Furious judge cites Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax as she stops Trump from tearing down trees at DC golf course

Furious judge cites Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax as she stops Trump from tearing down trees at DC golf course Workers cut down and bulldozed hundreds of trees because the president ‘demands haste,’ according to Judge Ana C Reyes - Bookmark - CommentsGo to comments Become an Independent member to bookmark this article Already a member? Log in The Lorax said he speaks for the trees, “for the trees have no tongues.” That job is now for a federal judge in Washington, D.C. District Judge Ana C. Reyes invoked Dr. Seuss’s environmental fable after ordering Donald Trump’s administration to stop work on a public golf course, where crews and tractors ripped out hundreds of trees over the weekend. Reyes unloaded on Department of Justice lawyers in a tense hearing this week after the government failed to alert the court and preservation groups about imminent plans to raze the public golf course, where more than 400 trees were knocked down. “Breakneck speed to clear trees that posed no harm. The reason? Disputed. The budget? Unclear. The environmental impact? Unstudied. The urgency? None,” Reyes wrote Tuesday night. “Next steps: bulldoze hundreds more.” Without her intervention, the “the ground, landscape and vistas will be irrevocably altered” because “destroyed trees cannot be replaced,” preservationists warned in a lawsuit against the administration. “Just ask the Lorax,” Reyes added. In a footnote, Reyes said she recently learned that Dr. Suess worked “late into the night” over his depiction of a “smallish gopher-like creature called the Lorax” for “a full year,” citing an article about the author from 1979. “But then, while on vacation in Africa, Dr. Seuss — inspired by the sight of a herd of elephants— ‘picked up a laundry pad and wrote the whole book that afternoon,’” she wrote. “The Court has seen no elephants. And it has certainly had less than a year to write. But it very much appreciates that her clerks know something of late-night work and industrious afternoons,” she added. Trump’s proposed overhaul of the public golf course — part of his extensive plans to remake the nation’s capital with sweeping changes to the landscape and public monuments — was happening “faster than anticipated,” according to preservation groups who are suing to stop the deconstruction. The lawsuit from the D.C. Preservation League and two D.C.-area residents calls on the court to halt the Trump administration's Washington National plan, the National Park Service’s proposed efforts to replace the public park with what the president is calling “one of the Greatest Golf Courses anywhere in the World.” The government had previously stated that it would not take irreversible action without completing a legal and environmental review process as required under the National Environmental Policy Act. But shortly before 5 p.m. Friday, the administration announced plans to begin clearing hundreds of trees. Tractors and heavy equipment tore down dozens of trees the next day, according to the plaintiffs. The administration claims that the “Tree Management Plan” is “but one step in the Government’s Washington National Plan, which, as Plaintiffs put it, seeks to ‘destroy East Potomac Golf Course,’” Reyes wrote Tuesday. “It is a coincidence, the Government seems to suggest, that [the Department of Interior] cut down hundreds of trees at the Course weeks after the President asked [the agency] to cut down trees at the Course, and not, say, any other time in the last seven years,” she added. “That asks rather a lot of coincidence.” The administration has done “precisely” what the preservations feared, the judge said. Tree removal plans moved from “removing only hazardous, dead, dying, or invasive trees to removing hundreds of healthy, non-invasive trees” — and did so without providing any “meaningful” notice to the plaintiffs and the court, Reyes wrote. Administration officials “raced” to tear down the trees, because the president “demands haste on his redesign, and not because of some newfound zeal to implement a small part” of a seven-year-old plan, she added. Kevin Griess, superintendent of National Mall and Memorial Parks, who was hauled Monday into the courtroom, testified that the trees were removed to return the course to “the original state of a links-style golf course,” which had “very, very, very few trees on it at all.” But asked by the judge whether there is any urgency whatsoever to continue pulling down the trees, Griess said “not that I’m aware of.” Rebecca Miller, executive director of the D.C. Preservation League, said in a statement that the government’s short notice of the tree removal “fails to honor previous commitments of timely communication made to the court and the plaintiffs.” She called the government’s “sudden execution” of the plan “a deliberate effort” by the National Park Service and Department of the Interior to bypass the courts and “jeopardize a protected historic resource.” “Filing late on a Friday and cutting trees at dawn the next morning sure seems to skirt everything this court asked of the administration,” said Alex Dickson, one of the plaintiffs in the case. “They seem to be moving forward any way they can, and looking for loopholes to get there.” Join our commenting forum Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies Comments