Trump Signs Executive Order Urging One-Year Jail Sentence For Flag Burning

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday seeking to investigate and prosecute people who burn the American flag if it “is likely to incite imminent lawless action,” such as a riot.

“To the maximum extent permitted by the Constitution, the Attorney General shall vigorously prosecute those who violate our laws in ways that involve desecrating the American Flag, and may pursue litigation to clarify the scope of the First Amendment exceptions in this area,” the order states.

“When you burn the American flag, it incites riots at levels that we’d never seen before. People go crazy,” Trump said. “If you burn a flag you get one year in jail. No exits, no nothing. … And you will see flag-burning stopping immediately. 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. … The people in this country don’t want to see our American flag burned and spit on.”

BREAKING: President Trump signs executive order to mandate one full year in jail for protesters who burn American flags

TRUMP: “The people in this country don’t want to see our American flag burned and spit on … They’re bad people that are trying to destroy our nation…” pic.twitter.com/Qo1Ib712F0

— Fox News (@FoxNews) August 25, 2025

In case Democrats object, it would be instructive for them to remember that in 2006, then-New York Democrat Senator Hillary Clinton declaimed, “So I hope, Mr. President, that we can pass a law that criminalizes flag burning and desecration. … I agree that this burning, this desecration, that can happen to our flag, is something that people have a right to ask this body to try to prohibit and prevent.”

Today, President Trump will sign an executive order cracking down on those who burn the American flag.

Before Democrats pretend to be outraged, here’s Hillary Clinton in 2006:

“I hope….we can pass a law that criminalizes flag burning and desecration.” pic.twitter.com/z6UUoQuJuE

— Christian Collins (@CollinsforTX) August 25, 2025

In 1984, Gregory Lee Johnson burned an American flag outside of the Republican National Convention in Dallas, Texas. He was arrested and charged with violating a Texas statute. The Supreme Court decided 5-4 that flag burning was a form of “symbolic speech” protected by the First Amendment.

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In his dissent, Justice William Rehnquist wrote:

For more than 200 years, the American flag has occupied a unique position as the symbol of our Nation, a uniqueness that justifies a governmental prohibition against flag burning . . . . The American flag . . . throughout more than 200 years of our history, has come to be the visible symbol embodying our Nation. It does not represent the views of any particular political party, and it does not represent any particular political philosophy. The flag is not simply another “idea” or “point of view” competing for recognition in the marketplace of ideas. Millions and millions of Americans regard it with an almost mystical reverence regardless of what sort of social, political, or philosophical beliefs they may have.

The Court insists that the Texas statute prohibiting the public burning of the American flag infringes on respondent Johnson’s freedom of expression. Such freedom, of course, is not absolute. . . . the public burning of the American flag by Johnson was no essential part of any exposition of ideas, and at the same time it had a tendency to incite a breach of the peace.

Justice John Paul Stevens added:

The ideas of liberty and equality have been an irresistible force in motivating leaders like Patrick Henry, Susan B. Anthony, and Abraham Lincoln, schoolteachers like Nathan Hale and Booker T. Washington, the Philippine Scouts who fought at Bataan, and the soldiers who scaled the bluff at Omaha Beach. If those ideas are worth fighting for—and our history demonstrates that they are—it cannot be true that the flag that uniquely symbolizes their power is not itself worthy of protection from unnecessary desecration.