Whether you like flag burning or not, it’s a protected right in this country, and it needs to stay that way.
Since day 1 of President Donald Trump’s second term, he has been signing executive orders. According to the Federal Register, Trump has signed 196 executive orders so far. He has already almost passed the amount he signed in his first term, in which he signed 220 executive orders. One of his latest executive orders that has stirred up controversy is ordering the prosecution of people who burn the American Flag.
Right after the executive order was signed, a man named Jan Carey, a 20-year U.S Army veteran, protested the executive order by burning an American flag outside of the White House. He is charged with a crime, but the charge is not for burning the flag. According to CBS, Carey is facing two misdemeanor criminal counts for lighting a fire, not in a designated area, and lighting a fire in a manner that threatened, caused damage to, and resulted in the burning of property, real property, and park resources. Both charges are punishable by a fine and potentially no more than 6 months in custody, according to CBS. In an interview with WUSA9, Carey said,
He “immediately thought I need to go burn a flag in front of the White House and let’s put this to the test.”
What Carey did is a perfect example of using your First Amendment rights. These are the rights that need to be protected, the rights that should obviously be protected.
Now I do not want people to misunderstand me; I do not endorse flag burning at all. I personally would never do it. But we live in the United States of America where freedom of speech is a constitutional right we all have.
According to NPR, the executive order, Order 14341, instructs the attorney general to pursue cases against people who “incite violence or otherwise violate our laws while desecrating this symbol of our country.”
Trump’s reasoning behind this was revealed while signing the executive order: “When you burn the flag, it incites riots at levels that we’ve never seen before. People go crazy.”
This now brings us to the big controversy: the Supreme Court has ruled many times before that flag burning is protected by the First Amendment. One example is the Supreme Court case of Texas v. Johnson, decided in 1989.
In that case, a man named Gregory Lee Johnson burned an American Flag outside of the Republican National Convention in 1984 to protest former President Ronald Reagan and his policies. He was then tried and convicted in a Texas court for violating a Texas statute. Johnson then appealed and took his case to the Supreme Court, where they ruled 5-4 in favor of Johnson and his right to burn the flag, stating that flag burning constitutes a form of symbolic speech protected by the First Amendment.
What this means is that Trump’s new order directly goes against the ruling in the Texas v. Johnson case. When the Supreme Court rules, it’s the law of the land.
This means the Trump administration is challenging the Texas v. Johnson ruling with this executive order. Another important thing to understand is what an executive order really is. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, with an executive order, President Trump can order the federal government to take any steps that are within the scope of the constitutional authority of the executive branch, and do not violate any federal law.
Basically, this means Trump is sending out a message to Attorney General Pam Bondi to start prosecuting people who burn flags. Can they do really do this? Well, according to the Supreme Court, the “law of the land,” the answer is no.
So this entire executive order is all for show. It was made to fire up the MAGA crowd and get the country talking, which it certainly has. This reminds me of the executive order to end birthright citizenship, which is currently stuck in the courts, as it goes against the 14th Amendment.
This is important to look into because it again shows President Trump trying to override the Constitution with his executive orders, which I very much disagree with. This country has checks and balances for a reason, and Trump is proving why.
So while I am not going to go burn flags myself, people in this country have a right to protest, and if they want to burn the Flag, they can because we live in the United States, where freedom of speech is a right everyone has, and the government cannot infringe on that right.
