Activist Judge Says Trump Can’t Cut Trees Without Her Approval

Trump Derangement Syndrome has afflicted yet another activist judge, this time in the nation’s capital where Uruguayan-born and Biden-appointed Judge Ana Reyes apparently believes that she and she alone should decide when and how many trees can be cut down at East Potomac Park.

Reyes reportedly “screamed” at Trump administration officials this week after the National Park Service (NPS) began removing trees from the park’s golf course, located about a mile southeast of the White House. NPS has already cut down about 430 trees and plans to remove more than 500.

The Trump administration has announced plans to renovate the course, which is more than 100 years old, into a championship-level venue, citing a 2019 NPS report which detailed significant tree overgrowth. A U.S. Department of the Interior spokesperson told Newsweek that “the work will help restore the course's historic character and reopen views toward landmarks, including the Washington Monument, National War College, Potomac River, and Washington Channel.”

But that explanation wasn’t good enough for various left-wing groups, who promptly sued the administration to stop the seemingly routine construction project. Judge Reyes then demanded that the administration seek advance approval from her before removing any trees or engaging in any construction-related activities.

The Department of the Interior says that it did provide advance notice with a filing at 4:55 pm last Friday before tree removal began. But that was not good enough for Reyes, who became “visibly frustrated” and began shouting at government lawyers.

Reyes then ordered all tree removal to be paused while she processes her feelings and the details of the case. CNN also reported Reyes will require “the administration to give 72 hours’ notice of any plans for the golf course, tree removal or otherwise, while the case plays out.” (One wonders if NPS is even allowed to fix divots without Reyes’s approval.)

“More than just being upset and furious right now, I am just beyond disappointed with the government,” Reyes said during the meeting, sounding more like a preschool teacher than a federal judge.

But the Department of the Interior owes Judge Reyes no explanation for what it did, since it is simply carrying out the recommendations of a 2019 “Cultural Landscape” expert report that called for the removal of trees and overgrown vegetation.

“Vegetation encroachment, invasive vegetation, and lack of vegetation management direction are compromising the character of plantings and/or spatial organization for the golf course,” the report found. The experts recommended that workers “[s]electively thin the forest where the trees are encroaching on historic view corridors and affecting playability of the golf course.

“This plan isn’t just about safety,” Kevin Griess, the superintendent of the National Mall and Memorial Parks, testified on Monday. “It’s about the restoration of the park to its original historic state of a links golf course.”

Everyone with common sense understands that massive trees, as nice as they may look, can obstruct the purpose of a golf course. Even healthy trees need to be removed if they are too close to other trees, otherwise disease spreads or they crowd each other out and none of them survive.

While it might be tempting for conservatives to mock Judge Reyes’s temper tantrum as just another case of anti-Trump hysteria, there is something deeper and far more troubling on display here. The reactionary anger toward the Trump administration’s golf course construction project also highlights the political left’s revulsion to building and beautification projects more generally.

As Trump has undertaken ambitious projects that invoke America’s identity as a nation of builders and dreamers, liberals have done everything they can to undermine those projects – a reflection of their deep cynicism and resentment toward America. They despise all that is beautiful, and especially monuments to American greatness left for future generations.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the totally disproportionate outrage over Trump’s “Independence Arch,” a planned 250-foot-tall arch to celebrate the 250th anniversary of American independence. Trump announced plans for the monument early in his presidency and selected an empty grass traffic circle across the Potomac from the Lincoln Memorial as an appropriate site.

In a bygone era, one could expect both parties to rally around the idea of a monument celebrating a quarter millennium of freedom and liberty. But elected Democrats have decried the project, while left-wing groups have ensnared it in a flood of lawsuits that have blocked construction.

The same tendency is on display in the left’s reaction to Trump’s planned White House Ballroom – which is really just a much-needed underground security upgrade with a ballroom on top. Despite presidents from both parties previously acknowledging the need for a large indoor gathering space on White House grounds, the left is acting as if Trump is razing the Executive Residence to the ground and installing Trump Tower on the rubble.

Projects like the Independence Arch, White House Ballroom, and even the East Potomac Golf Course revival embody the spirit of American exceptionalism and a deep confidence in American greatness that Trump is working to restore in the hearts of the American people.

The liberal opposition to these projects, meanwhile, shows that modern leftism is an ideology that instead worships ugliness while seeking to tear down and destroy all that is beautiful.

This instinct was similarly revealed in 2020 as left-wing rioters torched historic buildings throughout the country and tore down statues of America’s greatest heroes. It showed up again with the laughably ugly Obama Presidential Library, which unintentionally reflected the 44th president’s deeply corrosive impact on American society.

Conservatives and liberals have long been divided over plenty of issues. But this is a new phenomenon that has emerged only recently, and it now forces the country to a crossroads. Will we choose to be a nation of builders who honor our past, celebrate our identity, and seek beauty in what we create? Or will we succumb to an ideology of nihilism and destruction that will take our entire civilization down with it?

The choice belongs to us.