The Washington Post
February 28, 2025
President Donald Trump speaks to reporters and signs executive orders in the Oval Office at the White House on Feb. 4. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
President Donald Trump will soon sign an executive order designating English as the official language of the United States, marking the first time the country will have a federally recognized national language in its nearly 250-year history.
A draft White House fact sheet obtained by The Washington Post states that the order will rescind a federal mandate issued by then-President Bill Clinton “that required agencies and recipients of federal funding to provide extensive language assistance to non-English speakers.”
The fact sheet also states that the order will give agencies discretion to keep their current language policies allowing documents and services in other languages, “but encourages new Americans to adopt a national language that opens doors to greater opportunities.”
The White House order, the sheet stated, will help foster “national cohesion” and “establishes efficiency in government operations.”
The Wall Street Journal first reported on the order.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York) said at a news conference Friday that the Trump administration could be taken to court over the incoming order.
“Like dozens of the other executive orders and actions that have been taken, we’re going to have to examine if what he’s doing is actually in compliance with the law and the United States Constitution. And to the extent that it’s not, I’m confident that he will be sued,” Jeffries said, noting how courts have halted many of the president’s executive actions so far.
Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-New York) is set to deliver the Spanish-language response to Trump's joint address to Congress on Tuesday. At Friday's news conference alongside Jeffries, Espaillat suggested the order would undercut the country's global competitiveness.
“Of course, we would like to see the details of the executive action, but it’s mind-boggling if the intent is to suppress the ability of our young people to be proficient in other languages,” Espaillat said. “I think that that doesn’t make us competitive as a country.”
Trump has sought to make immigration enforcement a foundational component of his presidency. Although hundreds of languages are spoken in the United States, on the campaign trail last year Trump repeatedly expressed concerns about migrants coming into the country speaking foreign languages.
“We have languages coming into our country. We don’t have one instructor in our entire nation that can speak that language,” Trump said at the Conservative Political Action Conference outside Washington 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.”
Trump also told rallygoers in Virginia that classrooms in New York are being overwhelmed with students “from countries where they don’t even know what the language is.”
“We have nobody that even teaches it. These are languages that nobody ever heard of,” he claimed at the time.
Shortly after Trump took office for his second term, the White House took down the Spanish-language version of the White House website. The official X account for White House communications in Spanish, @LaCasaBlanca, was archived.
Republican groups have in recent years invested in Spanish-language messaging, and during both the 2020 and 2024 election cycles, Trump ran Spanish-language ads.
Some 78.3 percent of the nation age 5 and older reported speaking only English at home, according to a 2018-2022 American Community Survey (ACS), five-year estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau. Recent ACS data also found that 8.4 percent of people living in the U.S. report speaking English “less than ‘very well.’”
Trump and Vice President JD Vance have long expressed support for adopting English as the official language of the United States.
While serving in the Senate, Vance sponsored the English Language Unity Act, which sought to establish English as the official language of the United States, require that government functions are conducted in English and introduce a language test as part of the naturalization process.
On the 2016 campaign trail, Trump criticized former Florida governor Jeb Bush — who was running in the GOP presidential primary at the time — for speaking Spanish while campaigning.
“He should really set an example by speaking English in the United States,” Trump said.
During a debate in September 2015, when asked about criticism over his comments about Bush, Trump argued, “This is a country where we speak English, not Spanish.”
“We have a country, where, to assimilate, you have to speak English. And I think that where he was, and the way it came out, didn’t sound right to me. We have to have assimilation — to have a country, we have to have assimilation,” Trump said at the time.
Natalie Allison and Patrick Svitek contributed to this report.
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