AOC Says Trump Administration 'Spits On The American Flag' Due To These Scary Reasons

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) called out President Donald Trump and his administration for being “anti-American” and “putting America last” in a fiery rebuke on social media over the weekend.

The representative made her comments during a livestream on Instagram Saturday night, addressing a confrontation involving Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and Democratic lawmakers that took place at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Newark, New Jersey, on Friday.

Baraka was accused of trespassing at the facility and arrested, then released after spending several hours in custody.

Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security,  also accused New Jersey Reps. Bonnie Watson Coleman, LaMonica McIver and Robert Menendez of trespassing, along with assaulting and “body slamming” ICE agents. She suggested that the Trump administration was considering arresting them as well.

The New Jersey representatives have vehemently denied the claims from DHS. They accused ICE agents of showing aggression toward them and escalating the situation by arresting Baraka. They also accused ICE agents of attempting to impede their ability as members of Congress to conduct oversight at the detention facility.

“You lay a finger on ... Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman or any of the representatives that were there… we’re going to have a problem,” Ocasio-Cortez warned in the livestream. She then accused Trump and members of his administration, including Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, of being “anti-American.”

Trump has used the slogan “America First” in both of his presidential campaigns. The catchphrase, which has a complicated backstory that includes links to racist and xenophobic movements, may mean different things to different people today.

Ocasio-Cortez suggested that Trump’s “America First” is hypocritical, since his administration has been espousing “anti-American” attitudes by attacking the U.S. constitution, free speech and the powers of Congress. She also charged that it’s “un-American” to block Congress members from their “ability to investigate and conduct oversight.”

“This administration and Kristi Noem spits on the American flag every time she does that nonsense,” she said. “So, I don’t want to hear anything about ‘America First.’ These people and this administration is putting America last by acting like a man—a man —is who they are pledging allegiance to. That is not what this country is about.”

Read on to hear from experts on their thoughts about the importance of free speech, Ocasio-Cortez’s remarks and some key takeaways from the incident at the ICE detention facility in Newark.

The First Amendment’s protections for free speech is a “basic precondition for democracy,” an expert says.

Speaking about Ocasio-Cortez’s criticisms of the Trump administrations attacks on free speech, Paul A. Gowder, professor of law at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, said that Trump has been “egregiously violating” a crucial element of the First Amendment.

Gowder, whose research includes the rule of law, democratic theory and social and racial equality, said that there’s “a lot of complicated constitutional law surrounding the First Amendment’s protections for free speech.”

But, he added, “one of the most basic and fundamental principles is that the government cannot engage in what is called ‘viewpoint discrimination’ — either making laws or deciding how to enforce those laws based on people’s particular views.”

This principle, he said, is “obviously a basic precondition for democracy: if the government can punish particular political views, people who hold those views aren’t represented!”

The most notorious example of how the Trump administration has engaged in viewpoint discrimination is its efforts to revoke student visas, and in some cases green cards, for people who have participated in pro-Palestinian protests and spoken out against Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, Gowder said.

“Regardless of where you think the right lies in the terrible conflict in Gaza, the simple fact of the matter is that the Constitution does not permit the federal government to punish people for their beliefs on that subject,” he said, adding that the government “can’t deport someone who is already legally here, and especially not a permanent resident (green card holder) for their beliefs.”

Alison Gash, professor and head of the department of political science at the University of Oregon College of Arts and Sciences, told HuffPost that the most prominent way in which the Trump administration is “violating free speech protections” is by “linking funding for vital programs to limitations on what schools teach, what scholars research, and how students organize.”

Trump is “going so far as creating a list of words that schools and scholars cannot reference and implying loyalty tests,” she said. “He is forcing schools in particular to engage in undemocratic trade offs: comply with our limitations on speech, or risk losing millions in aid.”

Gash emphasized that “free speech is at the center of American democracy.”

“As the Court has frequently argued the Founders understood that free speech — even (or especially) speech that criticizes government — is required for democracy to function,” she said. “For people to actively choose, through the free exchange of ideas and information, which candidate will best represent their interests. Democracy doesn’t work without free speech.”

“More importantly the Founders feared that intrusions on speech would come from government,” she added.

Members of Congress are emphasizing their right to conduct oversight after the incident in Newark.

On Monday, Reps. Jason Crow, Veronica Escobar and Maxwell Frost issued a letter, addressed to Noem and acting ICE director Todd Lyons, to condemn the events that took place at the Newark ICE detention facility last week.

The representatives said that the members of Congress involved in the incident had “explicit legal right” to access the detention center — and without prior notice — as outlined in the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2020 and later  reaffirmed with the Further Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2024.

“Members of Congress have a statutory right to visit ICE facilities, as per their website and by federal law,” said Shawn Donahue, assistant professor of political science at the University at Buffalo College of Arts and Sciences. “Members of Congress have an oversight function as an implied power under the Constitution, but Congress seems to have added this statutorily.”

He told HuffPost that members of Congress likely find it important to highlight this right due to “what they see are abuses of power by the executive branch.”

Donahue said he believes it’s important to keep in mind that when it comes to matters of congressional oversight, “the party that is in power seeks to protect their power in the White House, while in opposition, they seek strong investigations.”

Gowder, the Pritzker law professor, noted that there’s a “longstanding constitutional understanding that Congress and its members have broad authority to inquire into the operations of the federal government for the purposes of doing their jobs.”

He said it’s “extremely alarming” that a DHS spokesperson would appear to suggest that the New Jersey representatives could be arrested over the incident at the detention facility in Newark.

“Let’s be clear: nobody is above the law, and while members of Congress have certain immunities from prosecution ... it’s not unlimited,” he said. “Members of Congress, just like the rest of us, can’t commit physical violence against people without consequences.”

“But, as we know, when people and police of any kind come into conflict the facts get murky quick,” he said. “If the body of a civilian and the body of a cop come into contact with one another, there’s a very thin line between who slammed into whom.”

He continued, “It’s all too easy for any armed agent of the state to claim that anyone who doesn’t do what they want was ‘resisting’ or ‘fighting’ or, in this case, ‘body-slamming’ them.”

Gowder said that since the representatives were “in a place they had a right to be, doing a thing that they had the right to do, and upholding their Constitutional responsibility to make sure that the government is following the laws they passed,” they should be receive “a strong benefit of the doubt to the members’ accounts unless unequivocal evidence proves otherwise.”

As for Ocasio-Cortez’s remarks about Trump’s “America First” slogan, Gowder pointed out that there’s a lot of different ways to interpret what “America” means.

“Is ‘America’ our history of terrible behavior ... or is ‘America’ our ideals, the standards we hold ourselves to and claim that we value?” he said. “In reality, I think it’s both: our national identity encompasses both our sins and our aspirations.”

He believes that when Ocasio-Cortez says Trump is putting “America last,” she’s talking about the “ideals” America seeks to represent to the world —  ideals such as free speech and democracy.

“Mr. Trump’s behavior is clearly a betrayal of those ideals, and accordingly, a betrayal of America as we all hope to understand it,” he said.

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