When an upside-down American flag was spotted outside the private residence of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, leftist media essentially painted him as an “insurrectionist.” But by these same standards, Democrats nationwide appear to be staging an “insurrection” of their own.
Leftists across America have adopted the inverted flag, a distress symbol, in recent days to protest the popular policies of President Donald Trump and government efficiency efforts of Elon Musk.
Last month, protesters flew a massive American flag upside down off El Capitan in Yosemite National Park in California, amid cuts to the National Park Service. The Washington Post fearmongered about the cuts, reporting that the Trump administration fired “the sole employee with the keys and the institutional knowledge needed to rescue visitors from locked restrooms.” As The Federalist’s Elle Purnell wrote, “If only one of the more than 1,000 people who work at Yosemite has the ‘institutional knowledge’ required to unlock a bathroom door, Trump should maybe consider firing more of them and replacing them with people who know how to make copies of a key.”
Nonetheless, Trump’s popular government efficiency efforts were upsetting enough to merit a distress signal.
“Hundreds” in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles marched to a local federal building over the weekend protesting cuts to bureaucratic bloat in agencies like the Department of Veteran Affairs, according to the L.A. Times. Some protestors were photographed flying the American flag upside down during the rally.
In Boulder, Colorado, an upside-down American flag was hung from a prominent rock formation near an office for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. According to a local Fox affiliate, the NOAA “began the process of firing hundreds” of federal workers last month. The city of Boulder ultimately removed the flag.
A “group of El Pasoans” laid the inverted American flag on the side of a hill overlooking the city “in protest of Trump administration policies,” as Texas journalist Bob Moore noted on X earlier this month. According to an article by Moore in El Paso Matters, the protest was “inspired” by the one in Yosemite.
Kenneth Weinstein of the Hudson Institute also spotted an inverted American flag on the campus of Georgetown University, which is home to pro-Hamas protests that continue even today. The display was a “sad reflection on a once great liberal arts university,” Weinstein wrote on X.
Smearing Conservatives
On Jan. 6, 2021, some Trump supporters carried an upside-down American flag while marching to the U.S. Capitol to protest the problematic administration of the 2020 election. Corporate media peddled the narrative that the inverted flag (along with common flags like the Betsy Ross and Gadsden flags) were “stop the steal” symbols and an immediate indication that anyone flying them must be a far-right insurrectionist. Leftist rag The American Prospect also claimed the symbol was “associated with white supremacist groups.”
Less than a year ago, The New York Times rushed to link Supreme Court Justice Alito to the so-called “insurrection” for flying the American flag upside-down outside his home in 2021. Alito told the outlet he “had no involvement whatsoever in the flying of the flag,” and that it was flown by his wife after a dispute with a neighbor. Still, other leftist outlets echoed the claim.
At the heart of these attacks was Democrats’ effort to smear all conservatives who dared support Trump or question the legitimacy of the 2020 election as “election-deniers” and “insurrectionists.” As The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway noted, Democrats commissioned the Jan. 6 committee to echo “the lie that there was nothing seriously wrong with the 2020 election,” and Biden’s DOJ indicted more than 1,500 individuals on Jan. 6-related charges. (President Trump has since pardoned and commuted sentences based on such charges.) Democrats also launched countless lawfare attacks and media smears against Trump.
But amid attempts to smear Trump and conservatives as “fascists” and “threats to democracy,” Democrats have repeatedly demonstrated themselves to be the party of radical extremism, authoritarianism, and political violence.
The American people were told to look the other way as radical leftists shut down businesses and destroyed lives during Covid-19 lockdowns and burnt cities to the ground during the Black Lives Matter riots of 2020. Now, violent leftists are firebombing Teslas because of their affiliation with Trump ally Elon Musk.
They have the art of projection down to a science. Now, after a smear campaign affiliating the upside-down American flag with “insurrection” and “extremism,” leftists are — by their own definition — acting pretty insurrection-y themselves.
Logan Washburn is a staff writer covering election integrity. He is a spring 2025 fellow of The College Fix. He graduated from Hillsdale College, served as Christopher Rufo’s editorial assistant, and has bylines in The Wall Street Journal, The Tennessean, and The Daily Caller. Logan is from Central Oregon but now lives in rural Michigan.
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