‘To disregard our cultural language is disheartening’: Trump’s executive order on official language sparks conversation among Eastern Washington leaders
President Donald Trump has signed an executive order designating English the official language of the country, the first time for such a declaration in U.S. history.
The order, signed on March 1, rescinds a policy issued by former President Bill Clinton that required federal agencies to provide language assistance for people with limited English proficiency, according to a White House fact sheet.
While the White House encourages agencies to embrace the official language adoption, the order does allow agencies to keep existing policies and provide documents and services in other languages.
Each agency will determine how and when to offer multilingual services.
Some people are unhappy with the move and said they will continue their efforts to support people with limited English proficiency across Eastern Washington.
“To disregard our cultural language when we were the first Americans is disheartening and lets us know that we are not important, our voices are not important, and the importance of our language and our culture is not validated or valuable to the American president,” said Lacey Abrahamson, a Spokane resident and member of the Shoshone Bannock tribe.
Abrahamson, an eighth-generation descendant of Sacajawea and also representing Colville, Coeur d’Alene and Spokane tribes, has been actively involved in Indigenous community work, including contributing to the design and logo of the Sacajawea Middle School a couple of years ago.
Although she opposes the order, she said this isn’t “their first rodeo,” and she remains determined to continue her work.
“We’re sovereign nations. Each of our reservations is a sovereign nation through treaties, and Trump can’t make those rules on our reservations. He can’t say, ‘Oh, you guys, English is your whatever language,’ because as a sovereign nation, we have our own governments and our own everything,” Abrahamson said.
Still, she worries about what she considers broader implications.
“It feels like at some points that he’s trying to abolish even our treaty rights,” Abrahamson said.
U.S. Rep. Michael Baumgartner, a Spokane Republican, said he backs Trump’s order because it stresses the importance of having a “unifying” language. He added that he supports offering important government information in other languages for people who don’t speak English and noted he expanded some of those services when he served as the Spokane County treasurer.
Before Trump took office for his second term, he had vocalized his disapproval of the variety of languages spoken across the country, according to a Guardian article.
“We have languages coming into our country. We don’t have one instructor in our entire nation that can speak that language,” Trump said during the conference last year. “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.”
Ohio Sen. Bernie Moreno, who introduced a bill in February this year that would’ve made English the official language, reaffirmed an effort by Vice President JD Vance, who co-sponsored a similar bill in 2023.
Vance continued his advocacy in 2024 after the bill he introduced died out, emphasizing to a ProEnglish board member in November that the English language was a “cornerstone of American culture for the past 250 years.”
“JD Vance was right–English is the official language of the United States and, as one of the only naturalized citizens serving in the Senate, I should know,” Moreno said in a written statement. “The proudest moment of my life was when I became an American citizen at 18, a process that showed me just how foundational the English language is to the American way of life. It’s long past time we enshrine this simple fact into law.”
Jackie Wambolt, treasurer for the Eastern Washington University Native American Student Coalition, similarly said she understands people are worried and afraid of the changes happening.
“I think it’s silly that it’s a big push and a big move for his administration, because our country has always been founded on the concept of multiple peoples coming together,” said Wambolt, a member of the Northern Cheyenne tribe.
Abrahamson acknowledged that with more than 570 federally recognized tribes in the United States, she can’t speak for all Native Americans on the executive order and shares her perspective based on her own experiences and conversations she has had within her community.
“For us Indigenous people, we’re working hard to revitalize our language – and it’s a positive uprising, for our people to be resilient in our culture and our language and for us,” Abrahamson said. “If he said, ‘English is the only language,’ I don’t think it’s going to really affect the natives, because we’re going to continue on our journey with holding strong to who we are and what we have, because this country is all that we have.”
Jacky Garcia-Angulo, community policy liaison for Mujeres in Action, said when she found out about the order, she couldn’t help but feel it was unnecessary and isn’t “something a country full of diversity needs.”
“I know that MiA as an organization is still going to fight for language access, because we don’t believe that language should be a barrier,” Garcia-Angulo said. “Language should always be available, no matter where it is that you are.”
She said she could see this instilling fear and causing people to avoid speaking their native tongue.
Rob Linebarger, chair of the Spokane County Republican Party, said making English the official language only makes sense.
“I don’t think it’s that controversial, given that English is the official language in 67 other countries,” Linebarger said. “… In fact, I think it’s great when people are bilingual or multilingual. I think it’s only a positive.”
Making a big deal out of this order, he said, is insignificant. He is personally looking at this as a good deal.
“If Joe Biden would have said that English needed to be the official language, do you think the left would have been losing their minds over it? I doubt it,” Linebarger said.
Lili Navarrete, a Spokane City Council member, said she is unfazed by the order.
“Sure, English is now the official language of the U.S., but we’re not going to change our language. I’m going to still keep speaking Spanish to my kids. … I speak Spanish in the stores. I speak Spanish anywhere I go. Here at the city council, my legislative aide is bilingual, so we speak Spanish here all the time,” Navarrete said.
Navarrete is the first Latina immigrant on council and recently helped pass an ordinance relating to language access and recruiting bilingual and multilingual applicants to the city of Spokane.
This ordinance also helps establish policies that would improve recruitment of applications fluent in multiple languages. Trump’s executive order would not interfere with this new adoption.
“I want a functional city, not a broken one,” Navarrete said. “… As city council representative, I have constituents who need services, and assistance in different departments here in the city, like permits. If we don’t have a way to communicate effectively, we will be doing a disservice to those residents.”
Since she’s been on the council, she said she has struggled with negative comments about her accent and receives emails telling her that “they don’t understand her” and that she “doesn’t make sense” because of it.
Although she’s not embarrassed by her accent and often appreciates feedback, it’s reached the point where she’ll tell her legislative assistant that if there’s anything negative, she doesn’t want to see it, unless it’s feedback on what she can do to help around the city and community.
“I have an accent. You can clearly hear it. English is not my first language,” Navarrete said. “When I arrived in Spokane with my family in 1988, we came from Mexico City to Spokane, we knew zero English – so I’m still trying to learn. There’s something new I learn every day, new verbs, and I’m so proud. I’m so proud that I’m bilingual.”
Garcia-Angulo said no matter where you are in the world, language access is important.
“Let’s say someone gets a parking ticket and they have to go to court for some reason for it, you don’t necessarily have to be able to speak English; you should be able to have access to the resources,” she said. “That’s why we have language access plans in place throughout the U.S. That’s why, you know, we have interpreters available throughout all different systems, and you know, something like an executive order shouldn’t change that.”
Although in agreement with the executive order, Linebarger said he also believes that language access is important and shouldn’t stop the continuation of translation among organizations.
“I don’t think the English being the official language prevents them from translating that,” he said. “If, let’s say there’s a border town with a lot of Spanish-speaking people, I think the government still would translate that.”
Pui-Yan Lam, a sociology professor at Eastern Washington University, said there has been a forced narrative that European immigrants quickly learned English and abandoned their native languages.
Lam argues that isn’t true.
“Actually, German immigrants, for example, fought to have bilingual education in schools … so I think it wasn’t until relatively recently that there was more of a backlash against bilingual education or bilingualism or multilingualism,” Lam said.
She said World War I sparked fear of immigrants for various years, leading to the decline of bilingual education.
During this time, many Americans worried that immigrants from enemy nations were spies.
It wasn’t until after World War II that the U.S. began celebrating immigrants and diverse cultures again.
Stacy Bondanella Taninchev, associate professor of political science and interim chair of international studies at Gonzaga University, said English was never established as the official language because the United States was founded by diverse colonies.
“We’ve always been a country that had influxes of immigrants from around the world,” Taninchev said.
She also pointed out that while some countries have official languages, others don’t, relying instead on the de facto language used by the majority of the population and in government.
Countries like the United Kingdom, Mexico, Sweden and Australia have no official language, while Canada has two, Switzerland has four, and India has as many as 11 official languages.
Regarding the recent executive order, Lam emphasized that the focus should be more on preserving languages than establishing an official one.
“A lot of people in this country don’t recognize how multilingualism is actually a strength of the United States, and its multilingualism is something that has been present from the very beginning of this country,” Lam said. “That’s why English has not been the official language of the United States.”
Language access continues to grow in Washington
After three years on the Senate floor, a rule requiring pharmacies across Washington to translate medical information passed its final adoption phase earlier this year.
This will make all prescriptions available in multiple languages by March 2027.
“I was super passionate about language access and to be a part of this, and to see how it’s progressed throughout the year has been phenomenal and amazing,” said Ashley Chon, who’s a student at Gonzaga University.
What began as a bill crafted by medical students from the Health Equity Circle – a student organization spanning universities in Washington focused on addressing health equity issues – was sent into the rule-making process through the Pharmacy Quality Assurance Commission in 2022 and passed earlier this year.
The rule aims to reduce language barriers for people with limited English proficiency when receiving medications.
According to the Washington State Office of Financial Management, nearly 8% of Washington state’s population has limited English proficiency, and many of those individuals speak Spanish, Russian, Vietnamese, Chinese, Korean or Somali as their primary language.
Ryou, the daughter of immigrants, said she personally understood these challenges after witnessing her parents, who have limited English proficiency, struggle to navigate the health care system. These hardships motivated her to pursue a career in medicine.
“I want to address more than just the things that I can do for my patients directly ,” Ryou said.
Chon shared a similar experience, having witnessed her parents’ challenges with the health care system – her father grew up in Korea and Bolivia, and her mother in the Philippines.
It wasn’t until the COVID-19 pandemic, however, that these issues became especially apparent.
“During the pandemic, (my dad) was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, and he had a really hard time getting translated care available to him,” Chon said. “The hospital had translators, and that was great, but he’d come home and look at all of the chemo pills and prescriptions and all of these random things that he had, and he was really confused.”
Seeing the progress on this issue and the passage of the rule was a goal Chon had been hoping for since she got involved her freshman year.
“I’m so, so glad it’s finally going to be available in March 2027. I think this is a theme that a lot of us have invested so much hope, energy, and time into,” Chon said.