In early spring, the founders of the National Links Trust met with a White House adviser to talk about the future of golf in Washington, D.C.
The White House adviser, William Doffermyre, who was set to become the solicitor general at the Department of the Interior, pitched founders Mike McCartin and Will Smith on the idea of a partnership. According to sources familiar with the meeting, Doffermyre’s plan was for the federal government to help renovate the three public golf courses the trust controlled: East Potomac Golf Links, Langston Golf Course and Rock Creek Park Golf.
Doffermyre expressed to the founders that President Donald Trump was eager to cut red tape and could help raise money for the venture.
While skeptical, the founders were intrigued. But they needed something: assurances from the Trump administration that their organization’s commitment to affordable and accessible golf would be maintained. Doffermyre said he would fight for that.
The three talked about the project throughout the summer of 2025. Doffermyre even recommended a lawyer at a Trump-aligned firm for the group to use as a conduit to help with negotiations with the White House. Near the end of the summer, Doffermyre told Smith and McCartin that he was working to arrange a meeting with Trump.
But a promising beginning morphed into chaos as Trump increasingly took an interest in remodeling many of D.C.’s iconic buildings and public spaces. By the end of 2025, the Interior Department notified the nonprofit it was terminating its 50-year lease, signed in 2020, with the National Park Service and said the National Links Trust owed millions in back rent to the government.
“They didn’t make the proper rent payments, and we’re still looking at that full situation, but there’s just no doubt about it. They didn’t hit any of the development targets,” an administration official with knowledge of the project told NOTUS. “They did perform in some other small ways, but those are serious problems.”
The future of the courses — when there will be renovations, how much it will cost to golf on them, who will have access — is all now in limbo.
NOTUS spoke with a dozen people involved or familiar with the planning of the project, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity, and reviewed documents detailing the process of Trump’s takeover of public courses and his vision for remaking them. Those conversations and documents show frenzied negotiations between the trust and the administration — with only the Trump side holding all the leverage.
Doffermyre met with Trump, Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum and other senior White House advisers on Aug. 1, 2025, to discuss the project. That was where Burgum officially pitched the idea of turning East Potomac into a top-level course fit for tour events.
According to documents reviewed by NOTUS, the pitch — titled America 250 Golf Project — would see the Interior Department and the National Park Service work closely with the National Links Trust to expedite the federal permits and other requirements needed to break ground on renovations in July 2026.
The National Park Foundation would launch an America 250 fundraising initiative to raise at-least $50 million to turn East Potomac into a world-class golf course named Washington National Golf Course, the documents show.
The presentation also showed a potential November 2025 groundbreaking at Rock Creek Park Golf and advocated for Langston Golf Course to also be included in the America 250 Golf Project, especially as the new Washington Commanders football stadium would bring heavy development to the area.
While Trump’s main interest was controlling the renovations at East Potomac, a picturesque course located on Hains Point with views of the National Mall, he also agreed to help raise funds for the renovations at the other two courses, a source familiar with the matter told NOTUS.
Doffermyre then drafted a preliminary document of what an agreement would look like and shared it with the two founders. That’s when things started to fall apart.
According to a draft of the proposal reviewed by NOTUS, there would be a new nonprofit organization, affiliated with the National Links Trust, titled Washington National Links Trust, chaired by Burgum. This would be the main vehicle for fundraising and operations for East Potomac.
The preliminary budget and goal were to raise $75 million with a kick-off event in early October 2025. Fundraising would be led by the National Park Foundation.
The plan was to have a 7,500-plus-yard, 18-hole course that included a nine-hole par-3 course. The goal was to break ground in late 2026 with completion in 2028.
The National Links Trust would then retain control of Rock Creek Park Golf and Langston Golf Course, and the National Park Foundation would aim to raise an additional $75 million for the remaining two courses, the documents show.
The founders felt blindsided. They believed that the proposal didn’t properly prioritize affordable and accessible golf and were confused as to why the three courses would be split up between two different entities.
Doffermyre explained that while the deal wasn’t final, it was something he believed everyone could get to yes on, according to two sources. However, McCartin and Smith were concerned that without a guarantee that everyone was on board, the National Links Trust could have the rug pulled out from under them.
An administration official with knowledge of the project told NOTUS that Doffermyre was “never out of turn on any of this,” and his pitching this proposal did not mean “we’re going to do this.”
“It was just a way of thinking about, ‘How does the administration, to meet the president’s agenda, make these golf courses what they should be?’” the official said.
A spokesperson for the National Park Foundation said while the organization was aware of conversations and ideas surrounding the National Links Trust, there was never anything formally presented to the National Park Foundation. They were never asked to assist in the project, nor do they currently play a role, the spokesperson said.
The National Links Trust founders were also concerned that, since the administration was clearly more focused on East Potomac, the other two courses would fall by the wayside — especially if the partnership prioritized fundraising for East Potomac as the original proposal did.
So, on Oct. 9, 2025, the National Links Trust sent back a list of topics and questions they wanted to discuss with the Interior Department.
The Trust proposed that an oversight board be established that included the two founders of the organization, Smith and McCartin; Tiger Woods; Augusta National Chair Fred Ridley; former CEO of PGA of America Seth Waugh; former commissioner of the PGA Tour Jay Monahan and president of the USGA Fred Perpall.
Representatives for Woods, Ridley, Waugh and Perpall did not respond to a request for comment. Monahan could not be reached for comment.
The document suggested that once the National Park Foundation raised the $150 million for all three courses, the oversight board would vote on contractors and renovation plans for the East Potomac project.
Second, they wanted to discuss the possibility that the National Links Trust would retain control of all three courses and proposed that as the National Park Foundation raised the funds, they would be allocated half to East Potomac Golf Course and half to Rock Creek Park and Langston on a one–to-one basis, the documents show.
And finally, they wanted to discuss the possibility that the funds raised be held in escrow and that construction on East Potomac not start until an agreed-upon threshold of fundraising was reached. Those funds, however, could go toward renovating Rock Creek Park and Langston before the threshold was met.
The response was baffling to the administration, a source familiar with the matter said. They believed that if they were the ones leading the fundraising effort for millions of dollars for the project, the National Links Trust was in no place to try to counter. Additionally, they were upset by the idea that the National Links Trust could dictate how and when the money would be spent when they would be leading the fundraising efforts.
As time went on and conversations died down, the founders started to believe that the administration was planning to go ahead without them.
In a last-ditch effort, the National Links Trust sent a proposal titled “Make DC Golf Great Again” on Oct. 20. It laid out an alternative plan for the National Links Trust to partner with the administration.
The plan would have established a 7,500-yard course at East Potomac, along with a modernized clubhouse and event space. The document also showed that all three courses would remain under the National Links Trust, with the oversight board in place.
They never heard back.
At this point, the administration was getting fed up. It had been over two months since the meeting at the White House, talks were stalled out and no progress was being made.
“The [Interior] Department said, ‘OK, we’ve done this long enough. We need to act. Time is of the essence,’” the administration official said. “You know, the four years go quickly. We got a lot to do.”
The official added that the National Links Trust “never could get their act together and tell us what they were after,” and it became “abundantly clear NLT was not capable of figuring out a path forward.”
So, talk of finding a different way to take over the courses started to ramp up.
At Interior, Burgum has developed a reputation for forcefully implementing the president’s wishes. He has taken unusually aggressive steps to try to stop ongoing construction of offshore wind farms, he commandeered the National Park Police to participate in Trump’s takeover of D.C. and he was integral to the administration’s renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America.”
In each case, Trump’s wishes were paramount.
The golf courses were no different. With the administration eager to start moving and all talks of a partnership at a standstill, the Interior Department sent a notice of default to the National Links Trust.
Forty-five days later, the trust got a termination letter in the mail, effectively ending any chance for a partnership between the Trust and the administration.
Publicly, both sides have maintained they are in the right. The National Links Trust has argued that there was no reason to cancel the lease and said that it was “fundamentally in disagreement with the administration’s characterization of NLT as being in default under the lease,” in a statement the day the trust’s lease was canceled.
“After general conversation about how National Links Trust and the administration could work together, we received a single document that was partially a legal document and partially an FAQ piece about how a potential future would look,” a spokesperson for the trust said in response to this story. “We responded to this document asking for a discussion with the administration. That discussion never occurred. We have continued to seek a dialogue with the administration about a path forward together, and none of this subsequent outreach received any response.”
The administration maintains that the group failed to meet any of the benchmarks set forth in its lease agreement. The official said the group was in default of both its financial and performance obligations.
While the group agreed to stay on until the administration found its replacement, the future of the courses is in limbo.
“The Department of the Interior will take on this task and achieve the mission that we discussed up and until it finds a new partner,” the administration official said.
White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said the course renovations were part of Trump’s pledge to “make D.C. safe and beautiful again.”
“As a private citizen, President Trump built some of the greatest golf courses in the world, and he is now extending his unmatched design skills and excellent eye for detail to D.C.’s public golf courses,” Rogers said in a statement. “The President and his extraordinary team will redevelop these decrepit golf courses in our nation’s capital to restore glamour and prestige.”
But currently, the consequences of canceling the lease could go well beyond golf.
The Trump administration’s takeover of the courses has resulted in a number of unforeseen consequences for both the golf courses and the broader DMV community.
From caddy and workforce development programs at Langston to the renovation at Rock Creek Park, numerous programs were immediately halted following the termination of the National Links Trust’s lease.
“It’s shocking, it’s saddening, it’s maddening,” Damian Cosby, the executive director of the National Links Trust, told NOTUS.
Since the termination, everything other than the day-to-day operations of the three golf courses has ceased.
“We are not running programming for our Jack Vardaman Workforce Development Program out of Langston this year. That’s because we’ve been terminated,” Cosby said. “We view these three facilities as community centers, as community hubs, places where people gather, and yes, there’s golf being played there, but there’s a lot of other activity at these facilities.”
Cosby also said he was concerned that programs for children, such as the Evans Scholars Foundation and the First Tee, wouldn’t have a place to operate following the termination.
The administration official was adamant that these programs would remain, and be bolstered, under its leadership. The official emphasized that they “are fully committed to continuing those relationships” and growing the partnerships with these programs.
Still, Cosby said without the National Links Trust, he fears access to affordable golf could be lost.
“You shouldn’t have to make six figures or be a member at a club to be able to access the game of golf, and that’s why municipal golf is here, is to be an on-ramp for everyone,” Cosby said. “Yes, you can make six figures, and we still want you to come to our facilities and play golf for a really affordable rate. But also, we want that kid whose family probably doesn’t have a ton of money to be able to use his Youth on Course membership and pay and play for $5.”
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