Obama Judge Orders Park Service To Leave The “8647” Anti-President Trump Flag Alone

A progressive protest group has been flying an 8647 flag on federal land near the National Mall, aimed squarely at the President of the United States.

The National Park Service called it a true threat and moved to shut it down. An Obama-appointed federal judge just told the government to leave it alone.

On June 29, 2026, U.S. District Judge Randolph D. Moss, appointed by Barack Obama, granted summary judgment to Accountability NOW USA and entered a permanent injunction against the Park Service and Interior officials.

The order blocks the government from revoking the group’s demonstration permit or seizing and removing the 8647 flag and similar displays over the message they carry.

Last night a federal district court issued a ruling that the National Park Service can't interfere with an ongoing protest critical of President Trump and prohibiting the Park Service from revoking Accountability NOW USA’s permit or confiscating and destroying the group's property. pic.twitter.com/ou3w1toI46

— ACLU of the District of Columbia (@ACLU_DC) June 30, 2026

The display sits on NPS-managed ground near the George Meade Statue on Constitution Avenue in Washington, D.C.

Volunteers have kept it up around the clock, calling for the impeachment and removal of President Trump.

The U.S. District Court permanent injunction order grants the group summary judgment and declares the 8647 flag not a true threat or incitement in the court’s view.

It rules the displays protected by the First Amendment when shown in a public forum under a valid demonstration permit.

The order then permanently bars the defendants from pulling the permit or removing and destroying substantially similar 8647 displays on that basis.

That is final relief at the district court level, not a short pause while the parties fight over facts. The injunction reaches NPS and Interior officials, along with agents and others acting with them, and it keeps them from using this message as the basis for yanking the permit.

In plain English, the court took the agency’s threat argument, rejected it, and locked in protection for the same kind of 8647 display in the same kind of protest setting.

That is a full win for the protesters and a hard loss for the agency trying to clear the message off federal land.

The Park Service did not treat this as an ordinary sign dispute. NPS argued the 8647 flag was a true threat against the President under 18 USC 871.

The agency also argued some of the signage was obscene, and it told the group to take the displays down or risk losing the permit.

Moss rejected that framing. In his memorandum opinion, he wrote that the central question was whether the materials fell outside First Amendment protection or counted as protected political speech.

The opinion says the parties agreed there were no material factual disputes, which allowed the court to treat the injunction fight as a summary judgment question and resolve the case on the merits.

Moss measured the flag and signs against narrow First Amendment exceptions for obscenity, true threats, and incitement. He concluded they were core protected speech, not legal obscenity, not a true threat, and not criminal incitement.

So the government could not force removal or condition the permit on the group dropping the message while the permit remains valid on federal park land.

In upholding the right of protesters to display 8647 flag, Judge Moss's 1st sentence cites the DC Circuit's ruling protecting some of Trump's outlandish statements during his DC criminal prosecution. https://t.co/ylHZMvCs9A

— Roger Parloff (@rparloff) June 30, 2026

The ACLU of D.C. represented the group and had already won an earlier order barring NPS from acting against the display.

The organization said the Park Service demanded the flag come down after it had been up for more than two weeks, then defended the case as a First Amendment fight over protest speech on public land.

That earlier stage matters because the court first issued temporary protection for the flag before the dispute moved into the final June 29 order. The group argued NPS was using its permit authority to suppress a message critical of the administration, while the government argued the message crossed into unprotected territory and could be regulated as a threat.

The Department of the Interior was not gentle in response. As Fox News reported, Interior pointedly noted that Moss was appointed by President Obama and argued that a flag it views as a threat to the Office of the President should not be permitted under any administration.

Fox placed the ruling in the broader fight over anti-Trump messaging and how aggressively the Park Service can police protests on federal land in Washington. The report also captured the administration’s sharper position: officials do not want a message they read as threatening sitting in the President’s backyard under a federal permit.

That is the tension the ruling leaves in place. One side sees a permit and a slogan.

The other sees a message aimed at the President that the government thinks crosses a line.

The Freedom Forum summarized the June 29 order as allowing the signs and the 8647 flag to remain, holding the displays were not legally obscene, not a true threat, and not incitement.

It framed the decision as a public-forum free-speech dispute over how far the Park Service can go in policing what a permitted protest is allowed to say.

The double standard practically writes itself. For years the same activist world cheered when speech it disliked got labeled dangerous and pulled down, and now it is running to the First Amendment for cover on land in the President’s own backyard.