U.S. President Donald Trump signed this Monday, August 25, an executive order to prosecute those who burn the U.S. flag as a form of protest, despite the fact that the Supreme Court has already ruled that it is a form of free speech.
“If you burn a flag, you get a year in jail, no early release, no exceptions – it’s a year in jail. If you burn a flag, what you’re provoking is inciting riots,” Trump said as he signed the document in the Oval Office.
Trump to prosecute flag burners
However, the text of the initiative does not include this condemnation, but only urges Attorney General Pam Bondi and the Department of Justice to investigate flag burning cases and to enforce criminal and civil laws as they deem appropriate.
This new executive order clashes with the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court.
In 1989, the High Court ruled that burning a U.S. flag is a form of free speech protected by the First Amendment.
The First Amendment includes protections such as freedom of belief, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of peaceful assembly.
This sentence was issued after four years earlier, activist Gregory Lee Johnson burned a flag during a protest at the Republican National Convention as a political demonstration against the policies of former President Ronald Reagan.
However, Trump’s order notes that “the Court has never held that desecration of the American flag conducted in a manner likely to incite imminent lawless action or constituting ‘provocative speech’ inciting violence is protected by the Constitution.”
Trump seeks to claim that beyond freedom of speech, the burning of the U.S. flag, which he defines as “the most sacred and precious symbol” of the country, exercises a call for acts that may be criminal.
The order included a specific section for the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security to “deny, prohibit, terminate or revoke visas, residency permits, naturalization proceedings and other immigration benefits, or seek the removal from the United States” of migrants who engage in acts of “flag desecration”.
This, he said, will stop flag burning “immediately”.
“It’s the same as when I signed the statues and monuments law: ten years in jail. Have you heard of attacks on our beautiful monuments? They disappeared,” Trump said, alluding to an order he signed during his first term in the White House.
With information from Agencia Efe
