President Donald J. Trump on Monday reportedly signed an executive order that seeks to make flag burning a criminal offense, challenging decades of Supreme Court precedent that has treated the practice as protected free speech.
In the Oval Office, surrounded by staff and reporters, Mr. Trump signed several executive orders, the last of which focused squarely on the act of desecrating the American flag — an act the president described as both inflammatory and dangerous.
“This is very important,” Mr. Trump declared. “Flag burning, all over the country, they’re burning flags. All over the world, they burn the American flag. And as you know, through a very sad court, I guess it was a 5-to-4 decision — they called it freedom of speech.”
For Mr. Trump, the issue is not merely symbolic. He argued that flag burning carries the potential to provoke unrest. “Because what happens when you burn a flag is the area goes crazy,” he said. “If you have hundreds of people, they go crazy. When you burn the American flag, it incites riots, at levels that we’ve never seen before.”
The order, posted on the White House website, frames the American flag as a “representation of America” and asserts that its destruction “may incite violence and riot.” It also notes that “American Flag burning is also used by groups of foreign nationals as a calculated act to intimidate and threaten violence against Americans because of their nationality and place of birth.”
The president stressed that his action does not disregard constitutional protections altogether. The order argues that the Court has never ruled that flag desecration “conducted in a manner that is likely to incite imminent lawless action or that is an action amounting to ‘fighting words’ is constitutionally protected.”
Under the new order, violators would face jail time. “And what the penalty is going to be if you burn a flag, you get one year in jail,” Mr. Trump said. “No early exits, no nothing. You get one year in jail, if you burn a flag… And it goes on your record. And you will see flag burning stopping immediately.”
The president pointed to his earlier move against attacks on monuments as proof of the deterrent power of strong penalties. “Just like when I signed the Statute and Monument act, ten years in jail, if you hurt any of our beautiful monuments. Everybody left town. They were gone. Never had a problem after that,” he said. “We stopped it.”
Mr. Trump also dismissed many flag burners as opportunists with little understanding of the act itself. “They’re paid by the radical left to do it,” he said. “You talk to these people, they don’t even know — half of them don’t even know what they’re doing. They say, ‘I don’t know, they gave me money to do this.’ They’re bad people. They’re trying to destroy our nation. That’s not working.”
Mr. Trump framed the measure as a defense not just of national pride, but of national security. “Some people would say it’s more important because the people in this country don’t want to see our American flag burned and spit on,” he said. “I think our nation now is the most respected nation anywhere in the world by far.”
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