Trump endorses flag-burning ban

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is “all in” for a constitutional amendment banning desecration of the American flag, he said in an early morning tweet Saturday, backing such an effort by two Republican senators.

To commemorate Flag Day — which is also Trump’s birthday — Sens. Steve Daines of Montana and Kevin Cramer of North Dakota introduced the amendment on Friday.

“All in for Senator Steve Daines as he proposes an Amendment for a strong BAN on burning our American Flag. A no brainer!” Trump tweeted.

This isn’t a new position for the president, who a few weeks after the 2016 election tweeted: “Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag — if they do, there must be consequences — perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail!”

The Supreme Court ruled in 1989 that flag burning was protected by the First Amendment after a protester was convicted of burning an American flag outside the 1984 Republican National Convention in Dallas. The following year, the nation’s highest court reaffirmed its ruling when it struck down legislation passed by Congress to make flag burning illegal.

“If it were up to me, I would put in jail every sandal-wearing, scruffy-bearded weirdo who burns the American flag. But I am not king,” said Justice Antonin Scalia at an event in Philadelphia in 2015. The late justice, an idol of conservatives, cast the deciding vote in determining it was constitutionally-protected speech to burn the flag.

The emotionally charged question of burning the flag in protest has long divided Americans. Some, like Trump, believe doing so is disrespectful to people who fought for and died in service to the nation, while others say flag burning is exactly the kind of freedom patriots fight to protect.

Congress voted at least half a dozen times on a flag-burning amendment between 1995 and 2006, but never could get the two-thirds support needed in the Senate. The closest it got was in 2006, when it fell one vote shy.

Even if a constitutional amendment made it through Congress, it would require the support of 38 states to be ratified. But to even get to that point now, Trump would have to first convince a longtime critic of making flag burning illegal: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

McConnell, who decides which bills get called up for a vote in the Senate, was one of the deciding votes that killed the amendment in 2006. He wrote an op-ed that year defending his position:

“I don’t share the slightest shred of sympathy with any who would dare desecrate the flag … They deserve rebuke and condemnation — if not a punch in the nose,” he said.

“I revere the American flag as a symbol of freedom. But behind it is something larger — the Constitution,” he continued. “The First Amendment, which protects our freedom of speech, is the most precious part of the Bill of Rights. As disgusting as the ideas expressed by those who would burn the flag are, they remain protected by the First Amendment.”