ARCHIVAL (C-SPAN, 8-25-25):
WILL SCHARF (WHITE HOUSE STAFF SECRETARY): Lastly, sir, this is an executive order on flag burning. It charges your attorney general —
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Would you listen to this? This is very important. If you burn a flag, you get one year in jail, no early exits, no nothing, and you will see flag burning stopping immediately.

JAN (JAY) CAREY (ARMY VETERAN): I saw a video about President Trump banning the burning of the flag.

JAN (JAY) CAREY (IN LAFAYETTE PARK): There’s a First Amendment right to burn the American flag.

JAN (JAY) CAREY: I was like, it’s my duty to go and burn a flag. . .

JAN (JAY) CAREY (IN LAFAYETTE PARK): I’m burning this flag!

JAN (JAY) CAREY: . . . to remind people that we have rights under the Constitution, regardless of what the president tries to do.

ARCHIVAL (KDFW, 1984):
NEWS REPORT: They called their demonstration a war chest march. Their goal, to protest Dallas companies with government contracts, or who would help finance the Republican convention. 
GREGORY (JOEY) JOHNSON (IN GROUP, SHOUTING): Five, four, three, two, one!

GREGORY (JOEY) JOHNSON: August 22nd, 1984, I went to Dallas to protest against the Republican National Convention, where Ronald Reagan was being renominated for a second term. The chants that we were doing were Ronald Reagan killer of the hour, perfect example of U.S. power, and then another chant was red, white and blue, we spit on you.

ARCHIVAL (KDFW, 1984):
NEWS REPORT: They chanted obscenities. At City Hall, they burned an American flag.

ARCHIVAL (CBS NEWS, 6-21-89):
GREGORY (JOEY) JOHNSON: It was great to see that flag, a symbol of international plunder and murder, go up in flames and be reduced to ashes. 

NARRATION: Joey Johnson was a member of the Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade, and was protesting what he saw as America’s destructive role in the world.

GREGORY (JOEY) JOHNSON: It’s not universal. You know, that everybody believes this way, you know, apple pie and American flag and Chevrolet and all. People have a range of disagreements with it. I think that’s important.

NARRATION: At the time, it was illegal to burn an American flag. Forty-eight states, including Texas, had laws against it.

ARCHIVAL (KDFW, 1984):
NEWS REPORT: Dallas police surrounded the demonstrators and began making arrests, and so, one by one, the demonstrators were arrested.

GREGORY (JOEY) JOHNSON: I was charged under section 4209 of the Texas Penal Code, desecration of a venerated object.

ARCHIVAL (CBS NEWS, 6-21-89):
POLICE DETECTIVE: It’s a symbol, and for him to destroy that symbol, just, to me, it’s just destroying everything that we live here for. 

NARRATION: Joey Johnson was sentenced to a year in jail. He appealed all the way to the Supreme Court, arguing that flag burning is political speech protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution.

ARCHIVAL (CBS NEWS, 6-21-89):
WILLIAM KUNSTLER: (JOEY JOHNSON’S LAWYER): You can’t make the flag into a sort of a religious object that’s so sanctified that it can’t be used in public protest. 

NARRATION: But before the Supreme Court issued its decision, another flag-related incident was making news in Chicago.

ARCHIVAL (NBC NEWS, 3-2-89): 
NEWS REPORT: An American flag on the floor of the Art Institute. What Is the Proper Way to Display the American Flag? That’s the title of the work. The artist is Scott Tyler.
SCOTT YYLER (AKA DREAD SCOTT): Well, they’re trying to tell me that I have to uphold that flag if I want to make art with it, and I said, you know. . .

DREAD SCOTT (ARTIST): I am a revolutionary artist. I wanted to make work that specifically called into question what the American flag was. The American flag represents a country that was founded on slavery and genocide, and down to this day is based on exploitation and oppression. It was a three- by five-foot flag, American flag, on the floor that people had the option of standing on, the choice to stand on, as they wrote their responses to the question.

ARCHIVAL (NBC NEWS, 3-2-89): 
JIM CUMMINGS: Several veterans groups had an answer for that question recently, when they tried to rescue the flag from the Art Institute.
VETERAN: It’s a disgrace to dishonor their flag. They gave their life for this. 

DREAD SCOTT (ARTIST): The vets got that it was actually critical of America, and they wanted to enforce one particular view – that America was this great place, and anybody who didn’t agree with that should love it or leave it.

ARCHIVAL (ABC NEWS, 3-12-89):
NEWS REPORT: Chanting veterans and their supporters jammed Michigan Avenue.

DREAD SCOTT: There were demonstrations in front of the museum.

ARCHIVAL (WTTW, 5-23-89):
NEWS REPORT: The veterans tried to get the Art Institute to shut down the display. 

DREAD SCOTT: Some of them chanted things like, the flag and the artist, hang them both high, evoking images of lynching. It was quite, you know, a big deal, and George Bush publicly called the work disgraceful, which I thought was a tremendous honor.

NARRATION: The question of how to treat the flag became even more urgent just months later, with the Supreme Court’s decision in Joey Johnson’s case.

GREGORY (JOEY) JOHNSON: The court actually ruled in my favor. They said that this was protected speech, you know, they said that it was clearly meant to convey a political message and that the state had no right to suppress it.

NARRATION: The decision sparked an immediate outcry.

ARCHIVAL (6-27-89):
PRESIDENT GEORGE H.W. BUSH: I believe that the flag of the United States should never be the object of desecration. Flag burning is wrong. 

ARCHIVAL (CBS NEWS, 6-27-89):
REPRESENTATIVE CAROLL HUBBARD (D-KENTUCKY): Americans who want to burn the American flag should consider moving to Iran, China or Cuba.

GREGORY (JOEY) JOHNSON: The response of Congress was to call for a new federal statute. It prohibited the physical desecration of the flag, including by burning it.

DREAD SCOTT: It was an effort to make patriotism compulsory, and it did specifically include wording that was designed to outlaw my artwork.

NARRATION: The new Flag Protection Act of 1989 banned flag burning and, in response to Dread Scott’s exhibition, trampling on the American flag.

ARCHIVAL (CBS NEWS, 10-30-89):
NEWS REPORT: In Washington, a test today. A new test case of a new federal law against desecrating the U.S. flag. Right on the steps of the U.S. Capitol, police arrested four people for flag burning.

DREAD SCOTT: Literally, the second the law went into effect, flags were burned all over the United States.

GREGORY (JOEY) JOHNSON: So we drove down to Washington, D.C., and went up to the steps of the U.S. Capitol and burned flags there.

DREAD SCOTT: I ended up burning flags on the steps of the Capitol along with Joey Johnson, a revolutionary artist named Sean Eichmann and a Vietnam vet named Dave Blaylock, and so there’s photographs of us burning flags, and so we went to jail, and then we were charged and the case went to the Supreme Court.

ARCHIVAL (CBS NEWS, 5-14-90):
SENATOR JOSEPH R. BIDEN (CHAIR, SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE): The vast majority of the members of the Congress want to protect the flag within the confines and restrictions of the First Amendment of the Constitution.
DREAD SCOTT: What this law, the Flag Protection Act of 1989, is about, it’s about stamping down anti-patriotic dissent.

DREAD SCOTT: They ruled, you know, 5 to 4 that again, flag burning is protected speech and that law was struck down.

NARRATION: Antonin Scalia, one of the court’s conservative justices, later explained.

ARCHIVAL (CNN, 2012):
JUSTICE ANTONIN SCALIA: If I were king, I would not allow people to go about burning the American flag. However, we have a First Amendment, and it is addressed in particular to speech critical of the government.

DREAD SCOTT (GIVING A TOUR OF THE FAIRFIELD UNIVERSITY ART MUSEUM, FAIRFIELD, CT): So this is a piece called Emancipation Proclamation, and it is simply me burning a flag, and it is a reference to the Emancipation Proclamation that Lincoln signed, which supposedly freed the slaves. 

NARRATION: Dread Scott is one of many artists who use the American flag in their work.

TEXT ON SCREEN:

“I don’t trust you anymore, Flag #59”
Sara Rahbar

“False Flag”
Danielle Scott

“and i’ll be there with you”
Imo Nse Imeh

DREAD SCOTT: If the Supreme Court upheld the Flag Protection Act of 1989, probably this work might be considered illegal. Whether they want to burn the flag, whether they want to make artwork that has the flag as a doormat, that’s permissible within the bounds of the First Amendment.

ARCHIVAL (FOX10, 7-20-16):
PROTESTERS: One, two, three, four. . . slavery, genocide and war. . .

ARCHIVAL (6-9-26):
REPRESENTATIVE STEVE WOMACK (R-ARKANSAS): We’ve seen folks burn and desecrate the flag. 

NARRATION: But flag burning is still controversial. Congressman Steve Womack is sponsoring a constitutional amendment to protect the flag. He has been trying for over a decade.

STEVE WOMACK: There are a lot of other symbols that reflect who we are as Americans, but nothing can rival the Stars and Stripes. I spent 30 years in uniform with that flag on my right shoulder. When people burn the flag, stomp on the flag, it affects the soul, I think, of the nation, unlike anything else. 

ARCHIVAL (C-SPAN, 8-25-25):
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: You burn a flag you get one year in jail, you don’t get 10 years. . . 

NARRATION: In 2025, President Trump issued an executive order to penalize those who burn the flag.

ARCHIVAL (C-SPAN, 8-25-25):
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: The people in this country don’t want to see our American flag burned and spit on. They’re bad people. They’re trying to destroy our nation.

NARRATION: In response, a veteran named Jay Carey went to Lafayette Park across from the White House.

ARCHIVAL (THE BULWARK, TMX, 8-25-25):
JAN (JAY) CAREY: My name’s Jay Carey, I’m a retired disabled combat veteran. We burn this flag in protest!

NARRATION: Carey served in Bosnia, Afghanistan and in Iraq, where he received the Bronze Star.

JAN (JAY) CAREY: I don’t hate America. I don’t hate the American flag. This was about the Constitution. The president is trying to take away our ability to speak freely, to question our government, to question what it’s doing. My First Amendment right is sacrosanct. It is not something that can be taken away with a swipe of a pen.

NARRATION: Carey was arrested and charged with two federal misdemeanors, but the government eventually dropped the charges.

JAN (JAY) CAREY: I was going to challenge it because I wanted the Supreme Court to rule against this president in favor of the Constitution.

NARRATION: For now, even though many find it repugnant, burning the flag is still protected political speech. 

STEVE WOMACK: I just love the American flag, and when people use that flag in a nefarious way, just to make a political point, it is extremely offensive.

DREAD SCOTT: Well, no, everybody doesn’t love this flag, and to the degree you try and stop people from expressing dissent, you will create more dissent.

(END)