Donald Trump’s thoughts returned to flag burning Friday night as he once again threatened Americans who participate in the constitutionally protected activity with a punishment he made up.
Posting to his Truth Social account, the president, 79, said, “To ICE, Border Patrol, Law Enforcement, and all U.S. Military: As per my August 25, 2025 Executive Order, please be advised that, from this point forward, anybody burning the American Flag will be subject to one year in prison. You will be immediately arrested. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
Trump was referring to his August order where he declared it illegal to burn an American flag. At the time, he said without evidence that burning the flag “incites riots” and makes “people go crazy” at “levels we’ve never seen before.”
The Supreme Court ruled that burning the American flag is a constitutionally protected form of free speech in 1989. Famously, the late Judge Antonin Scalia, an icon among conservatives, maintained that flag burning was a constitutional form of free speech.
As burning the flag is not illegal, Trump’s threat of “one year in prison” for flag burners is completely invented. It’s also not even in the Executive Order in which he declared flag burning illegal.
Legal scholars have serious doubts that Trump’s threats against flag burners will hold up in court. First amendment activist group FIRE wrote at the time of the order that Trump cannot overwrite the First Amendment with the stroke of a pen.
First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams told Mediaite in August, “The Bill of Rights has not been amended since flag burning was held by the Supreme Court to be First Amendment protected and there is no reason to believe that President Trump’s latest effort at limiting speech will be sustained by the Supreme Court.”
STATEMENT: President Trump may believe he has the power to revise the First Amendment with the stroke of a pen, but he doesn’t.Flag burning as a form of political protest is protected by the First Amendment. That’s nothing new. While people can be prosecuted for burning… pic.twitter.com/ONu1IwL0q3
— FIRE (@TheFIREorg) August 25, 2025
The threat comes as President Trump ramps up his war on American citizens, which has so far included sending military troops to Democratic cities like Portland, Oregon on the pretense of them being “war-ravaged” and filled with “domestic terrorists.”
The president has characterized various forms of protest and left-leaning expressions of free speech as the basis for arrests.
On Sept. 25, he issued the infamous NSPM-7 memo that outlined various thought crimes as evidence of “domestic terrorism.” These include, “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.”
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