Op-Ed: Trump’s Executive Order Making It Illegal To Burn US Flag Defies Supreme Court And Is Anti-Freedom

On Monday, President Donald Trump signed yet another executive order that objectively demonstrates his administration’s descent into authoritarianism and outright attacks on our constitutionally-protected liberties, and if the GOP and the rest of the MAGA world had any semblance of integrity, they would be outraged.

If they were truly the patriots they claim they are, they would fight for our right to burn the American flag.

That’s right, y’all, Trump’s latest EO allows for the criminal prosecution of individuals who burn the flag in protest, an act that the U.S. Supreme Court upheld as protected speech 36 years ago.

“When you burn the American flag, it incites riots at levels that we’ve never seen before,” Trump claimed, citing absolutely no fact-based evidence whatsoever, as usual.

Trump even acknowledged that the Supreme Court has already ruled that burning the flag is protected under the First Amendment — he just doesn’t care.

From the Guardian:

The order tells the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, to look at cases where people burned flags and see if they can be charged with other crimes like disturbing the peace or breaking environmental laws.

It’s an attempt by Trump to go around a supreme court decision from 1989, when the court ruled 5-4 in Texas v Johnson that destroying the flag is protected political expression under the first amendment.

That court ruling threw out flag-burning laws in 48 states and made it clear that people have the right to burn flags as a way to express their political views.

“All over the country they’re burning flags,” Trump said in the Oval Office on Monday when he signed the order. “All of over the world they burn the American flag, and as you know, through a very sad court, I guess it was a 5-4 decision, they called it freedom of speech.

Trump also claimed “you burn a flag, you get one year in jail” as he signed the executive order, but the order itself doesn’t include details about a potential jail sentence.

Trump has long advocated for criminalizing flag burning. In 2016, he posted on social media: “Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag – if they do, there must be consequences – perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail!”

The White House also acknowledged the SCOTUS ruling on its website, but went on to claim the ruling didn’t include instances in which the act of burning the flag could incite violence.

“Notwithstanding the Supreme Court’s rulings on First Amendment protections, the Court has never held that American 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.  See Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397, 408-10 (1989),” White House officials wrote.

Funny how that works, ain’t it?

In 2020, President Donald Trump responded to losing his bid for a second term by claiming over and over again that the election had been rigged against him. For the entire month and a half between Nov. 20, 2020 and Jan. 6, 2021, Trump shouted from every rooftop he could find that he won the election, and the Democrats stole it, despite dozens of judges across lower courts, appellate courts and the Supreme Court, every election official in states that Trump challenged, the former head of election cybersecurity, Trump’s own attorney general and the Department of Justice all saying unequivocally that it wasn’t true. This propaganda directly resulted in a riot at the U.S. Capitol, a crime for which Trump pardoned more than 1,500 offenders.

Now, that same president has decided that flag burning should result in jail time because of the act’s supposed potential to cause violence. One would have to be willfully obtuse not to see that this order isn’t about potential violence, it’s about appeasing his MAGA minions by forcing pseudo-patriotism under penalty of law.

Of course, we can’t count on the GOP or Trump’s followers to call out the glaring hypocrisy of the Trump administration, or the 180 it has done on its vow to protect and honor the Constitution, because they stopped caring about all that in January.

It took one man — one boorish, infantile, anti-intellectual, emotionally stunted, aggressively mediocre white man — to cause conservative Republicans to outright abandon virtually every core principle they’ve ever claimed to have.

For decades — and especially during the eight years of President Barack Obama’s presidency — Republicans preached from the bible of “small government” and would consider it heresy of the highest offense if a commander in chief decided it was the federal government’s role to dictate what private institutions or state institutions of learning can teach, what content is promoted by cultural art centers, what historical exhibits are displayed at museums, how media outlets operate, or what professional sports franchise owners should name their teams.

Republicans claimed they were all about state rights and sovereignty — until their MAGA messiah decided it was the executive office’s role to withdraw congressionally approved funding from state governments that failed to fall in line with MAGA ideology.

Tea Party Republicans fearmongered for years about “tyrannical governments” — now they cheer on the president as he threatens to weaponize the National Guard against democratic cities against the will of those cities’ leaders.

The Republican Party has, for years, championed itself as the party that holds the U.S. Constitution sacred — now they’re OK with a president who decides unilaterally who deserves due process and who doesn’t, when checks and balances should be ignored, and when the First Amendment applies and when it doesn’t.

President Donald Trump came into power, and Republicans decided none of their ideals mattered anymore.

They might as well burn the American flag.

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