United States President Donald Trump has signed an executive order punishing those who burn the country’s flag with one year in jail, despite a longstanding court ruling that flag burning is protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution.
The order, signed on Monday, acknowledges the 1989 Supreme Court decision, which found that flag burning is protected as free speech, but argued that it is “likely to incite imminent lawless action”.
“If you burn a flag, you get one year in jail; no early exits, no nothing,” Trump said as he signed the order.
“You get one year in jail, and it goes on your record, and you will see flag burning stopping immediately,” he added.
The move has been condemned by free speech groups who say that the order violates key civil liberties, as Trump pursues a vision of executive power with few constraints.
“President Trump may believe he has the power to revise the First Amendment with the stroke of a pen, but he doesn’t,” the free speech advocacy group FIRE said in a statement.
“The government can’t prosecute protected expressive activity — even if many Americans, including the president, find it ‘uniquely offensive and provocative’,” it added.
Monday’s executive order calls on Attorney General Pam Bondi to prosecute those involved in flag burning to the “fullest extent possible”.
The order claims without evidence that flag burning is being used by foreign nationals to intimidate and threaten Americans. The order also threatens visa revocation, deportation and more for foreign nationals who do so.
The order says that flag burning is tantamount to “incitement” or “fighting words”, with Trump saying that flag burning “incites riots at levels we’ve never seen before”.
There is no evidence for this claim, which has been dismissed by legal experts.
“I don’t think this is something that has been a big problem,” GS Hans, a law professor at Cornell University who focuses on the First Amendment, told the Associated Press news agency. “It’s a solution in search of a problem.”
The post Trump bans burning of US flag in defiance of constitutional protections appeared first on Al Jazeera.
