President Donald Trump is set to sign an executive order establishing English as the official language of the United States. The order marks the first time the country has had a national language.
According to a report by ABC News on Friday, a White House official confirmed that Trump is expected to sign the order, which will rescind a directive issued during the Clinton administration. That directive required federal agencies to provide language assistance to individuals with what it called “limited English proficiency” (LEP).
Under Trump’s new order, agencies will have the discretion to determine how and when to offer assistance in languages other than English. The White House has argued that while multiple languages are spoken in the US, English is the most widely used, and making it the official language would help unify the nation.
“Establishing English as the official language promotes unity, establishes efficiency in government operations, and creates a pathway for civic engagement,” the White House said in a fact sheet, according to ABC News.
The idea of declaring English the national language was previously considered during Trump’s first term but was never enacted. In 2021, Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe introduced a bill to make English the official language. The bill stated that all US citizens should be able to read and understand key documents such as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, with exceptions only in “extraordinary circumstances, such as asylum.”
A 2019 Census Bureau report found that the number of people who speak a language other than English at home had tripled from 1980 to 2019, reaching 67.8 million, or one in five.
