English still is not the official language of the United States. On March 1, President Trump issued EO 14223, Designating English as the Official Language of the Unites States. But executive orders are not royal decrees. The Constitution and the laws of the United States do not, in fact, vest the president with any authority to make English the official language. That would require a law.
There is quite a gap between what this executive order claims to do and what it actually does. The designation of official language is meaningless. You do not need to comply with this order anymore than you need to stop calling the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of Mexico.
The historical rationale for the unilateral designation also obfuscates the multilingual history of the United States. Yes, the founding documents were written in English, but states like Pennsylvania, Maryland and New York promptly and uncontroversially ordered translations for their sizable German- and Dutch-speaking populations. These translations were important in the dissemination and ratification of these documents, much like the Voting Rights Act makes it possible for language minorities to participate in elections today.
That doesn’t mean this executive order, meant to weaken civil rights protections, is toothless. Its most substantive action is rescinding President Clinton’s Executive Order 13166, which expanded the protections against language discrimination in the Civil Rights Act by mandating federal agencies and federally funded programs to provide language services for people with limited English proficiency. Trump’s new order stops short of banning language services (“Agency heads are not required to amend, remove, or otherwise stop production of documents, products, or other services prepared or offered in languages other than English”) but it will make it easier to deny language services. Linguistic accommodations play an important role in critical areas like health care, education, voting, housing and justice, among others.
Despite its vague nods to “multilingual American citizens,” the executive order will have a chilling effect on language minorities. If English is needed to “cultivate a shared American culture for all citizens” or to “create a pathway to civic engagement,” presumably that is at the expense of other languages being relegated to the private sphere. Multilingualism is tolerated, but languages other than English are not invited into public arenas. The text of the order feels maybe less Trumpian than some of his recent proclamations, but the effect is very much “assimilate or else.” I expect it will lead to an uptick in incidents of language harassment in public spaces.
If a law is needed to designate English as the official language, why hasn’t Congress done so, particularly during recent periods of Republican majority in Congress? It hasn’t been for lack of trying. On Feb. 12, newly elected Sen. Bernie Moreno introduced the English Unity Act of 2025. Before him, the most prominent legislator to introduce a bill to enshrine English as the official language was J.D. Vance, whose first-ever sponsored bill was the English Unity Act of 2023. The House version of the once-fringe English Language Unity Act (H.R. 997) was first introduced by Rep. Steve King in 2003, and, like clockwork, again each session of Congress through 2019. None of those bills ever made it past the committee stage.
Trump used the rhetoric of the English-only movement in his 2016 presidential campaign, ridiculing Jeb Bush for speaking Spanish, but other than taking down the Spanish version of the White House website immediately upon taking office, he did not show much interest in pursuing this issue during his first term.
If he has done so now, it is probably due to Vance’s influence. The language in Trump’s order (“it is therefore long past time that English is declared the official language of the United States”) echoes the press releases for Vance’s (“It is far past time for Congress to codify its place into law”) and Moreno’s (“It’s long past time we enshrine this simple fact into law”) bills.
That still leaves unanswered why groups like ProEnglish have failed until now to make much headway in Republican policies or ultra-conservative think-tanks. Neither The Heritage Foundation nor Project 2025, for instance, have paid much attention to this issue. It would seem like low hanging fruit, particularly with polls generally favorable to conferring official status to English. Maybe it’s because, except for the designation “official,” the English Language Unity Act, in any of its versions, adds nothing new. It calls for “official functions of Government to be conducted in English” (they already are), a “uniform English rule for naturalization” (language testing already is a requirement), and “all naturalization ceremonies (to) be conducted in English” (they already are). Maybe it’s because the First Amendment, the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act have been enough to keep English-only laws from jumping from the state level — 31 states, including New Hampshire, have ratified English as official language through legislative and ballot initiatives — to the federal level.
The most likely reason is its utter pointlessness. Except for providing culture war fodder, there is no urgency in protecting something that needs no protection. According to Census data, 78.3% of residents over 5 speak only English at home, and of those who speak other languages, the majority also speak English very well. Nothing threatens English as the language of government, laws, education or communication, or challenges its place as dominant language.
In the words of the late Sen. John McCain, hardly a progressive voice, “Our nation and the English language have done quite well with Chinese spoken in California, German in Pennsylvania, Italian in New York, Swedish in Minnesota and Spanish in the Southwest. I fail to see the cause for alarm now.”
The executive order purports to promote unity, but it’s hard to take those intentions at face value. For one, nothing communicates unity like the need to impose it. For another, the iterations of the English-only movement in the country’s history have inevitably been accompanied by virulent anti-immigrant sentiment, not by unity: mob violence against Spanish speakers in 1870s California, deportations and scapegoating of Mexicans during the Great Depression and after, the spike in hate incidents against Spanish speakers after 2015. Trump’s second presidency is no exception. There’s little hope for unity in the face of “Mass Deportations Now” signs at rallies, or the spectacle of rounding up immigrants and putting them in concentration camps.
Roberto Rey Agudo is the language program director in the Department of Spanish and Portugese at Dartmouth College.