‘You Will Be Immediately Arrested’: Trump Pretends He Has Authority To Imprison Flag Burners for ‘One Year’

AP Photo/Alex Brandon

President Donald Trump said on Friday night that people who burn the American flag will be arrested and imprisoned for one year.

In 1989, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a state law that banned burning the American flag. The following year, the court did the same to a federal statute on flag burning, which it deemed protected speech under the First Amendment.

Although the president lacks the authority to incarcerate flag-burners, he is claiming it anyway. On his Truth Social platform, Trump declared:

To ICE, Border Patrol, Law Enforcement, and all U.S. Military: As per my August 25, 2025 Executive Order, please be advised that, from this point forward, anybody burning the American Flag will be subject to one year in prison. You will be immediately arrested. Thank you for your attention to this matter!

In August, Trump signed an executive order targeting flag burners.

“This is very important,” Trump said at the time. “Flag burning, all over the country, they’re burning flags. All over the world, they burn the American flag. And as you know, through a very sad court, I guess it was a 5-to-4 decision — they called it freedom of speech. But there’s another reason, which is perhaps much more important. It’s called death. Because what happens when you burn a flag is the area goes crazy.”

Constitutional scholars have widely panned Trump’s attempt to outlaw this instance of free expression.

“The Bill of Rights has not been amended since flag burning was held by the Supreme Court to be First Amendment-protected, and there is no reason to believe that President Trump’s latest effort at limiting speech will be sustained by the Supreme Court,” legendary First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams – father of Mediaite founder Dan Abrams – told this publication in August.