A federal judge appointed by Barack Obama granted a temporary restraining order Monday that bars the National Park Service from taking down an "86 47" flag flown by a left-wing protest group near the National Mall, just blocks from the White House. U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss ruled the display amounts to protected political speech, not a threat against President Donald Trump, even as the Secret Service has investigated more than 1,300 uses of the phrase.
The order keeps the flag up for 14 days while litigation continues. It hands a courtroom win to Accountability Now USA, a progressive advocacy group that has been holding a round-the-clock protest near the U.S. Capitol calling for Trump's impeachment.
The ruling lands in a political climate defined by real violence against the president. Trump survived two assassination attempts in 2024, including a July 13 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, where a bullet grazed his ear. And just this April, a suspect named Cole Allen was accused of plotting an assassination attempt tied to the White House Correspondents' Dinner. Against that backdrop, the Department of the Interior pushed back hard.
Moss, who previously served in Bill Clinton's Justice Department and has contributed to Democratic candidates and causes, wrote that the "86 47" message reasonably advocated Trump's impeachment and removal from office, not violence. Fox News Digital reported that Moss found the meaning of "86" ambiguous and noted the flag bore no violent symbols and used patriotic colors.
"The evidence shows that Plaintiff displayed the 8647 flag to urge that Congress impeach and remove President Trump from office."
Moss acknowledged that political violence is rising but said that reality does not change what the protesters' speech actually means. In a longer passage from the ruling, Newsmax reported that Moss wrote:
"The Court does not doubt that political violence is on the rise and that it poses a grave threat not just to the targets of the threats but to the country as a whole. But the enormity of that problem does not change the meaning of Plaintiff's speech, which by any reasonable measure merely advocated for the President's impeachment and removal from office, that is, 'to throw [him] out.'"
He also wrote that "a true threat to the life or safety of the President would undoubtedly outweigh the interest of the public or the speaker in continuing to urge that unlawful conduct." But he concluded no such threat existed here.
The ruling followed claims that Secret Service and National Park Service officials repeatedly pressured protesters to remove the "86 47" flag and other signs. The Washington Examiner reported that Secret Service agents interviewed protesters about the display and that the Justice Department argued the government has a strong interest in investigating possible threats against the president.
Accountability Now USA alleged the National Park Service violated its First Amendment rights by threatening to revoke its permit. Moss sided with the group, writing that the government offered no evidence to support its claim that the speech constituted a genuine threat.
Breitbart reported that Moss wrote bluntly: "The government seeks to squelch core political speech without any articulable, much less evidentiary, basis for concluding that the speech actually threatens the life or safety of the President."
Court filings revealed that one protest volunteer told Secret Service agents: "I want Trump to live forever and rot in jail where he belongs." Moss found that statement, whatever its tone, undercut the government's argument that the protesters harbored violent intent.
The judge also traced the etymology of "86," writing that it originated in "1930s soda-counter slang" and historically meant to "throw out," "refuse service," or "get rid of" someone or something. He found that no reasonable observer could have viewed the flag as a threat to the president's life or physical safety.
Trump's Department of the Interior did not mince words. A DOI spokesperson told Fox News Digital:
"This opinion is from an Obama-appointed judge. In what world have we lost all decency, to demand that any threat against the President be taken very seriously."
The spokesperson added: "While the Department shall and does comply with the Court's orders, this type of behavior should not be tolerated."
Fox News Digital reached out to Moss' chambers for comment. The fact pack does not indicate whether chambers responded. The ruling is not the first time an Obama-appointed federal judge has clashed with the Trump administration in recent weeks. In a separate case, an Obama-appointed judge ordered Trump's name removed from the Kennedy Center, drawing a fierce White House response.
The "86 47" phrase sits at the center of another high-profile legal fight. The Department of Justice charged former FBI Director James Comey with two federal counts over an Instagram post last year showing seashells arranged to spell "86 47." Comey faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted. He denied intending any violent threat toward Trump and said he understood "86 47" to mean "leave" or "ditch."
The Washington Times noted that Moss's ruling undercuts the Justice Department's argument in the Comey case, since the judge found the same phrase to be protected political speech when used by protesters. If a federal court says "86 47" on a flag near the Capitol is constitutionally protected advocacy for impeachment, prosecutors will have a harder time arguing the identical phrase on Comey's Instagram was a criminal threat.
That tension between two arms of the federal government, one prosecuting the phrase, the other being told by a judge it is protected, is the kind of legal incoherence that invites skepticism about whether the rules are being applied evenly.
The flag ruling arrives amid a broader pattern of federal judges intervening in Trump administration actions. In recent months, courts have weighed in on everything from ICE arrests at immigration courts to executive orders on mail-in ballots.
Not every ruling has gone against the administration. A federal judge recently let a Trump mail-in ballot executive order move forward, rejecting a Democratic challenge. But the accumulation of Obama- and Clinton-era appointees issuing orders that constrain Trump's agencies has become a recurring flashpoint.
Moss's background, Clinton Justice Department, Obama appointee, Democratic donor, does not automatically disqualify his legal reasoning. But it does explain why the Interior Department's spokesperson led with the judge's pedigree. When a president has survived real bullets and a foiled assassination plot within the span of a year, the people charged with protecting him are not inclined to split hairs over soda-counter slang.
The case also touches a sore spot in the D.C. federal courts. U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui recently drew backlash from Trump allies after apologizing to Cole Allen, the suspect accused of plotting an assassination attempt tied to the White House Correspondents' Dinner, over his treatment in custody. Faruqui told Allen from the bench:
"At a minimum, I should be apologizing to him. We are obligated to make sure he's taken care of. Mr. Allen, I'm sorry that things have not been the way they are supposed to."
A judge apologizing to a man accused of targeting the president is the kind of moment that erodes public trust in the judiciary's seriousness about political violence. Paired with Moss's ruling that "86 47" is harmless advocacy, it paints a picture of a D.C. bench more alarmed by government overreach than by the environment that produced two assassination attempts in a single year.
First Amendment protections are real and they matter. The government should not be in the business of banning political slogans it finds distasteful. But context matters too. When the Secret Service has investigated more than 1,300 uses of a phrase, when the man it references has been shot at twice and targeted a third time, and when the Justice Department is actively prosecuting someone else for using the same words, a 14-day restraining order protecting that phrase on a flag near the Capitol is not just a free-speech case. It is a signal about priorities.
And in Washington, signals are never just academic. They tell people what the system will tolerate, and what it won't bother to take seriously.
