A flag linked with far-right groups that was used by January 6 rioters has been flown at another government agency in Washington, D.C., according to a report.
The controversial flag, which features the image of a pine tree and the words “Appeal to Heaven,” was recently spotted outside the office of a top U.S. Department of Education official, USA TODAY reported.
The “Appeal to Heaven” flag, also known as the “Pine Tree flag,” dates back to the Revolutionary War, though in recent years has become linked to Christian Nationalist groups as well as the Proud Boys and certain neo-Nazi groups, according to the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism.
It was not immediately clear how long the flag had been hung outside the D.C. office of Murray Bessette, the principal deputy assistant secretary in the Office of Planning, Evaluation and Policy Development, the report says.
The flag was also spotted outside the Small Business Administration in June. Its re-emergence comes at a time when many worry about the separation of church and state – and as the president has vowed to protect prayer in public schools.
The president of the union for Education Department workers nationwide, Rachel Gittleman, told USA Today that the agency “has no place for symbols that were carried by insurrectionists.”
“Since January, hardworking public servants at the U.S. Department of Education have been subjected to threats, harassment, and sustained demoralization,” she said. “Now, they are being asked to work in an environment where a senior leader is prominently displaying an offensive flag – one that, regardless of its origins in the American Revolution, has come to represent intolerance, hatred, and extremism.”
In response, an Education Department spokesperson said, “As usual, union members are more concerned about imagined grievances and silly political fights than the abysmal test scores of our nation’s students.”
The Education Department did not immediately return a request for comment from The Independent.
In June, the Small Business Administration flew the “An Appeal to Heaven” flag during a ceremony, but it was only raised for about a day, according to a report in WIRED.
The flag has been at the center of controversy previously, including in the summer of 2024 when reports emerged that it had been flown multiple times outside the New Jersey vacation home of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito in 2023.
Around the same time, The New York Times reported that another flagpole on the judge’s front lawn at a property in Virginia had flown an upside-down American flag in late 2020 and early 2021, in the days after Joe Biden took office.
House Speaker Mike Johnson has, at times, displayed the flag outside his office on Capitol Hill.
The “Appeal To Heaven” flag and the inverted US flag were both embraced by supporters of Donald Trump’s “Stop The Steal” campaign, which falsely claimed Biden’s victory was fraudulent.
