President Donald Trump is expected to firm a historical executive order that designates English as the official language of the United States, confirmed a White House official to ABC News on Friday.
The request marks the first time that the country has had a national language.
The executive order terminates a mandate of the Clinton era that required agencies and beneficiaries of federal funds to provide broad linguistic assistance to those who do not speak English. According to the new order, agencies will have the flexibility of deciding how and when to offer services in languages other than English, according to an informative sheet that the White House shared with ABC News.
President Donald Trump attends a press conference with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer (not in the photo) at the White House in Washington, DC, on February 27, 2025.
Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
The White House is defending the action, saying that while hundreds of languages are spoken in the United States, English is the most used. In addition, the White House argues that establishing a national language unifies the country and its citizens.
“Establishing English as an official language promotes unity, establishes efficiency in government operations and creates a path for civic commitment,” wrote the White House on the information sheet provided to ABC News.
It is not yet clear when Trump is expected to firm the executive order.
The measure is produced in the middle of the Trump crusade to stop government support for programs that promote diversity, equity and inclusion. On his first day in office, the President signed an order that ordered the federal agencies to terminate all subsidies or contracts “related to capital” and then signed an follow -up order that required federal contractors that certify that they do not promote Dei.
People in the United States communicate in more than 350 languages, with Spanish, Chinese, Tagalo, Vietnamese and Arabic as some of the most spoken languages that are not English, according to data from the United States Census Office.
TO 2019 Census Office Report He discovered that the number of people in the United States spoke a language that is not English at an almost tripled home from 1980 to 2019, from 23.1 million (approximately one in 10) to 67.8 million (approximately one in five). The report also found that English speakers also increased, which grew from 187.2 million in 1980 to 241 million in 2019.
