Paddlers Sue Trump Over Potomac River Closures

The Washingtonian reports:

The Trump White House has yet another legal headache—and this time, the other side brought paddles. The Canoe Cruisers Association of Greater Washington filed a lawsuit in Maryland Thursday against members of the administration, alleging defendants Karl L. Schultz, the commandant of the US Coast Guard, and Kirstjen M. Nielsen, the secretary of Homeland Security, failed to properly notify residents and surrounding businesses of a policy that locked them out of a 1.6-mile stretch stretch of the Potomac River.

Paddling and boating enthusiasts have been at odds with the administration for the better part of a year, after the Coast Guard implemented a then-temporary shuttering of a stretch of the river nearly 30 miles upriver from Washington, adjacent to Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia. Thursday’s complaint challenges the Coast Guard’s regulation, which it says “revokes the public’s legal right to access and enjoy a popular section of the Potomac River whenever President Trump visits Trump National.”

Trump’s visits to his nearby golf course have closed the river to the paddlers and others on many weekends.