Donald Trump has signed an unconstitutional executive order banning protected speech. He is ordering that anyone who burns an American flag should receive a year in jail.

So I guess it doesn’t matter if the flag is desecrated, but only how you desecrate it. MAGAts seem to think this is OK.

Trump did pardon J6 MAGAt terrorists for using flagpoles with the flag to attack Capitol Police.

And he seemed OK with Kid Rock’s attire.

And in the Oval Office, which Kid Rock must have confused with Waffle House, and with the way Trump decorates, who can blame him?

And Trump desecrates the flag with his ping-pong paddles, which you can find in the Trump Store.

Today, over on GoComics, a MAGAt told me my school shooting cartoon should be removed because it’s disgusting. GC is a private platform, but the MAGAt still proved how he feels about protected speech. The only speech he approves of is speech he wants to hear, just like Donald Trump.

Remember when Trump and other Nazis howled about their right to free speech being violated when they were banned from Facebook and Twitter (even though those are both private platforms). As soon as he returned to office, he went after universities for allowing protests, claiming they were antisemitic, and threatened the schools’ funding. I agree that college campuses should be safe spaces, free of hate and violence, but if you’re a free speech advocate, you have to understand that hate comments are protected by the First Amendment, just as all comments are, within bounds of safety. You still can’t scream fire in a crowded theater, but you can yell something racist like, “Send them back” at a Trump rally.

And protesting for Israel to stop bombing children isn’t antisemitic.

The first problem with Trump’s EO is that he doesn’t have the power to create laws all by himself or override the United States Constitution. In the 1989 case Texas v. Johnson, flag burning as political protest was ruled to be protected First Amendment speech.

In 1984, Gregory Lee Johnson set fire to an American flag outside the Republican National Convention in Dallas during a demonstration against nuclear war and Republican policies. He was sentenced to a year in prison and fined $2,000 for violating a Texas law against “desecration of a venerated object.” That law was bullshit. Who decides what’s “venerated?” Is burning a cross illegal, but not burning a Star of David?

The case reached the Supreme Court, which ruled that burning the flag was protected speech under the First Amendment. “We do not consecrate the flag by punishing its desecration, for in doing so we dilute the freedom that this cherished emblem represents,” Justice William J. Brennan Jr. wrote in the majority 5-4 opinion.

Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in a concurring opinion, “It is poignant but fundamental that the flag protects those who hold it in contempt.”

That’s correct. You often hear people talking about fighting for our flag, but nobody’s ever fought for our flag. They may have fought for what it represents, but not a piece of fabric. Also, nobody has fought for what the flag represents in a very long time. Neither Vietnam nor Iraq was ever interested in taking away our freedom. Donald Trump is a greater threat to our freedom than the Taliban or al-Qaeda, and this flag-burning EO is proof of that.

Justice Antonin Scalia voted in the majority that flag-burning is protected speech. Congress quickly passed a law making flag burning illegal, which SCOTUS also knocked down.

There are fire laws, but burning an American flag is constitutional. I thought Trump and MAGAts were so-called constitutionalists, in that they believe and protect the Constitution? I guess that only applies to the things in it that they like.

In the EO, Trump directed federal agencies to “vigorously prosecute” anyone who desecrates the U.S. flag, and to detain and revoke the visas of noncitizens who have been accused of such behavior.

That’s more fascism. He wants visas revoked just on accusations alone. That’s some real Stalin shit right there. Of course, his supporters are all, “Why do you have to invoke the fascism word every time he does something just a teensy bit fascist? Have I said ‘wah’ today, yet? WAAAAAAAH!” Fucking MAGAts.

What’s troubling me the most is that he’s ordering Attorney General Pam Bimbo Bondi to find a case of someone burning a flag, charge them for desecrating a flag, and hope the accused fights it to the Supreme Court, just like they did with abortion.

SCOTUS took a case challenging a Mississippi law banning abortion after 15 weeks, and used it to overturn Roe. If the group of extreme far-right, corrupt fascist currently on the highest bench get a flag-burning case, they’ll overturn precedent again and place a ban on free speech.

And just like in 1989, when Republicans, including George H. W. Bush, were all clamoring to add an Amendment to the Constitution to ban flag burning, rampant flag burnings aren’t occurring across the nation right now. I believe there was one guy last week who burned a flag, and a veteran at that. Didn’t he fight for the right to burn a flag?

Trump, who’s feuded with Gold Star families, said John McCain was a war hero only because he got captured, and said, “I like people who don’t get captured,” called war dead “suckers and losers,” and designated himself, a person who dodged fighting in Vietnam, a “war hero,” is the last person who should be designating what does and doesn’t desecrate the American flag.

If Trump bans flag burning, what will he ban after that? Will it be illegal to burn a Confederate flag? Will it be illegal to burn a MAGA flag? Will it be illegal to yell, “The emperor wears no clothes?”

Will it be illegal to draw Trump in an American flag diaper?

I have always supported the right to burn a flag because I believe in free speech. I don’t believe anything should be venerated to the point of worship. But now, I kinda wanna burn an American flag.