Donald Trump to sign executive order making English official US language

In its nearly 250-year history, the US has never had a national language at the federal level.

Donald Trump is to make English the official language of the US. Picture: AFP.

President Trump is planning to sign an executive order that would for the first time make English the official language of the U.S., according to White House officials.

In its nearly 250-year history, the US has never had a national language at the federal level. Hundreds of languages are spoken in the U.S., the by-product of the country’s long history of taking in immigrants from around the world.

The executive order would rescind a federal mandate issued by President Bill Clinton that agencies and other recipients of federal funding are required to provide language assistance to non-English speakers, the officials said.

Agencies will still be able to provide documents and services in languages other than English, according to a White House summary of the order viewed by The Wall Street Journal. The summary of the order said the goal of making English the national language is to promote unity, establish efficiency in the government and provide a pathway to civic engagement.

Trump has made cracking down on illegal immigration a cornerstone of his presidency and he has promised the largest mass deportation operation in American history.

During the recent presidential campaign, Trump warned that migrants who don’t speak English were being “dropped” into communities such as Springfield, Ohio, and he raised concerns that migrant students who don’t speak English were unable to communicate in classrooms.

“We have languages coming into our country. We don’t have one instructor in our entire nation that can speak that language,” Trump said last year. “These are languages – it’s the craziest thing – they have languages that nobody in this country has ever heard of. It’s a very horrible thing.” During a 2015 presidential debate, Trump criticised former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush for speaking Spanish on the campaign trail. “This is a country where we speak English, not Spanish,” Trump said at the time.

Trump and his Republican allies spent millions during the 2024 campaign to reach out to Spanish-language speakers and other non-English speaking voters. Soon after taking office, the Trump administration took down the Spanish-language version of the White House website. The official Spanish-language social-media account on X, @LaCasaBlanca, no longer exists.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is bilingual, conducted some of his official diplomatic business with Latin American leaders in Spanish during a recent trip to the region.

Though the U.S. doesn’t have an official language, applicants must pass a test demonstrating an ability to read, write and speak English to become naturalised citizens.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, most Americans – more than 78% – speak only English at home. But millions of Americans primarily speak other languages, such as Spanish, Chinese and Tagalog. Dozens of Native American languages are also spoken in the U.S.

More than 30 states have passed legislation designating English as their official language.

Since the civil-rights movement of the 1960s, several laws have been passed to provide services or equal opportunities for non-English speaking people in the U.S. Republicans in Congress have also tried – unsuccessfully – to pass legislation making English the national language.

Vice President JD Vance introduced the English Language Unity Act when he served as a U.S. senator from Ohio. The proposed bill, co-sponsored by Sen. Kevin Cramer (R., N.D.), called for the federal government to conduct all official business in English and introduce a language-testing standard for a pathway to citizenship.

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