President Donald Trump will soon launch another salvo against civil rights gains in America with an upcoming executive order declaring English the official language of the United States.
For the entirety of its 249-year history, America has never had an official language. While most Americans speak English, more than 350 languages are spoken here, reflecting the diversity of the population.
Trump has long railed against the diversity of America’s melting pot and the Wall Street Journal reports that his executive order will rescind an order signed by former President Bill Clinton in 2000 that instructed federal agencies to provide accommodation to millions of non-English speakers.
Clinton’s order was meant to bolster the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on race, color, or national origin. Trump has issued a flurry of orders attacking policies related to the law, which was passed to combat racial segregation and discrimination stemming from the practice of slavery and other crimes against humanity and dignity.
President Donald Trump signs executive orders in the Oval Office.
The order would not immediately make English the official language. That would require a law passed by Congress. Then-Sen. JD Vance proposed legislation in the Senate in 2023, the “English Language Unity Act,” that would accomplish this task but it failed to pass; his replacement, Sen. Bernie Moreno, introduced a similar bill on Feb. 12.
Creating an official language would likely give a federal stamp of approval for linguistic racism, which is discrimination against people who do not speak the dominant language in a population. By making one language the only accepted way of speaking, non-English speakers would likely face discrimination in the workplace and in their daily lives.
Trump has been a fierce advocate of discrimination throughout his entire life as a political figure and has used his leadership of the Republican Party to attack Black people, Latinos, Asians, women, the disabled, LGBTQ+ people, and hundreds of others.
Of course, Trump and his team have used languages other than English when it helped them to accomplish their goals.
During a recent visit to Costa Rica, Secretary of State Marco Rubio conducted a press conference in Spanish (he is fluent in the language as the son of Cuban immigrants). Similarly, Trump’s campaign had no problem using Spanish in campaign ads attacking Vice President Kamala Harris during the 2024 election.
But using multiple languages to assist Americans? Trump is all-in on changing the law and American tradition, as long as civil rights are rolled back.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated with Sen. Bernie Moreno’s bill.
Campaign Action
