Making Daily Headlines · Page 3
Judge Declines to Be the Lorax, Still Keeps the Trees Standing
· New York time
U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes has continued to block President Trump from cutting down trees at a D.C. golf course. In her order, she revisited her earlier line that she was not the Lorax and did not speak for the trees, adding that the court speaks only for the rule of law. The Dr. Seuss reference gives a legal order an unusually leafy public profile, but the judge's distinction is serious. Her stated concern is the law governing the dispute, not a claim to represent the feelings of the landscape. The trees remain standing because a court order remains in force, not because a fictional forest advocate appeared at counsel's table. That distinction has not made the scene any less comic. A proposed change to a golf course has produced an exchange in which a federal judge must specify which children's character she is not. The fairway has acquired a procedural hazard more formidable than a misplaced bunker: it must wait for the legal process. The trees, meanwhile, have managed to become the best-known quiet participants in the case. They have offered no interviews and filed no briefs, leaving the judge to remind everyone that the court's subject is the rulebook, even when the scenery keeps attracting the attention.
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