Recently Trump passed an Executive Order over burning American flags. August 26th 2025, the amendment was passed. Donald Trump claims that burning an American flag will result in one year of jail time, but would this be in violation of our First Amendment rights? To an extent it violates our First Amendment rights, the order aims to punish people who exceed their First Amendment Rights.
Trump’s words outside of what the order says violate our First Amendment Rights, when he says things like “burning an American flag will result in one year jail time” “we will make it constitutional” they disregard our first amendment rights.
In my opinion i think it is very important to maintain every part of our First Amendment rights. When the government starts dictating what people can and can’t say it turns into a democracy. People have the right to say or do what they want as long as it doesn’t aim to harm anyone. Burning flags is protected under our First amendment rights and people have the rights to do and express how they feel as long as violence isn’t involved. Limiting these expressions of self that people do would be completely wrong and out of line. I think what Trump says vs what the amendment actually say do not reflect each other and i see that as an issue, because trump speaks with authority but he’s saying things that are wrong.
The Executive Order is trying to enforce laws against flag-burning incidents that violate applicable, content-neutral laws, while causing harm unrelated to expression consistent with first amendment rights. In simpler terms the order covers actions of flag burning that exceed our first amendment rights. Previously in the 1889 ruling of Texas vs. Johnson it was ruled that flag burning was protected speech under first amendment rights. But President Trump and his administration are trying to find a way to make this order constitutional or within our given rights.
Trump said “We’ll make it constitutional. We’re going to make it constitutional.”
But don’t we have more important things to be worried about? Healthcare, Debt, Inflation…? There are bigger issues in our country than whether people are burning flags as their first amendment rights or not. Healthcare is a major issue throughout the United States and should be dealt with before being worried about flag burning. The same thing goes for debt and inflation. We have major issues to be worried about over flag burning.
Trump says “When you burn a flag it incites riots” but how can this be entirely true. Burning a flag isn’t what incites the riots, the surrounding issue is what causes them. As much as it can be deemed inappropriate to burn American flags, it is covered under our first amendment rights and creating a rule on it is not any more appropriate.