{"id":7526,"date":"2025-08-27T15:21:52","date_gmt":"2025-08-27T15:21:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/president-trump-signs-executive-order-prosecuting-burning-of-the-american-flag-justia-news-august-27-2025\/"},"modified":"2025-08-27T15:21:52","modified_gmt":"2025-08-27T15:21:52","slug":"president-trump-signs-executive-order-prosecuting-burning-of-the-american-flag-justia-news-august-27-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/president-trump-signs-executive-order-prosecuting-burning-of-the-american-flag-justia-news-august-27-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"President Trump Signs Executive Order Prosecuting Burning of the American Flag \u2014 Justia News \u2014 August 27, 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div itemprop=\"articleBody\">\n<p>On Monday, August 25, 2025, President Donald J. Trump signed an executive order prosecuting burning of the American Flag.<\/p>\n<p>The order states that \u201c[d]esecrating [the flag] is uniquely offensive and provocative,\u201d and such an act is \u201cthe clearest possible expression of opposition to the political union that preserves our rights, liberty and security.\u201d The order continues on to allege that burning the flag \u201cmay incite violence and riot.\u201d Further, the order claims that flag burning \u201cis also used by groups of foreign nationals as a calculated act to intimidate and threaten violence against Americans because of their nationality and place of birth.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>President Trump\u2019s order specifically cites that the U.S. Supreme Court in <em>Texas v. Johnson<\/em>, 491 U.S. 397 (1989), \u201chas never held that American Flag desecration conducted in a manner that is likely to incite imminent lawless action or that is an action amounting to \u2018fighting words\u2019 is constitutionally protected.\u201d The order seeks to \u201crestore respect and sanctity to the American Flag and prosecute those who incite violence or otherwise violate our laws while desecrating this symbol of our country.\u201d The executive order empowers the U.S. Attorney General to \u201cprioritize the enforcement to the fullest extent possible of our Nation\u2019s criminal and civil laws against acts of American Flag desecration that violate applicable content-neutral laws, while causing harm unrelated to expression, consistent with the First Amendment.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The order itself does not detail specific punishments for flag burning. However, President Trump remarked while signing the order that \u201c[y]ou burn a flag, you get one year in jail. You don\u2019t get 10 years, you don\u2019t get one month.\u201d President Trump continued on to state that \u201c[i]t goes on your record, and you will see flag burning stopping immediately.\u201d The executive order attempts to prosecute flag burning in stark contrast to\u00a0<em>Texas v. Johnson<\/em>, which holds that the First Amendment protections on symbolic speech prevent states from banning desecrations of the American flag.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Additional Reading<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.jurist.org\/news\/2025\/08\/trump-signs-executive-order-to-prosecute-us-flag-burning\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Trump signs executive order to prosecute US flag burning<\/a>,\u00a0<em>JURISTnews<\/em> (August 27, 2025)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/trump-flag-burning-order-constitution-protests-cc24b33b4c64e3b83a5d2e097ebc03ff\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Trump\u2019s order on flag burning could return the question to the Supreme Court<\/a>,\u00a0<em>The Associated Press<\/em> (August 26, 2025)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/presidential-actions\/2025\/08\/prosecuting-burning-of-the-american-flag\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Prosecuting Burning of the American Flag<\/a>,\u00a0<em>The White House<\/em> (August 25, 2025)<\/p>\n<p><em><a href=\"https:\/\/supreme.justia.com\/cases\/federal\/us\/491\/397\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Texas v. Johnson<\/a><\/em>, 491 U.S. 397 (1989)<\/p>\n<p><strong>Photo Credit:\u00a0<\/strong>Kevin RC Wilson \/ Shutterstock.com<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><script>(function(d, s, id) {\n            var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];\n            if (d.getElementById(id)) return;\n            js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id;\n            js.src=\"https:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.11&appId=1639788792774312&autoLogAppEvents=1\";\n            fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);\n        }(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));<\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On Monday, August 25, 2025, President Donald J. Trump signed an executive order prosecuting burning of the American Flag. The order states that \u201c[d]esecrating [the flag] is uniquely [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7527,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1619,2869,6695,3971,1491,309,310,1574,304,6694,306,409],"class_list":["post-7526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-american","tag-august","tag-burning","tag-executive","tag-flag","tag-justia","tag-news","tag-order","tag-president","tag-prosecuting","tag-signs","tag-trump"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7526\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}