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Nashua has taken its flag-ban fight inside.

For years, the city has attempted to block citizens from flying flags it disapproves of on public flagpoles outside City Hall. Now, officials are considering a ban on signs, banners, and flags inside the aldermanic chambers as well. Some aldermen are unhappy about what members of the public are saying with their signs.

Like calling them “asshats.”

Alderman Rick Dowd is leading the push for an ordinance that would prohibit any display items in the chambers during public meetings.

“There’s no need for debate. This ordinance is going to make it a rule we can enforce,” Dowd said Monday night during a meeting of the Personnel/Administrative Affairs Committee.

According to Dowd, the signs, banners, and flags displayed at public meetings have gotten out of hand. He claims some attendees are blocking cameras and obstructing others’ views with large signs, and that the displays could potentially block emergency exits. While Nashua previously operated under an unwritten “gentlemen’s agreement” against such displays, Dowd said too many members of the public now ignore that tradition and bring their signs anyway.

“We need to embrace this ordinance to be fair to everyone who comes to our meetings,” Dowd said.

But before the meeting, the New England First Amendment Coalition (NEFAC) raised concerns. NEFAC President Gregory Sullivan and Executive Director Justin Silverman sent aldermen a letter warning that the ordinance, as written, may violate the First Amendment.

“While there may be circumstances that would allow reasonable restrictions on these types of expression, a general prohibition based on a ‘security concern’ without any additional guidance as to what would constitute such a concern is ripe for impermissible viewpoint discrimination. The current language of O-25-060 does not include such guidance. It also allows for these forms of expression to be prohibited without any explanation provided by the Board,” Sullivan and Silverman wrote.

“Worse, the analysis accompanying the ordinance provides that the rule on banners, flags, and signs can be waived at any time, which encourages viewpoint discrimination and favoritism—both prohibited by the New Hampshire state constitution and the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.”

Aldermen Ben Clemons and Tim Sennott expressed concern that Dowd’s ordinance goes too far to address a problem they say has already been resolved. Aldermen already have the authority to ban vulgar or disruptive displays and speech during meetings. They can also remove individuals who attempt to electioneer during public sessions.

“That’s one of the shortcomings of the First Amendment—someone’s always going to push the envelope,” Sennott said.

Clemons argued that any new ordinance should make room for legitimate visual aids or other valid forms of political speech during public comment.

“There has to be a middle ground somewhere,” Clemons said.

Committee Chair Alderman Shoshanna Kelly demonstrated that middle ground at the start of Monday’s meeting. Resident Paula Johnson brought a pasteboard to illustrate the types of displays the public has used in the past to make points about city government policy. The next speaker, resident Laurie Ortolano, brought pieces of paper with slogans like “Derek T. is an Asshat” printed on them. Kelly cut her off and took away the remainder of Ortolano’s speaking time.

“We have the authority to make rules about what we allow or don’t allow. This is our meeting, and we need to make sure it is expedient and that we can get done what we need to get done,” Kelly said later.

Ortolano’s sign appeared to refer to Alderman Derek Thibeault, one of several board members she has publicly sparred with in recent years.

People from hostile foreign nations like China, Iran, and Russia would be barred from buying property in New Hampshire under a revised proposal that is part of the just-passed budget bill.

“I’m very concerned, especially when you look at what’s happening to our agricultural land and agricultural land near military bases,” said Sen. Regina Birdsell (R-Hampstead).

The ban prohibits Granite State land purchases by buyers from the People’s Republic of China, the Russian Federation, the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Syrian Arab Republic, and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

But it was China’s itch to buy American property that prompted Birdsell’s proposal.

She has been trying to protect New Hampshire from hostile ownership for the last two legislative sessions. Birdsell’s proposal for this year would have only restricted hostile actors from buying properties within 10 miles of military bases, but a last-minute agreement with New Hampshire realtors allowed the legislature to put a broader ban into the budget bill.

Birdsell said if the deal had come together sooner, it could have stopped the massive — and some say suspicious — purchase of property in Nashua by Nongfu Spring. 

Nongfu is China’s largest beverage company, and its owner, Zhong Shanshan, is China’s richest person, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. He also has ties to the Chinese Community Party.

Nongfu spent  $67 million on an industrial building close to one of Nashua’s water sources, despite online assessments valuing the property at approximately $15 million. The company will be buying water from Nashua’s Pennichuck Water Systems, like any other industrial customer, Pennichuck told NHJournal.

But the worry about foreign ownership is deeper than bottled water. Chinese-owned companies own or lease approximately 400,000 acres of agricultural land in the United States, a fraction of the 40 million acres owned by all foreign nationals or foreign-owned companies. It’s the anti-American politics and the local location that have lawmakers like Birdsell concerned.

Chinese properties in the United States are close to 19 American military facilities, such as Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, Patrick Space Force Base in Florida, and Camp Pendleton in California. Birdsell, whose father was in military intelligence, sees the potential danger in allowing regimes like China, North Korea, and Russia to gain a foothold close to American defense facilities. 

“I’m very concerned about the New Boston Space Force Base, the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, and Pease,” she said.

Birdsell isn’t alone. Over the past few years, more than two-thirds of state governments around the country have enacted a ban on foreign people or entities from buying property. On the federal level, U.S. Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.) and Sen. John Freeman (D-Penn.) are pushing  for more oversight on foreign countries buying American farmland. 

“We should take back all of their farmland. This is really a national security issue, and it is a food security issue,” Fetterman said in 2023.

Fears about foreign ownership of land in sensitive U.S. locations have been heightened by news from Russia and Iran. In Russia, Ukrainian forces were able to get trucks loaded with drones near military locations and unleash a recent devastating attack on the Russian air force. In Iran, Israeli operatives built an entire drone factory inside the country and used those drones to hit the Islamic Republic’s air defense and missile launching capabilities.

“I would say it’s a wake-up moment now,” said Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin told a security roundtable after the successful Ukraine attack. “We’ve always known that hardening our bases is something that we need to do, and so we have that actually in our budgets, to be able to get more resilient basing.”

There are potential security threats in New Hampshire. Space Force officials have testified in Concord about drones flying onto the base and other cybersecurity threats the New Boston facility is tackling.

More troubling is the 2022 arrest of a Russian man living in Merrimack who was allegedly part of a smuggling operation. According to law enforcement, Alexey Brayman was part of a spy ring that used his New Hampshire home to funnel things like ammunition for sniper rifles and electronics that could be used in nuclear or hypersonic weapons to locations around the world.

The fate of the budget is uncertain with Gov. Kelly Ayotte’s veto threat hanging over it. Birdsell’s legislation isn’t controversial, but everything is up in the air until the budget gets signed.

“I’m just going day to day right now,” Birdsell said.

The fight over Nashua’s City Hall Plaza flagpole isn’t over as residents Beth and Stephen Scaer filed an appeal with the First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston this week, arguing the city is abusing the law to get away with First Amendment violations.

The Scaers, represented by the Institute for Free Speech, took Nashua to court last year after city officials denied them permission to fly an ‘Appeal to Heaven’ Pine Tree flag on City Hall’s “Citizens’ Flag Pole.” According to the lawsuit, the city used vague language in its 2022 flagpole policy to deny the request.

In March, United States District Court Judge Landya McCafferty ruled against the couple. In her ruling, McCafferty agreed with Magistrate Judge Talesha Saint-Marc’s December report on the case which argued the city is exempt from First Amendment considerations thanks to the flagpole policy that defined the pole as government property. 

“[Saint-Marc] correctly found that the undisputed facts indicate that the flags displayed on the Citizen Flag Pole pursuant to Nashua’s 2022 Flagpole Policy constituted government speech not regulated by the First Amendment,” McCafferty wrote.

But Nathan Ristuccia and Endel Kolde, the attorneys representing the Scaers, say in their appeal that Nashua is simply using government speech rules to engage in viewpoint discrimination.

“Nashua officials believe that they can manipulate government speech doctrine to subsidize viewpoints that they like and discriminate against citizens whose views they disfavor, Ristuccia and Kolde write. “The City has sought to maintain a Citizen Flag Pole in front of City Hall as a forum for favored constituents, while using its written policies to create a superficial appearance of compliance with controlling precedent. But the city discriminates against minority and dissenting views—exactly those views that need First Amendment protection.”

From 2017 through to 2022, Nashua allowed residents to fly flags at the City Hall Plaza with no written policy for oversight or content restriction. After the city of Boston lost a United States Supreme Court case for banning a Christian group’s flag from its citizens’ City Hall flag pole, Nashua created a written policy to give officials veto power over citizens’ flags. In so doing, according to McCafferty’s ruling, Nashua transformed the flagpole from being a free speech zone, into a government speech zone.

But Ristuccia and Kolde point out that Nashua rejected flags it did not like before the 2022 policy was written.

“Both before and after the formation of the 2022 policy, Nashua officials rejected flags whose messages they disfavored,” Ristuccia and Kolde write.

According to the AmericanFlags.com website, the Appeal to Heaven flag was designed by Colonel Joseph Reed, who served as the personal secretary to George Washington. Originally commissioned for use on six military cruiser ships, the flag was adopted on October 21, 1775. It became the official Massachusetts Navy flag in 1776.”

The pine tree was a symbol of New England and its wealth of natural resources in colonial America. The “Appeal to Heaven” message is a reference to British philosopher John Locke, whose writings on self government greatly influenced the founders.

The Scaers wanted to fly the Appeal to Heaven flag to commemorate Granite Staters who fought in the Battle of Bunker Hill in the opening days of the Revolutionary War. But the city rejected their application on the grounds that the Pine Tree flag “is not in harmony with the message that the City wishes to express and endorse.”

Nashua has allowed residents to fly flags celebrating different religious sects, nationalities, and sexual identities for years. However, Nashua began to take a dim view of some flags, especially those proposed by the Scaers.

Beth Scaer got permission to fly a “Save Women’s Sports flag” for one week in 2020, but it was removed after 24 hours and city staff told her it was “transphobic.”

Stephen Scaer applied to fly a “Detransitioner Awareness Flag” in 2024 to commemorate people who reverse their sex change procedures. He was also told that the symbol “is not in harmony with the message that the City wishes to express and endorse.”

City Attorney Jonathan Barnes argued in court that flying the Pine Tree flag was akin to displaying a Nazi symbol on Hitler’s birthday.

“I mean, [Ristuccia] would have you believe that we can raise the Nazi flag to commemorate Hitler’s birthday. I think that’s totally unreasonable, and it certainly wouldn’t be in the city’s best interests to do that,” Barnes said in court.

The Pine Tree flag is a patriotic symbol with a history with links to the 1772 Pine Tree Riot in Weare, N.H. It was one of the earliest acts of rebellion against British authority in the American colonies, and predates the Boston Tea Party. The dispute, over enforcement of British laws restricting the use of valuable white pine trees, resulted in a group of local men storming the inn in Weare where representatives of the British government were staying and driving them out of town.

The flag was a popular symbol of resistance among New England colonists and its use spread through the Continental Army. George Washington had the flag flown from schooners commissioned for the war.

But, recently, the flag has also been adopted by some right-wing extremists. The flag is used by some in the Christian Dominionist sphere who advocate overthrowing democracy in order to create a Christian theocratic form of government.

Fears that Chinese billionaire Zhong Shanshan planned to buy his way into controlling Nashua’s water supply are giving way to tentative relief, with officials keeping a wary eye on a deal.

The good news, says Pennichuck Water, is that the potential deal with Zhong’s Nongfu Spring could ultimately lower residential water bills.

But state and local officials are less than thrilled that the international customer is based in China, which has an adversarial relationship with the U.S., and where companies are under the thumb of the Communist regime.

In February, Nongfu Spring secretly bought a $67 million industrial property in Nashua close to the Pennichuck Pond watershed, sparking concern about the future of Pennichuck Water, the utility owned by the City of Nashua. But C. George Bower, chairman of Pennichuck’s board of directors, told NHJournal there is no plan to sell Zhong anything but water.

“There is zero plan to sell the company, there is zero plan to sell any land. We have no land to sell,” Bower said.

Zhong’s close ties to the authoritarian Chinese Communist government, his company’s less-than-stellar environmental record, and the secrecy surrounding the Nashua plant generated alarm throughout the state. The company declined to respond to questions from NH Journal about the unusual property purchase or its plans in Nashua.

Gov. Kelly Ayotte told NHJournal that she would be watching the deal to make sure Nongfu remains a Pennichuck customer and not a Pennichuck owner.

“It’s critical that we safeguard New Hampshire from foreign adversaries like China. We need to ensure we aren’t allowing any national security threat to take root in our state,” Ayotte said.

According to Forbes, Zhong is worth $58 billion, making him the wealthiest man in China. In addition to owning Nongfu Spring, China’s biggest maker of bottled water, he also controls Wantai Biological, which makes rapid diagnostic tests for infectious diseases, including COVID-19.

Nongfu and Pennichuck are in the preliminary stages of deal negotiations, Bower said, but just for water. Zhong wants up to two million gallons a day for his planned beverage plant at his new 80 Northwest Blvd. property. That’s good news for Pennichuck, its owners, and its customers, Bower said. 

Pennichuck has the capacity to produce up to 35 million gallons per day, Bower said, more than enough to accommodate Nongfu’s planned operations. Any costs associated with hooking Nongfu up to Pennichuck’s water system, like adding new water lines, would be borne by the company.

A large-scale, industrial customer like Nongfu would lock into a contract that guarantees a set amount of water per month for the customer. Bower said such deals also require the customer to pay for all the water, whether they use it or not, giving Pennichuck a consistent, new revenue source.

It gets better for Pennichuck. As part of its conservation efforts, Pennichuck charges commercial and industrial customers on a rising scale, meaning the more water they buy, the higher the rate goes. Adding Nongfu as a customer could help drive down costs for Pennichuck and everyone in the Pennichuck system.

“We have fixed costs and variable costs, and a contract like this brings in an ongoing revenue stream that could help us control rates,” Bower said.

That means Pennichuck’s thousands of residential water customers throughout southern New Hampshire could end up paying less for their drinking water, Bower said.

Adding Nongfu to the system is the same as adding any other commercial or industrial customer, Bower insisted. Pennichuck already supplies water for the Anheuser-Busch brewery in Merrimack, which Belgian beverage conglomerate InBev owns.

Granite Staters concerned by a Chinese billionaire buying a large facility near Nashua’s water supply say the issue isn’t xenophobia. Many international businesses are active in New Hampshire. Instead, it’s the specific threat posed by China.

“Water is one of our most vital resources – to have a business, backed by the CCP, accessing water in our backyard is alarming,” said former state Rep. Randy Whitehead. “City officials and the Pennichuck Corporation need to come clean and provide some answers about this deal.”

Sen. Regina Birdsell (R-Hampstead) has proposed legislation to stop Chinese companies from owning land near sensitive military sites in the state.

“Whether it’s flying spy balloons across our country or scooping up critical plots of U.S. real estate, China has stepped up its efforts to spy on our country,” Birdsell said when she proposed the legislation. “Other hostile nations, such as Russia, Iran, Syria, and North Korea, could try the same surveillance tactics unless we do something to stop them. Totalitarian nations do not see any difference between one of their citizens’ companies and the government itself.”

The prospect that Pennichuck could be bought by a foreign individual or entity is alarming, and the reason that the City of Nashua now owns the utility. 

“When the city bought Pennichuck, it really did to secure the water supply,” Bower said.

Nashua waged a decade-long battle to buy Pennichuck, closing the $200 million deal in 2012. The city took action after watching the old owners of Pennichuck risk the future security of the region’s water supply. The former owners sold off wetlands to commercial developers and were even considering a purchase offer from a French company when Nashua stepped in. Today, Pennichuck continues to operate as a for-profit utility corporation, but it reports to a single shareholder, the City of Nashua. 

China’s largest beverage company, Nongfu Spring, is setting up operations in Nashua after spending $67 million on an industrial building.

But the property’s location, adjacent to the Pennichuck watershed area that supplies drinking water for the city, raises questions about where Nongfu will get its H2O.

Pennichuck Pond

Recent developments have sparked public concern about the potential sale of Nashua’s water resources to a foreign entity. A significant real estate transaction and subsequent hiring activities have brought those issues to the forefront, prompting questions about the future of the city’s water supply.

According to online records, in February 2025, STAG Industrial sold a 337,391-square-foot industrial property at 80 Northwest Boulevard in Nashua for a staggering $67 million, despite online assessments valuing the property at approximately $15 million. The buyer was not officially disclosed, leading to speculation about foreign involvement. However, recent job postings on LinkedIn indicate that Nongfu Spring, a major Chinese bottled water company, is actively hiring for positions at that location.

Nongfu sells bottled water, tea, juices, and other drinks. It was one of the first private beverage companies to emerge in China in the 1990s and helped make its owner, Zhong Shanshan, the richest man in China with a net worth of around $65 billion. 

Zhong and Nongfu came under fire last year in China when nationalist activists there deemed the billionaire was not patriotic enough. It’s not clear how much the boycott was the work of so-called nationalists or part of a pressure campaign brought by the authoritarian government against Zhong. However, it’s well known that China’s Communist Party (CCP) exerts a strong influence over businesses operating within the country, both domestically and foreign. 

That’s one reason state Senate Majority Leader Regina Birdsell (R-Hampstead) has proposed legislation to prevent agents of the Chinese government from buying and owning land near sensitive military locations in the state.

The concern in the Gate City isn’t war fighters, but water.

Across the road from Nongfu’s new beverage plant is the Pennichuck Pond, one of many ponds in the Pennichuck water system that serves as Nashua’s main water source. 

Nashua’s water supply is managed by the Pennichuck Corporation, a semi-private water company controlled by the city. Nashua purchased Pennichuck in 2012 in a unique $200 million deal that left the corporate structure in place but positioned the city as the sole shareholder. 

The deal took 10 years and multiple trips to court to go through. The push to buy Pennichuck started in the early 2000s when it was learned that a French company planned to buy a controlling interest in the water supplier. City leaders acted to keep local control of the water. 

But prior to the possible foreign owner controversy, city leaders were unhappy with Pennichuck’s management, which had been selling off hundreds of acres of land to developers. The purchase was also a way for Nashua to keep Pennichuck’s land for water use, and not for building.

The upcoming Pennichuck Board of Directors meeting on May 21, 2025, has locals wondering if they will discuss and vote on any measures related to Pennichuck Pond, the water supply, and any deals related to these recent transactions. Current Board Chair C. George Bower did not respond to a request for comment about the upcoming meeting.

Pennichuck is based in Nashua and supplies water to communities throughout southern New Hampshire. Pennichuck serves approximately 40,000 customers using water from the Pennichuck watershed and the Merrimack River. It generates more than $50 million a year in revenue against $40 to $45 million in expenses.

One of Donald Trump’s first political successes was his embrace of the opioid addiction issue in New Hampshire during the 2016 campaign. Long overlooked, the scourge of addiction was hitting working-class Americans hard, with the Granite State suffering more than 300 drug overdose deaths in 2015.

In 2018, the data analysts at WalletHub ranked New Hampshire as having the third-highest drug use rate in the U.S.

But a decade after Trump came down the golden escalator and helped raise the profile of the opioid issue, New Hampshire’s fortunes have reversed. The latest WalletHub report, released Wednesday, ranks New Hampshire 11th best overall in terms of its drug problem. The report looks at factors like recovery availability, law enforcement efforts, and rates of addiction. Hawaii, Utah, and Nebraska were in the top three for states doing well, while New Mexico, West Virginia, and Nevada have the most dire drug addiction problems according to the report. 

“I think we’re doing significantly better,” said Chris Stawasz, regional director with ambulance company American Medical Response.

Only one New England state, Connecticut, has a lower rate of drug abuse than New Hampshire. Massachusetts and Maine rank 26th and 27th, respectively; Rhode Island comes in at 28th, and Vermont is last in the region at number 32.

Stawasz, who has been collecting and publishing overdose data from the cities of Manchester and Nashua for years, said data from this year is already showing a major improvement.

“Nashua and Manchester are at half of where we were a year ago, and statewide it’s down as well,” Stawasz said. 

Part of the credit goes to state government, where Gov. Chris Sununu led a bipartisan effort to make treatment more readily available to Granite Staters. Mental health and confronting addiction have been among a handful of issues where, despite some differences in approach, support for solutions has been strong on both sides of the aisle.

As a result, New Hampshire ranks 48th among states with adults whose drug-treatment needs are unmet, WalletHub reports.

In Manchester, which has been ground zero for the Granite State’s battle with addiction, Mayor Jay Ruais — who has struggled with his own addiction issues — says the battle has been hard fought. But, he told NHJournal, the results are undeniable as the number of fentanyl overdoses and deaths continues to decline.

“Trend lines have been extraordinarily clear,” Ruais said. 

Stawasz will release numbers for the first quarter of 2025 within the next few days, but he said Manchester and Nashua have seen at least a 50 percent reduction from the first quarter of 2024. The projections for the total 2025 number of overdoses and deaths could be their lowest in at least a decade. 

Getting from the worst of the opioid crisis to the recovery being seen today takes a combination of different people and agencies working on different aspects of the problem, Stawasz said.

“I can’t point to one specific item. There’s a lot of effort going into the recovery, prevention, and law enforcement.”

Focusing police agencies on busting fentanyl dealers and stopping the traffic of drugs coming up from Massachusetts has been a big part of the recent success, Stawasz said. Ruais said police are a major component of Manchester’s success in combating the epidemic, along with the city’s Rapid Overdose Assessment and Response (ROAR) Team, assembled to deal with different aspects of addiction.

“This is an entirely collaborative effort,” Ruais said. 

Now, the ROAR team can redouble efforts and hopefully get ahead before there is a next wave, Ruais said. The city can start looking more at prevention, targeting efforts to schools and youth in the city to keep them away from drugs. 

“We can further reduce these numbers so that a person never gets into an addiction,” he said. 

It’s not an Appeal to Heaven, but to the First Circuit Court of Appeals for Nashua residents Beth and Stephen Scaer in their Pine Tree flag fight with the city.

The Scaers filed a lawsuit seeking an injunction against Nashua after they were denied an application to fly the Revolutionary War-era banner, which includes the slogan “An Appeal to Heaven,” by Nashua officials. On Friday, lawyers for the Scaers’ filed notice in the federal court of their intention to go to the appeals court in Boston.

Last Month, United States District Court Judge Landya McCafferty denied their motion for a preliminary injunction, ruling the couple was likely to lose their case on the merits. McCafferty relied on Magistrate Judge Talesha Saint-Marc’s review and report of the case in her ruling. 

According to McCafferty and Saint-Marc, the city did not violate the Scaers’ free speech rights when it denied their flag application. They argue the city’s application process for requests to fly flags on the city’s Citizen’s Flag Pole is an example of an allowable government speech restriction that does not infringe on the First Amendment.

Nathan Ristuccia, an attorney with the legal nonprofit The Institute for Free Speech, insists the court is wrong and that the treatment of the Scaers, who are outspoken political conservatives, is viewpoint discrimination.

“The City of Nashua cannot manipulate government speech doctrine into a ruse for subsidizing viewpoints they like and discriminating against those they disfavor,” Ristuccia wrote in a motion arguing against Saint-Marc’s report. “The City has sought to maintain the Citizen Flag Pole as a forum for favored constituents while using its written policy to create a superficial appearance of compliance with (prior free speech ruling) Shurtleff v. City of Boston.”

In the past, the Nashua city government has allowed flags celebrating Pride Month, transgender rights, as well as ethnic heritage with the national flags of Greece and the Dominican Republic. However, the city has also rejected previous requests to fly symbols advocating pro-life politics, libertarianism, and protecting women’s sports from biological males. 

The city adopted a flag pole policy in 2022, after several rejected applications, that states in part, “[the] flag pole is not intended to serve as a forum for free expression by the public.”

Ristuccia calls the policy an attempt at invoking “magic words” to get around the First Amendment claims of people whose applications were rejected. The Scaers had their Pine Tree Riot flag rejected in 2024 when the city informed them the Revolutionary War banner is not “in harmony with city policies and messages that the city wishes to express and endorse.”

The city’s rejection of the Pine Tree Riot flags is not about Nashua officials harboring royalist sentiment. Instead, officials are being swayed by current political prejudices seemingly shared by Saint-Marc. In her report, Saint-Marc determined the flag the Scaers wanted to fly is a symbol that’s been coopted by the “far right.”

“The record also indicates that the flag was used during the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the United States Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.,” Saint-Marc wrote.

City Attorney Jonathan Barnes likened the Scaer’s request to fly the Pine Tree Riot flag at city hall to flying a Nazi flag during his arguments in front of Saint-Marc.

“I mean, [Ristuccia] would have you believe that we can raise the Nazi flag to commemorate Hitler’s birthday. I think that’s totally unreasonable, and it certainly wouldn’t be in the city’s best interests to do that,” Barnes said in court.

The 1772 Pine Tree Riot took place in Weare and is considered a pivotal event that led to the American Revolution. The flag has long been associated with patriotic movements. The Scaers wanted to fly the flag on the anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill to honor New Hampshire Minutemen.

A federal judge ruled Friday the City of Nashua did not violate resident Beth Scaer’s First Amendment rights when it denied her permission to fly the “Appeal to Heaven” Pine Tree flag on the citizen’s flag pole.

“The Magistrate Judge correctly found that the undisputed facts indicate that the flags displayed on the Citizen Flag Pole pursuant to Nashua’s 2022 Flagpole Policy constituted government speech not regulated by the First Amendment,” ruled United States District Court Judge Landya McCafferty.

For years, the City of Nashua had a policy of making a flagpole at City Hall available, upon request, to citizens who wanted to celebrate or demonstrate on behalf of an idea or group. In the past, that included the flags of Ireland, India, and Ukraine, along with the “Suffrage” flag, the “Children of the American Revolution” flag, and the Lion’s Club flag. Recently, city officials took down the New Hampshire state flag to make room for a “Progress Pride” banner.

What the city would not allow was the flying of a flag promoting women’s rights/girls-only sports or the historic “Appeal to Heaven” Pine Tree Flag. Nashua resident Beth Scaer told the city she wanted to fly the flag to commemorate the anniversary of the Bunker Hill battle, in which several New Hampshire residents took part.

The city refused.

“The flag is not in harmony with the message that the city wishes to express and endorse. Therefore, we must deny your request,” wrote Jennifer L. Deshaies, whose job title in city government is “risk manager.”

Scaer sued, and her cause was taken up by the Institute for Free Speech (IFS). The case went before Magistrate Judge Talesha Saint-Marc last year.

During testimony before Saint-Marc, City Attorney Jonathan Barnes compared flying the Pine Tree flag at City Hall to flying a Nazi flag.

“(The plaintiffs) would have you believe that we can raise the Nazi flag to commemorate Hitler’s birthday. I think that’s totally unreasonable, and it certainly wouldn’t be in the city’s best interests to do that,” Barnes said.

In her report rejecting Scaer’s complaints, Saint-Marc called the flag a “far-right” symbol and noted it was flown by some participants in the Jan. 6, 2021 U.S. Capitol riot.

In fact, the pine tree was a common symbol of New England during the Revolutionary War era. The Pine Tree Flag was adopted as Massachusetts’ state flag for a brief period.

The symbol is also tied to the historic Pine Tree Riot in Weare, N.H., one of the first acts of rebellion leading up to the American Revolution.

As for Jan. 6, free speech advocates note the most commonly flown flag by the rioters was the U.S. flag, which currently flies in front of Nashua City Hall.

McCafferty was unmoved.

The legal issue in dispute is the city’s claim that the so-called Citizen’s Flagpole was never, in fact, a free speech forum, despite the many flags flown by many residents to promote various causes. The city insists every flag was a form of “government speech not regulated by the First Amendment,” as McCafferty ruled.

The Greek national flag flies outside Nashua City Hall on the city flagpole usually reserved for the POW-MIA flag.
(CREDIT: Beth Scaer)

The IFS points out that Nashua Mayor Jim Donchess suddenly (and quietly) ended the city’s flagpole policy soon after the lawsuit was filed. ‘The flagpoles on city hall grounds shall henceforth be exclusively controlled by city government,” Donchess declared.

“The abrupt repeal of Nashua’s flag policy is a tacit admission that the old policy was unconstitutional,” IFS attorney Nathan Ristuccia told NHJournal at the time.

On Monday, Ristuccia told NHJournal there will be an appeal.

“We fully intend to appeal this decision to the First Circuit, where we’ll continue arguing that Nashua’s vague and subjective flag policy created exactly the kind of viewpoint discrimination the Supreme Court has repeatedly found unconstitutional.”

Meanwhile, the city’s flag policy continues to raise questions. Just days before McCafferty’s ruling, the city pulled down the POW-MIA flag that traditionally flies outside City Hall and replaced it with the national flag of Greece. It was, according to a statement from the city, to commemorate Greek Independence Day on March 25.

“I don’t know why they ditched the POW-MIA flag, but I think it is disrespectful,” Scaer told NHJournal.

The city of Manchester suffered the fewest opioid overdose fatalities in February since 2020, part of a statewide trend of fewer deaths and fewer ODs.

Mayor Jay Ruais (R-Manchester) is celebrating the good news but, along with fellow Republican Gov. Kelly Ayotte, says there is still more work to do.

“The significant decline in fatal opioid overdoses across the state and here in Manchester is the positive news we have been working so hard toward,” Ruais said.

Manchester recorded just three opioid overdose fatalities in February, the lowest one-month tally since November 2020. Chris Stawasz, with ambulance company Global Medical Response, Inc., said Manchester’s fatalities are now 12 percent lower than the previous 12-month rolling average.

And Manchester isn’t the only bright spot for a state that’s struggled to address the opioid epidemic for years. The state Office of the Chief Medical Examiner’s latest report shows a 35 percent drop in opioid overdose deaths from 2023 to 2024.

Ayotte said the numbers show New Hampshire is on the right track.

“Thanks to our state’s coordinated approach to fighting the drug crisis, New Hampshire is a model for the nation in bringing down fatal overdose deaths,” Ayotte said.

New Hampshire has focused on making recovery programs more accessible, getting life-saving naloxone to people who need it, and making sure people with substance abuse can get medical care and employment. 

In Manchester, Ruais has focused on getting people experiencing homelessness into housing instead of temporary shelters where overdoses run rampant. This week, the city’s Board of Aldermen voted to spend $201,000 to pay for a mobile crisis unit and case manager to reach out to people in the grip of addiction. At the same time, the city will spend $250,000 from its Affordable Housing Trust fund to create up to 30 transitional housing beds to get people off the streets.

“We are making real progress addressing homelessness and reducing drug overdoses, so now is not the time to take our eye off the ball,” Ruais said.

Ayotte wants to see more done to stop drugs before they hit the streets.

Last month, she held a joint press conference with the mayor of Lawrence, Mass. — a notorious hub for illegal drugs in the region — to announce a joint effort to stem the flow of fentanyl and other opioids.

“We will build on this progress and continue to be vigilant by strengthening our drug interdiction efforts through Operation Granite Shield and Northern Shield while supporting those in recovery with investments in our Community Mental Health Centers and Recovery Friendly Workplaces,” Ayotte said.

On Tuesday, Acting U.S. Attorney Jay McCormack announced the arrest of three illegal immigrants from the Dominican Republic, charged with selling cocaine in Nashua. The arrests were carried out by the Drug Enforcement Agency with the help of the Nashua police.

Elizardo Escaria Delison, 32, Belisario Luis Delison, 49, and Rayddy Delison De Aza, 28, were each charged with one count of conspiracy to distribute and possession with the intent to distribute controlled substances.

 Their arrests were part of Operation Take Back America, an initiative that, in part, targets overseas drug cartels operating in the United States. 

For all the positive signs, Stawasz cautions people to be ready in case things start going south again.

“Please keep in mind that due to the nature of the opioid epidemic and its clear history of unpredictability, it is always possible that the trend of lower numbers could quickly change,” Stawasz said.

The City of Nashua did not violate the First Amendment when it rejected resident Beth Scaer’s application to fly the Pine Tree “Appeal to Heaven” flag at city hall, a federal judge ruled this week. But a free speech organization representing Scaer says the fight is far from over.

Magistrate Judge Talesha Saint-Marc issued a report on Monday to Chief District Judge Landya McCafferty recommending the court deny Scaer’s request for an injunction against the city. Scaer was seeking the preliminary injunction to prevent Nashua officials from denying their flag permit applications, or closing down the public flag program.

After being slapped with a lawsuit over free speech violations for refusing to allow Scaer to fly the historic Pine Tree Flag, Nashua Mayor Jim Donchess quietly pulled down the city’s flagpole policy entirely.

Nathan Ristuccia, an attorney with the Free Speech Institute representing Scaer, called Saint-Marc’s report disappointing, but added it’s not the final word in the case. He plans to file objections to Saint-Marc’s report in the coming days.

“Although we are disappointed with the magistrate judge’s recommendation against the preliminary injunction, this is just one early step in the legal process for defending our client’s First Amendment rights,” Ristuccia said. 

Saint-Marc found that since Nashua’s original flag display policy explicitly states the venue is not a place for absolute free expression, city officials are not violating anyone’s rights when they choose to reject some flags. 

“During the time period relevant to the Scaers’ claims, Nashua maintained a written flagpole policy with identifiable guidelines of what it wished to communicate through the flags displayed on the Citizen Flag Pole,” Saint-Marc wrote. “The 2022 Flagpole Policy stated that the ‘potential use of a City flag pole is not intended to serve as a forum for free expression by the public.’”

Scaer’s attorneys argue having a policy doesn’t free the city from illegally practicing viewpoint discrimination.

Scaer filed her lawsuit against Nashua in September, claiming she was denied the ability to fly the historic Pine Tree flag at City Hall’s “Citizen’s Flag Pole.” According to Scaer’s lawsuit, the city used its vague policy to deny her request. The flag’s origins are linked to events in 1772 in the town of Weare, N.H. Colonists staged a pre-Revolution act of defiance against British rule. Scaer planned to fly the flag to commemorate the anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill.

But Saint-Marc again sided with Nashua when she noted that different symbols, like the Pine Tree flag, can have multiple meanings. In this case, the Pine Tree flag could be considered a symbol of the far right as much as a symbol of the Revolutionary War, she wrote.

“The record also indicates that the flag was used during the Jan. 6, 2020 attack on the United States Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.”

Scaer’s supporters are quick to note that far more U.S. flags were flown by rioters that day, and the American flag currently flies outside Nashua City Hall.

Representing the City of Nashua before Saint-Marc last month, attorney Jonathan Barnes compared flying the Pine Tree flag to displaying a Nazi symbol on Hitler’s birthday.

“I mean, [Ristuccia] would have you believe that we can raise the Nazi flag to commemorate Hitler’s birthday. I think that’s totally unreasonable, and it certainly wouldn’t be in the city’s best interests to do that,” Barnes said.

According to the transcript from the Nov. 5 hearing, Ristuccia did not advocate for the display of Nazi symbols.

Barnes also admitted to Saint-Marc that, under its policy, Nashua would ban the national flag of Israel at City Hall as well. The City has previously banned the Palestinian flag, a pro-life flag, and flags supporting people who detransition after sex change procedures.

Saint-Marc’s report will now go to McCafferty for a final decision on the injunction. Even if McCafferty agrees with Saint-Marc on the injunction, the case is far from over.

“The final decision about the preliminary injunction rests with the district judge, who may accept, reject, or modify the magistrate’s recommendation. As the case proceeds, we will continue fighting to protect the rights of every citizen to express their views freely, without government censorship,” Ristuccia said.