President Donald Trump is about to sign an executive order that will proclaim English as the official language of the United States, according to various sources confirmed on Friday morning.
This executive order will revoke a provision issued by former Democratic President Bill Clinton in the year 2000, which required federal agencies and recipients of federal funds to provide language assistance to non-native English speakers.
Throughout the nearly 250 years of the nation's history, the United States has never had an official language. However, all key documents, such as the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, have been written in English.
Despite this, around 180 of the 195 countries in the world have an official language, leaving the United States among the few countries that haven't officialized one. The executive order proposed by Trump will allow federal agencies to decide whether or not to offer services in languages other than English.
Trump had previously suggested the possibility of making English the national language. In 2024, during an intervention at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), Trump criticized the immigration policies of Joe Biden's administration, claiming that the languages entering the country are diverse and some of them so unknown that "nobody in the country has ever heard" of them.
According to the newly elected leader, this situation represents a challenge for education in the country and is "a very serious problem".
