President Donald Trump is set to sign an executive order that will make English the official language of the U.S., confirmed Friday morning.
Trump will sign the executive order later on Friday, which rescinds a mandate issued by former President Bill Clinton in 2000 that required federal agencies and recipients of federal funding to provide language assistance to non-English speakers, a White House official shared.
The U.S. has never had an official language across its nearly 250-year history, though every major document such as the Constitution and Declaration of Independence has been written in English. About 180 countries of the 195 countries across the globe have official languages, leaving the U.S. as one of the few countries that has not officiated a language, a White House official shared.
It will be left to individual federal agencies to assess whether to offer services in languages other than English.
Trump previously had previewed potentially officiating English as the nation's language, including in 2024 as he railed against the Biden administration's immigration policies.
The order is intended to celebrate multilingual Americans who have learned English and passed it down to their family members, while also 'empowering immigrants' to reach the American dream via a common language.
Trump has signed at least 76 executive orders since reclaiming the Oval Office in January.
His executive orders and actions have included renaming areas of the country to better celebrate the nation and its history, including renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, and signing an executive order to drop the Obama-era name Mount Denali, the tallest peak in the U.S. located in the Alaska range, back to its original Mount McKinley.
