A group of National Park Service demonstrators unfurled an upside-down American flag on the cliff face of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park on Saturday to protest the Trump administration’s mass firing of park rangers.
The flag hung upside down — a long-standing signal of distress or protest — for several hours before being removed. The protest was first reported by the San Francisco Chronicle.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum fired roughly 1,000 park service employees last week as part of the Trump administration’s purge of recently hired federal employees. The preliminary effort, guided by the Trump administration’s Office of Personnel Management and entrepreneur Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), s part of a broader plan to drastically shrink the federal government.
A flag is only allowed to be flown upside down under the U.S. flag code “as a signal of dire distress.”
