In one of the stranger campaign stops of the year, an Oregon county commissioner traveled to Minnesota to campaign before a Somali audience, delivering her remarks in Somali as an American flag appeared to hang upside down behind her.
Nafisa Fai, a Somali-born refugee running for chair of the Washington County Board of Commissioners in Oregon, appeared in a video that went viral Thursday after conservative social media accounts highlighted the flag and her use of Somali rather than English.
The footage shows Fai speaking at a podium with a campaign sign identifying her as a candidate for Washington County commission chair. An American flag stands behind her, apparently inverted.
Oregon politician Nafisa Fai just held a rally in MN, speaking Somali, with an American flag UPSIDE DOWN.
Enough with the pretending already.
These are not Americans. pic.twitter.com/UwBbhxOn1h
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) October 15, 2026
A longer video published by Somali TV of Minnesota identifies the gathering as a community event supporting Fai’s campaign. Although she is seeking public office in Oregon, Fai traveled to Minnesota, home to one of the nation’s largest Somali populations, to build support for her candidacy.
Fai came to the United States as a teenager after living in a Kenyan refugee camp and has spent nearly 30 years in Oregon. Elected in 2020, she became Washington County’s first Black, Muslim, and immigrant or refugee commissioner. She currently represents District 1 and is challenging fellow Commissioner Pam Treece for the countywide chair position.
The upside-down flag is particularly notable because the U.S. Flag Code reserves the display for situations of extreme distress involving danger to life or property. Although the code carries no criminal penalties for civilians, an inverted flag is widely recognized as a distress signal and has also been used as a form of political protest.
A similar controversy erupted in July when an American flag was displayed upside down at a Somali Independence Day celebration in St. Cloud, Minnesota. Organizers said the display was a mistake, apologized, and corrected the flag.
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