Trump wants to make burning the American flag a crime punishable by 1 year in jail.
That is a terrible idea.
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If you burn an American flag, you get 1 year in jail pic.twitter.com/3m7s7PpA9S
— Margo Martin (@MargoMartin47) August 25, 2025
I understand the sentiment. Burning the flag is an insult to the country, to your fellow citizens, and most of all to the men and women who served our country honorably.
Yet…we are allowed to insult people, and with good reason. The alternative to allowing free speech is compelled speech, or compelled silence. And while burning a flag is not “speech,” it is expressive and intended to convey a message of defiance.
Trump’s order on flag burning directs his administration to prosecute people who “desecrate” the American flag and to detain and remove immigrants who have been accused of such behavior.
The Supreme Court in 1989 in a 5-4 ruling found that burning the U.S. flag is protected by the First Amendment, but Trump in the executive order asked Bondi to find a case that could challenge that ruling. The majority of the justices now are significantly more conservative than the court was then.
A White House official cited images of flag burning “alongside violent acts” from recent protests as a justification for the order. Trump, a president particularly attuned to imagery, took great issue with pictures of demonstrators in Los Angeles waving Mexican flags and burning the American flag amid protests against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement action this summer.
Currently, we are in a cold war with Europe over free speech, and the last thing America or the President needs to do is muddy the message or start picking and choosing what speech is allowed.
Trump does play a game with words, calling the act “incitement to riot.” It’s a nice trick, but it is a trick. By that logic, anything that provokes anger in people could be considered “incitement to riot.”
I have serious doubts that the Court will reverse its decision. The decision seems solid enough.
One good thing–Democrats will go nuts on this one, too. Maybe that is all Trump wants out of this.
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