Controversial Flag Ignites Fury – Flies Above D.C

Building with dome and flags flying outside.

A 250-year-old Revolutionary War banner has quietly become a loyalty test inside the federal government, and the latest flashpoint was a Flag Day photo-op at the Small Business Administration.

Story Snapshot

A Revolutionary-era “Appeal to Heaven” flag now doubles as a modern badge for Stop the Steal and Christian nationalism.
Trump appointees raised or displayed it at the Small Business Administration and the Department of Education in Washington, D.C.
Union leaders and critics say the flag has become inseparable from January 6 and far-right extremism.
Supporters insist it is simply historic patriotism, exposing a deeper fight over who owns America’s founding symbols.

A Revolutionary Banner Walks Into A Modern Federal Workplace

The same white “Appeal to Heaven” flag that fluttered above Washington’s cruisers in the Revolutionary War now hangs over cubicles and agency entrances in Donald Trump’s Washington. In June 2025, that banner briefly flew beneath the Stars and Stripes at Small Business Administration headquarters during a Flag Day ceremony, hoisted while Administrator and former Senator Kelly Loeffler posed for a celebratory photo calling it an “AMERICAN MADE flag.” The image lingered online long after the flag came down, and that was the real message.

Roughly the same week, staff inside the Department of Education noticed the identical flag hanging outside the D.C. office of Murray Bessette, a principal deputy assistant secretary in the powerful Office of Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development. For front-line civil servants already rattled by threats and political pressure since January 2025, the sight of a January 6 icon on their own hallway wall felt less like a civics lesson and more like a warning label on the building.

From John Locke To Stop The Steal

Historically, the “Appeal to Heaven” or Pine Tree flag was a straightforward symbol: a call, borrowed from philosopher John Locke, that when earthly justice fails, people appeal to divine authority. George Washington’s early naval schooners flew it as they challenged an empire that ignored colonial petitions. For generations, it sat safely in the museum wing of patriotic lore, alongside minutemen silhouettes and tricorne hats, far from modern partisan warfare.

That changed after 2020, when Stop the Steal organizers and Christian nationalist groups pulled the flag out of the archives and into the streets. The banner appeared at rallies falsely alleging a stolen election and then waved prominently among the crowd that breached the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Since then, it has flown over Justice Samuel Alito’s vacation home, outside House Speaker Mike Johnson’s office, and now at executive branch agencies each time defended as innocent history, each time photographed in the company of those who deny the 2020 result.

Why Career Staff See A Threat, Not A History Lesson

Union leaders inside the Education Department argue that context, not the artist’s statement, defines a symbol in a workplace people do not choose. Rachel Gittleman, who leads the union representing departmental employees, called the flag “carried by insurrectionists” and said it represents “intolerance, hatred, and extremism,” sharply at odds with serving a diverse public. From a conservative, common-sense perspective, that reaction is predictable when your colleagues watched the same cloth on live television as rioters smashed windows and chanted about hanging a vice president.

Far-right flag used by Jan 6 rioters flown above another government agency in DC

It marks the second time the controversial flag has been flown at a government agency in D.C.https://t.co/PHVzJfZTAj

— Ⓜ️Ⓜ️ Lauren Ashley Davis – OG Meidas Might 🇺🇲🦅 (@Meidas_LaurenA) December 16, 2025

The Trump officials involved offer a different frame. Loeffler’s Flag Day message wrapped the banner in small-business patriotism and manufacturing pride, steering around its 2020s baggage. Bessette has not publicly elaborated, but his role sits within an administration that loudly champions “Judeo-Christian principles” in education policy, a phrase many supporters see as moral restoration and many critics hear as code for Christian nationalism. In both agencies, the flag became shorthand for a broader culture war over religion, legitimacy, and who gets to define “real America” inside neutral government offices.

The Conservative Litmus Test Hiding Inside A Historic Flag

Defenders on the right, amplified by outlets like Fox News, insist the controversy proves the left’s hostility to basic American history. When Senator Ed Markey labeled the banner a “Christian nationalist” symbol, Loeffler’s allies fired back by pointing to Markey’s own past flag displays, arguing that Democrats suddenly discovered a problem only when conservatives embraced the image. That line of argument resonates with many conservatives who see a pattern: traditional symbols recast as extremist whenever they appear in the wrong hands.

There is a hard reality that both sides quietly understand: symbols do not stay neutral once blood is spilled under them. The Confederate battle flag did not become radioactive because of one speech; it became toxic because of the causes its bearers chose. The “Appeal to Heaven” flag now sits on that same slippery slope. Every time it rises over a taxpayer-funded building, federal workers and voters must ask whether they are saluting 1776, 2021, or a hybrid ideology that tries to sanctify both.