President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order making English the official language of the United States.
The order would rescind a federal mandate from President Bill Clinton that required agencies and other entities receiving federal funds to provide assistance to non-English speakers, the Wall Street Journal reports.
The U.S. is one of only a few countries that does not have an official language. The order will celebrate Americans who have learned English and passed it onto their family members while also “empowering” immigrants to learn a common language, according to reports.
Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2024, Trump said, “We have languages coming into our country. We don’t have one instructor in our entire nation that can speak that language. 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.”
In 2023, then-Senator JD Vance introduced a bill to officially declare English the official language of the U.S. Under the English Language Unity Act, “Representatives of the Federal Government” are obligated to preserve the “role of English as the official language of the Federal Government.”
Representatives may fulfill this obligation by “encouraging greater opportunities for individuals to learn the English language,” according to the bill.
The “English Language Unity Act” also stated that “all citizens of the United States should be able to read and understand generally the English language text of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, and the laws of the United States made in pursuance of the Constitution of the United States,” as part of the naturalization process.
