certain countries as “dangerous,” but the court found that Trump did not connect these countries, nor the people from them, to any active conflict or terrorist organization.
“That’s right, we need a TRAVEL BAN for certain DANGEROUS countries, not some politically correct term that won’t help us protect our people!” Trump wrote on June 5, 2017.
The three-judge appeals panel found that Trump had exceeded his statutory authority and that the order violated immigration law.
The case was also consequential because the court also cited then-White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer’s public confirmation that Trump’s tweets were considered official presidential statements.
“The President is the President of the United States, so they’re considered official statements by the President of the United States,” Spicer said at a press briefing June 6, 2017.
Trump’s transgender military ban: October 2017
In an Oct. 30, 2017, ruling in Doe v. Trump, Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly mentioned Trump’s tweets in opposition to allowing transgender service members in the military.
“Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming … victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail,” Trump wrote in a series of tweets in July 2017.
Kollar-Kotelly found that the abrupt Twitter announcement, without the usual deliberative process, provided additional support for the plaintiffs’ argument that the ban was not driven by genuine concerns about military effectiveness.
She temporarily blocked the provisions restricting enlistment and continued service.
Trump’s order targeting Perkins Coie: May 2025
The pattern continued into Trump’s second term. In May 2025, Judge Beryl Howell struck down an executive order targeting law firm Perkins Coie with restrictions affecting security clearances, government contracts, and access to federal buildings.
She cited Trump’s Truth Social post from April, in which he said: “I’m suing the law firm of Perkins Coie for their egregious and unlawful acts, in particular the conduct of a specific member of this firm.”
Howell found that the post supported the conclusion that the executive order punished the entire firm over one person’s conduct, pointing toward retaliation rather than a legitimate national security concern.
Trump’s Harvard funding cuts: September 2025
Trump had by then entered a monthslong battle against Harvard University, demanding that the university enact sweeping curriculum, hiring, and admissions changes—in particular, the Administration sought to do away with the school’s diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and accused it of failing to adequately address antisemitism.
The university eventually sued the Trump Administration for the $2.2 billion funding freeze it tried to impose for failing to meet its criteria, initiating President and Fellows of Harvard College v. United States Department of Health and Human Services.
Harvard used Trump’s social media posts as evidence that the Administration was not acting neutrally, but rather amounted to what the university described as “unconstitutional retaliation.”
On April 15, 2025, Trump wrote that Harvard “should lose its Tax Exempt Status and be Taxed as a Political Entity if it keeps pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting ‘Sickness?’”
The next day, he wrote that Harvard is “hiring almost all woke, Radical Left, idiots.”
On Sept. 3, 2025, U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs ruled in Harvard’s favor, citing Trump’s posts in finding that his stated concerns were “untethered from antisemitism” and instead focused on the university’s perceived political orientation.
Trump’s withholding of SNAP benefits: November 2025
A case from November 2025 further demonstrated the dangers of Trump disclosing his political motives on social media.
In Rhode Island State Council of Churches v. Rollins, small businesses and nonprofits challenged the Department of Agriculture’s suspension of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) during the government shutdown.
Lawyers with Democracy Forward, who represented the plaintiffs, sought to show that the Administration was withholding funds as a means of political leverage, rather than its stated need to preserve funding for child nutrition programs. They pointed to social media posts by Trump in which he complained about Democrats.
On Nov. 4, 2025, he wrote that SNAP benefits “will be given only when the Radical Left Democrats open up government, which they can easily do, and not before!”
Two days later, District Judge John McConnell ruled against the Administration and ordered it to restore funding in full by Nov. 7, saying that Trump’s “statements make clear that the administration is withholding full SNAP benefits for political purposes.”
“This Court is not naïve to the administration’s true motivations,” McConnell wrote in his decision.
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