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The English Only Executive Order from Trump fulfilled a decades-long effort by xenophobic organizations

March 4, 2025
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On March 1st, the Trump Administration put forth an Executive Order that designates English as the official language of the United States.

The move follows the Trump administration’s termination of the Spanish-language version of the White House website and its Spanish-language account on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Both were abruptly shut down within hours of Trump’s second presidential inauguration. Visitors to whitehouse.gov/espanol were met with “page not found” and a “GO HOME” button that sent the user to the English-language page. This button was later updated to read, “GO TO HOME PAGE.”

Part of the Executive Order states: 

From the founding of our Republic, English has been used as our national language. Our Nation’s historic governing documents, including the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, have all been written in English.  It is therefore long past time that English is declared as the official language of the United States.  A nationally designated language is at the core of a unified and cohesive society, and the United States is strengthened by a citizenry that can freely exchange ideas in one shared language. 

Historically, the U.S. has had no official language, and Spanish was spoken in the lands that now make up the U.S. well before the country’s founding. 

Today, there are approximately 43 million people in the U.S. that speak Spanish as their primary language, representing roughly 14% of the entire population. If those who speak Spanish as their second language are included, then the U.S. is the second-largest Spanish-speaking country in the world after Mexico.

Another inaccuracy from the Trump Executive Order to make English the official language of the US is this comment – Our Nation’s historic governing documents, including the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, have all been written in English. 

The U.S. Constitution was translated into German and Dutch in 1787 and 1788, languages that were widely spoken at the time, especially in New York, Pennsylvania and Maryland. These translations helped inform the public of the country’s foundational values and allowed for public engagement and participation during the ratification process. 

In 1964, the Civil Rights Act, which outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion and sex, also laid the legal foundation for multilingual services in federal assistance programs. In government programs such as Medicaid, people who speak a language other than English are entitled to treatment equal to that of English speakers.

If you attend a Grand Rapids City Commission meeting, they offer a Spanish language interpreter, even for those wishing to participate in Public Comment. However, the Kent County Commission meetings DO NOT provide translation nor interpretation, despite the fact that there are 11.7 Latino/Hispanics living in Kent County, according to the 2023 US Census.

English Only

For decades there has been an organized effort to make English the official language of the US, starting as far back as the early 1930s, when the America First movement was in fully swing. (See Erika Lee’s book, America for Americans: A History of Xenophobia in the United States)

Beginning in the early 1980s groups like US English were formed and, “dedicated to making English the official language of the United States through amendments made to the US constitution,” according to SourceWatch.

US English was also connected to the  John Tanton Network, a group of anti-immigration organizations like the Federation for American Immigration Reform and Center for Immigration Studies. 

Over the years they spent millions of dollars lobbying the US Congress to make English the official language. Some of their largest funders were:

Not only did the DeVos family fund this effort, Helen DeVos was part of the Advisory Board of US English up until 2013. This relationship between the DeVos family and the far right agenda, underscores the point I was making in an article last month, entitled, Why are we not more pissed off with the DeVos family regarding the shit show that is the Trump Administration?  So why aren’t we protesting outside of the DeVos complex in downtown Grand Rapids?

from → Indy News

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