Trump directs Justice Department to ‘vigorously prosecute’ flag burning

President Trump is trying to thread a tricky First Amendment needle, ordering his Justice Department on Monday to try to find ways to “vigorously prosecute” people who burn the American flag as an act of desecration.

The Supreme Court ruled in 1989 that flag burning can be a form of speech that the Constitution protects, but Mr. Trump said in his new order that this speech must have limits, such as when it crosses lines into inciting violence.

He said there’s room for prosecutors to bring charges, and that’s what he directed Attorney General Pam Bondi to do.

He also asked her to refer cases to state and local authorities to see if any local laws or ordinances are broken by flag burning.

And he called for his administration to take flag-burning into consideration in other federal cases, such as where someone is applying for a green card or citizenship.

“My administration will act to restore 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, to the fullest extent permissible under any available authority,” Mr. Trump said in the new order.

Speaking to reporters as he signed the order, Mr. Trump said flag burning incites riots because “people go crazy” when it happens.

“People in this country don’t want to see our American flag burned and spit on and by people that are, in many cases, paid agitators. They’re paid by the radical left to do it,” the president said in the Oval Office.

In the 1989 case, Texas v. Johnson, the high court ruled that burning the flag was symbolic political speech and thus protected by the core of the First Amendment. The majority in the 5-4 ruling said that was true even for the flag, “a symbol of nationhood and national unity.”

The ruling applied to a state law that banned flag burning when it was likely to incite anger in others. The justices said the Texas law allowed for the flag to be burned for other purposes, such as burning a damaged flag, so prohibiting it as an act of desecration amounted to unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination.

A year later, the high court struck down a similar federal law prohibiting flag burning.

Subsequent attempts to amend the Constitution specifically to ban burning the American flag stumbled in Congress.

Ms. Bondi, joining Mr. Trump, said she can bring prosecutions without “running afoul” of the First Amendment, though she didn’t reveal how.

Making the case on other grounds can be difficult.

In 2019, Gregory Johnson, the same man who sparked the initial Supreme Court case, burned an American flag outside the White House, drawing misdemeanor charges of disorderly conduct for inciting violence and disorderly conduct for causing unreasonable fear. After the American Civil Liberties Union objected, calling the charges political retaliation for protected speech, city prosecutors dropped the case.

Several high-profile protests in recent months included the desecration of the American flag.

Protesters lit the flag on fire last year outside the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, during Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s congressional address in July 2024 and during a New York City protest of U.S. support for Israel.

American flags were also burned in June as demonstrators rushed into the streets of Los Angeles to protest a crackdown on immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally.

“The American flag is the most sacred and cherished symbol of the United States of America, and desecrating it is uniquely and inherently offensive and provocative. It is a statement of contempt and hostility toward our nation and an act used by groups of foreign nationals calculated to intimidate and threaten violence against Americans,” the White House said in a fact sheet defending the new order.