The American Flag is Half-Mast Too Often
Overusing the symbol dilutes its meaning.
Following former President Jimmy Carter’s death on December 29, 2024, current President Joe Biden ordered that the American flag be raised at half-mast for 30 days, as is customary whenever a former president dies. This was much to the chagrin of President-Elect Donald Trump, since the 30-day period overlaps with Trump’s inauguration on January 20, 2025. Trump complained on Truth Social:
"The Democrats are all 'giddy' about our magnificent American Flag potentially being at 'half mast' during my Inauguration," Trump said, employing a term frequently used for the lowered position when the flag is on a ship.
"They think it’s so great, and are so happy about it because, in actuality, they don’t love our Country, they only think about themselves," Trump said.
While Trump’s complaints here are entirely self-serving, I think they highlight a genuine problem in American flag culture: Our flag is half-mast way too often!
The Half-Mast Tradition
Raising a flag half-mast (also known as half-staffed) is the tradition of raising a flag only halfway up a flagpole instead of all the up as you normally would. This is typically done out of mourning or respect for some national tragedy. For the purposes of this article, I’m only going to talk about half-staffing when it comes to the American flag, but other flags can be flown at half-mast as well (like state flags, military flags, and the POW/MIA flag).
By law, half-staffing can be triggered in one of three ways:
Congress designates days for the American flag to be flown half-mast through legislation.
Currently, Congress has designated 5 days per year when the American flag should be flown half-mast:
Memorial Day1
Patriot Day (aka 9/11 Memorial Day) — September 11th
Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day — December 7th
Korean War Veterans Armistice Day — date varies
National Firefighters Memorial Day — date varies
The President designates days for the American flag to be flown half-mast through executive orders.
The President can unilaterally declare the American flag to be flown at half-mast. There is no limitation on when the President may declare this, nor is there any limitation on how many days per year the President may declare this. As a result, the vast majority of half-staffing events are triggered by the President.
Local officials (governors, state legislatures, city councils, etc.) designate days for the American flag to be flown half-mast within their jurisdictions.
Sometimes there is an event that a state or local government wishes to honor with a half-staffing (e.g. a beloved local figure has just died). It feels kind of odd that a local official can designate how the national flag is flown, but that’s how the law works.
Whenever the President or other relevant officials declare a half-staffing, all government agencies must fly their American flags at half-mast. This includes flags on government property, flags outside government buildings, flags on military outposts, and flags within American embassies overseas.
(It should go without saying that private individuals and organizations do not have to follow these rules. As a private entity, you have the right to fly your flags at half-mast, full-mast, or any other -mast, on any day you choose. Free speech, baby!)
An Overused Power
The website https://us.halfstaff.org/ documents all the instances of the American flag being flown at half-staff. And let’s just say that Presidents have used their half-staffing powers quite liberally.
Has there been a natural disaster? Raise the flag at half-mast.
Has there been a mass shooting or terrorist attack? Raise the flag at half-mast.
Has an important politician just died? Raise the flag at half-mast.
Has the former Prime Minister of Japan just died? Raise the flag at half-mast.
Has the Queen of England just died? Raise the flag at half-mast for twelve days.
That last one in particular really irks me. We fought to get rid of the British monarchy in this country more than 200 years ago. Yet, here we are honoring the death of a foreign royal in the same way we honor our own fallen soldiers.
There have been at least 50 separate national declarations of half-staffing since 2020. Most of those declarations have been for a period of more than one day, with many lasting a week or longer. That gives us no fewer than 195 days since 2020 when the American flag has been flown at half-mast. Or to put it another way: If you walked up to a government building on some random day between January 2020 and January 2025, you would have a more than 10% chance of seeing the American flag half-mast.2 (And that’s just the nationwide declarations. If you also count state and local declarations, the number of half-staffing days is even greater.)
As a vexillology nerd, I pay attention to flags. Not only what’s on the flags themselves, but how the flags are flown and what rituals our society places around the treatment of flags. That is why I am so irritated by the overuse of half-staffing. In theory, flying the flag at half-mast should be a sign of great importance, reserved for special occasions. We are disrupting our normal procedures to draw your attention to a rare, tragic event in our country’s history or recent past.
In practice, however, the fact that the flag is half-mast so often makes the ritual far less significant. Oh, the flag is half-mast today? I wonder what crappy thing happened in America this week. If the flag is half-mast too often, people will stop paying attention to it.
Or to put my point more succinctly:
(By the way, this is also why I hate it when people play Christmas music before Thanksgiving. If you arbitrarily extend the Christmas season to be more than a month long, it’ll feel a lot less special when Christmas Day actually does come.)
My source does not list half-staffing declarations made before 2020, so I can’t say whether this problem has gotten better or worse over time. Maybe Joe Biden, for whatever reason, has been more eager to fly the flag at half-mast than other Presidents. Or maybe we’ve always had this problem.
But regardless of whether this problem is new or not, it has to stop. Presidents have to stop abusing their unchecked authority to declare the flag raised at half-mast. Not every tragic event or death deserves a nationwide week of mourning. The half-staffing ritual can only remain important if it remains selective. We owe it to our flag to preserve that importance.
Technically this is actually one-and-a-half days on most years. “Peace Officers Memorial Day” is set at May 15th each year and runs from sunrise until sunset. Normal Memorial Day is set at the last Monday in May and runs from sunrise to noon.
The list of declarations comes from https://us.halfstaff.org/, with numbers calculated by ChatGPT. If there’s some error in my numbers, blame one of those two sources for misleading me.