Officials at Alaska’s famed Denali National Park are taking heat after allegedly telling construction crews at the park not to fly the American flag.

Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, penned a letter to National Park Service Director Charles Sams demanding an explanation for the alleged actions of officials at Denali National Park, noting that the alleged demand for the bridge construction crew to remove the flag was made on the “eve of Memorial Day weekend.”

The claim appears to have originated in a report by the Alaska Watchman, a local conservative news outlet that cited an anonymous construction worker at the park. Fox News Digital has been unable to independently verify the details of the report, but a National Parks Service official disputed the account.

ALITO SAYS WIFE DISPLAYED UPSIDE-DOWN FLAG AFTER ARGUMENT WITH INSULTING NEIGHBOR

In his letter, Sullivan said that one of the construction vehicles involved in the project had a 3-by-5 foot American flag affixed to it, but for “reasons that remain unclear, someone at the National Park Service (NPS) caused the construction crew to remove the American flag.”

“This is an outrage – particularly in the lead-up to our most solemn national holiday, Memorial Day, a time when Americans come together to honor those that gave their lives in service to our nation, while wearing our country’s flag,” Sullivan wrote. “The American flag, especially on Memorial Day weekend, should be celebrated, not censored by federal government employees.”

The Alaska senator noted that he could find no regulations that would prohibit the flying of American flags on public land, arguing that such a regulation would be odd given that the purpose of national parks is for “the enjoyment of American citizens.”

Sen. Dan Sullivan (Brandon Bell/Pool/Getty Images/File)

ANTISEMITIC RIOT AT COLUMBIA REACHES BOILING POINT AS AGITATORS TAKE OVER ACADEMIC BUILDING, BARRICADE DOORS

Sullivan concluded by demanding that Sams investigate the incident and take steps to “ensure an incident like this does not happen again in American national parks.”

This view shows the landscape near Denali, Alaska, on Sept. 17, 2019. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

A National Park Service spokesperson told Fox Digital the incident never happened.

“Reports that a National Park Service (NPS) official ordered the removal of an American flag from a Denali bridge construction worker’s vehicle at Denali National Park are false,” said Peter Christian in a statement. “At no time did an NPS official seek to ban the American flag from the project site or associated vehicles.”

The flag is flown throughout the park, and the NPS doesn’t have any authority over contractors, he said. 

“The NPS neither administers the bridge project contract, nor has the authority to enforce terms or policies related to the contract or contractors performing the work,” Christian said. “The American flag can be seen at various locations within Denali National Park – at park facilities and campsites, on public and private vehicles, and at employee residences – and we welcome its display this Memorial Day weekend and every day.”

The incident also sparked an apparent protest from Alaska residents, who organized a “patriotic convoy with flags” from Fairbanks to Denali National Park on Sunday. The protest, which was organized on Facebook, had 23 confirmed participants and more than 100 interested as of Sunday morning.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story has been updated with comment from the National Park Service.

In Bell Gardens, Raquel Martinez said she has relied for nearly three years on a program that pays an assistant to help her make it safely to her frequent appointments at the MLK Medical Campus.

Martinez, 65, is blind and has cancer. If she did not have the help of her support worker, Martinez said, she would struggle to navigate the elevators and find the right office. Her assistant also helps her with groceries and other daily tasks such as housekeeping, she said, tending to her 21 hours a week.

“I was in need of a lot of help,” Martinez said in Spanish.

As budget cuts squeeze the state, California could yank such assistance from elderly, blind or otherwise disabled immigrants who have relied on the state’s In-Home Supportive Services program.

IHSS pays assistants who help people with daily tasks such as bathing, laundry or cooking; provide needed care such as injections under the direction of a medical professional; and accompany them to and from doctor’s appointments. It aims to help people remain safely in their own homes, rather than having to move into nursing facilities or suffer without needed care.

Gov. Gavin Newsom has proposed cutting immigrants in the country illegally from the IHSS program, estimating it would save California nearly $95 million as the state stares down a $44.9-billion budget deficit.

The proposed cut has outraged groups that advocate for immigrants and disabled people, which argued it would be a shortsighted move that would jeopardize Californians who need day-to-day support, put them at increased risk of deportation and ultimately drive up costs for the state.

At a recent hearing in Sacramento, Ronald Coleman Baeza called it “indefensible” for Newsom to propose “to eliminate these services for a population for no reason but for their immigration status.”

“It’s right out of Donald Trump’s playbook,” said Baeza, managing director of policy for the California Pan-Ethnic Health Network. “Without IHSS, these individuals will need costly and preventable hospital and nursing home care, and family caregivers will go without pay,” perpetuating “a generational cycle of poverty.”

In California, IHSS is open to blind, disabled and aged people on Medi-Cal, the California Medicaid program. Medi-Cal has expanded over time to include immigrants here illegally, beginning with children and eventually covering Californians of all ages. State officials emphasized that if the cut goes through, immigrants without legal status would remain eligible for Medi-Cal.

“The IHSS benefit for the undocumented population was an expansion of services,” H.D. Palmer, deputy director of external affairs for the Department of Finance, said in an email. “None of these solutions were made easily or lightly. The overall goal was to maintain core programs and base benefits” such as Medi-Cal, “in particular, Medi-Cal services regardless of citizenship status.”

The California Department of Social Services said nearly 3,000 immigrants without legal status had been authorized for IHSS. Budget officials said more than 1,500 were receiving such benefits as of earlier this year.

At a California State Senate subcommittee hearing, a Department of Social Services representative said the state agency was working with the Department of Health Care Services to see what other benefits people being jettisoned from IHSS might be able to access “to mitigate any negative impacts.”

Most of the affected people getting such assistance are 50 and older, but the program also serves children with disabilities who might otherwise need to live in facilities, advocates said.

Advocates fear that if the proposed cut is approved by state lawmakers, people in the country illegally could lose such support as soon as July. The Department of Social Services said it would issue notices at least 10 days in advance to people being cut off. Martinez, who is here illegally, hadn’t heard that IHSS could be yanked away until a reporter mentioned it.

Blanca Angulo, 62, who helps others through the local group Inmigrantes con Discapacidades — Immigrants with Disabilities — said rolling back the benefits would be “a terrible blow.”

“They don’t know the life of a disabled person because they’re not walking in our shoes,” she said in Spanish. “So for them it’s very easy to take away these services without thinking about it.”

Booting people from the program could also have reverberating effects on families, advocates said. In many cases, relatives are the ones being paid to provide care under the program. Anthony Wright, executive director of the consumer advocacy group Health Access California, called it “a double whammy.”

If a caregiver “loses income and has to potentially find other work, then who does the caregiving?” he asked. “Or they continue the caregiving, but then they have no means to meet basic needs.”

In the Hollywood area, Jose Villasana Moran worries about what losing the program would mean for his family. His husband took a pay cut from working as an assistant manager at a restaurant to serve as the IHSS caregiver for his 63-year-old mother, who is here illegally and has Alzheimer’s disease.

“My mom needs help 24/7,” Moran said. “I don’t know what we will do. … We have to dress her. We have to comb her hair, clip her nails, make her food because she cannot cook anymore.”

Putting her in a nursing home “would be the last resort,” if they could even afford it, Moran said. His late father had needed more care than they could provide and had endured shoddy care at a dirty facility, he said.

“I would not want my mom to go through that.”

Being jettisoned from the program would mean losing the income his husband had been receiving for her care, now capped at 195 hours a month, he said. Moran was determined that somehow, between the two of them, “we’re going to try to take care of my mom, even if we don’t have the money.”

But he fears other vulnerable people who are in the country illegally may be left alone without help, putting themselves and others at risk, “because family members are forced to leave the house and work.”

In Contra Costa County, Norma Garcia has been attending to her 67-year-old mother, who has dementia and needs constant care, through the IHSS program. If her mother is cut off from the program, and Garcia is no longer paid to care for her, “how am I going to buy food? How will I keep paying the bills?” she asked.

“My spouse works, but it’s not enough,” she said in Spanish. Finding another job outside their home in El Sobrante is impossible when her mother needs so much help, Garcia said.

“I can’t leave her alone for even a minute.”

Hagar Dickman, a senior attorney with the advocacy group Justice in Aging, called it “a really big inequity issue.”

“It forces a targeted population, which is the individuals who are undocumented, to either seek institutional care … or to increase impoverishment of their families,” Dickman said.

Critics also argue that any savings from ejecting people here illegally from IHSS could be outstripped by the expense of putting more of them into nursing facilities. Attorneys with Disability Rights California pointed out that the state has estimated a nursing home costs an average of $124,188 annually — far more than the average cost of roughly $28,000 for people in the country illegally on IHSS, they said.

“This looks like a classic example of ‘a penny wise, a pound foolish,’ ” Wright said. Even if only a fraction move into nursing homes, “it would still cost more money, because nursing home care is so much more costly.”

Dickman added that being pushed into a nursing facility could put immigrants at risk of losing their shot at legal status. Under the “public charge” rule, people can be blocked from getting a green card or citizenship if they are likely to become “primarily dependent” on government aid. Medi-Cal benefits do not usually factor into those decisions — but they can if someone is institutionalized for long-term care at government expense.

As it stands, Angulo said many immigrants here illegally are already afraid to use IHSS services for fear of possible consequences. “The laws are always changing,” she said in Spanish, “for good or for bad.”

At a recent hearing, a representative of the Western Center on Law & Poverty warned that the advocacy group believes the cuts would violate state and federal law, including the Americans with Disabilities Act, and said it was “exploring litigation options.”

Palmer said Newsom “respects that there will be disagreement over many of these proposals, and that other alternative approaches may be put forward in the weeks ahead as discussions with the Legislature continue.”

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg argued that Ukraine should be able to use American weapons to strike inside Russian territory, in an apparent break with the Biden administration.

“I think the time has come for allies to consider whether they should lift some of the restrictions they put on the use of weapons they have donated to Ukraine because, especially now when a lot of the fighting is going on in Kharkiv, close to the border,” Stoltenberg said in an interview with the Economist over the weekend. “To deny Ukraine the possibility of using these weapons against legitimate military targets on Russian territory makes it very hard for them to defend themselves.”

While the NATO boss did not mention the U.S. or the Biden administration by name, the comments come as the U.S. has continued to ban Ukraine from using American weapons to target Russian territory.

KYIV’S FORCES ARE UP AGAINST A CONCERTED RUSSIAN PUSH IN EASTERN UKRAINE, A MILITARY OFFICIAL SAYS

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has urged the U.S. to lift the restrictions, calls that have begun to gain favor among some lawmakers on the Hill. Last week, a bipartisan group of lawmakers led by House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Michael Turner, R-Ohio, penned a letter to the Defense Department asking that the restrictions on U.S. weapons use be lifted.

“Ukrainians have been unable to defend themselves due to the administration’s current policy,” the letter read.

According to an Institute for the Study of War report, Russia has continued to amass equipment and men at the Ukrainian border for its planned Kharkiv offensive. The bulk of that equipment has remained in reserve on the Russian side of the border, the report noted, far enough away to be out of the reach of much of Ukraine’s arsenal.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, second left, looks at a map during his visit to the 110th Mechanized Brigade in Avdiivka, the site of fierce battles with the Russian troops in the Donetsk region. (Ukrainian Presidential Press Office via AP)

SITUATION IN UKRAINE IS ‘DIRE’ AS AMMUNITION SUPPLIES DROP ON US, EUROPE ‘STARVATION DIET’

That could change if Ukraine was able to use HIMARS rocket and ATACMS missile weapons systems provided to the country by the U.S., which the report notes would likely be able to reach the Russian targets.

The recent calls to change that policy have also gained the support of House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., who said in an interview with Voice of America last week that the U.S. should not “micromanage” Ukraine’s war effort.

President Biden (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

“I think we need to allow Ukraine to prosecute the war the way they see fit,” Johnson said. “They need to be able to fight back.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a Fox News Digital request for comment.