Trump aims to make the act of burning the American flag a criminal offense through an executive order.

 

Trump aims to make the act of burning the American flag a criminal offense through an executive order.

Despite the Supreme Court's longstanding position that flag burning is safeguarded by the First Amendment, the Trump administration is pursuing legal action against this act as a breach of current criminal statutes.

WASHINGTON (CN) — On Monday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order intended to address flag burning as a method of protest, a decision that has already faced backlash for potentiallyinfringing upon protected speech under the First Amendment.

The order aims to associate flag burning with a broad range of offenses and seems to be an attempt to revisit over three decades of Supreme Court rulings that have recognized the act as a constitutional form of protest.

"When you burn the American flag, it incites riots, at levels we’ve never seen before," Trump stated to reporters in the Oval Office on Monday. "People go crazy."

While the executive order does not classify flag burning as a separate crime, it instructs the Justice Department to pursue cases that "violate applicable, content-neutral laws, while causing harm unrelated to expression consistent with the First Amendment." Potential offenses could encompass violent crimes, hate crimes, illegal discrimination, or local regulations against open burning and disorderly conduct.

Additionally, the order targets non-citizens and visa holders, directing the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Homeland Security to deny or revoke visas, residency, or naturalization for individuals who burn the flag under this new legal framework.

The administration indicated that the order is focused on prosecuting individuals who "incite violence or otherwise violate our laws while desecrating" the American flag.

Trump mentioned on Monday that the punishment for flag burning would be one year in prison, stating, "no early exits, no nothing." However, the order itself does not specify a sentence for this offense.

"The people in this country don’t want to see our American flag burned and spit on," the president remarked.

 

Trump has consistently maintained that flag burning should be a criminal offense, yet this perspective contradicts Supreme Court rulings. In the 1989 case of Texas v. Johnson, the Supreme Court determined that flag burning constitutes protected speech under the First Amendment and has also ruled that laws enacted by Congress aimed at criminalizing the act are unconstitutional.