Trump mulls loss of citizenship, jail for flag burning

President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday proposed harsh punishments for flag burning, mentioning loss of citizenship or a year in jail.

“Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag — if they do, there must be consequences — perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail!” Trump wrote in an early morning tweet.

Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag – if they do, there must be consequences – perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 29, 2016

{mosads}The catalyst for the president-elect’s 7 a.m. tweet is unclear.

Fox News reported earlier this month that Hampshire College in Massachusetts would stop flying all flags on campus after an American flag was burned following Trump’s win.

“We hope this will enable us to instead focus our efforts on addressing racist, misogynistic, Islamophobic, anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic and anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and behaviors,” Hampshire’s president, Jonathan Lash, said in a statement at the time. 

Rep. Sean Duffy (R-Wis.) pushed back on Trump’s proposal during an early morning interview.

“I don’t think we want to make this a legal issue,” Duffy told CNN on Tuesday.

Burning the American flag was first ruled to be protected speech under the First Amendment in the 1989 Supreme Court case Texas v. Johnson. 

An NBC News producer noted on Twitter that then-Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) introduced a bill in 2005 that would have outlawed burning the American flag.

In 2005 a bill was introduced that would outlaw burning the American flag.

That bill was introed by: @HillaryClinton & Sen Bennett (R-UT) pic.twitter.com/3hKzTjV0E9

— Frank Thorp V (@frankthorp) November 29, 2016

Early in his presidential campaign, Trump said that he supported revoking the citizenship of babies born to undocumented immigrants, but this appears to be the first time since then that he’s proposed revoking citizenship as a punishment.

This report was updated at 8:26 a.m.