One of the most left-wing cities in the U.S. took down a Revolutionary War-era flag from near its city hall shortly after liberals attacked Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito for having the same flag outside of his house.
San Francisco flew the “Appeal to Heaven” flag above its Civic Center Plaza, a part of the city that includes its town hall, before officials took it down over the weekend, according to The San Francisco Chronicle. The flag formerly flew outside of Alito’s New Jersey home, leading liberal media outlets to publish stories tying Alito to right-wing extremist elements and leading Democrats to argue he should recuse himself from certain Supreme Court cases pertaining to former President Donald Trump.
The “Appeal to Heaven” flag was originally flown over George Washington’s ships during the American Revolution, and is currently the official naval and maritime flag of Massachusetts.
However, some activists and members of the media have argued that it has taken on a contemporary significance to those who were involved in the events that unfolded at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, according to the Chronicle. Similarly, liberal media outlets and judicial activists have made similar suggestions about Alito’s impartiality due to his wife’s choice to fly an upside-down American flag outside their residence.
Like the “Appeal to Heaven” flag, some have associated the upside-down American flag with the events of Jan. 6. Critics of the media’s portrayal of the flags and their implications for Alito’s impartiality have characterized the uproar over the flags as a thinly-veiled pressure campaign designed to undermine Alito and the court’s conservative-leaning majority.
The city originally flew the flag to acknowledge the “quest for American independence,” but it has “since been adopted by a different group — one that doesn’t represent the city’s values,” city officials told the Chronicle.
Democratic Senators Dick Durbin of Illinois and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island requested that Alito recuse himself from cases pertaining to Trump and the 2020 election, but the Alito informed the lawmakers in writing that the flag controversy did not meet the court’s standards for recusal.
The office of Democratic San Francisco Mayor London Breed did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
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