President Donald Trump’s executive order designating English as the official language of the United States did not mandate government agencies stop offering services or materials in other languages. But across the federal government, those resources have been disappearing.
The Department of Justice earlier this month suspended its website offering resources for non-English speakers navigating the federal government, and there’s no guidance as to whether those resources are coming back.
The DOJ took down the site for limited English proficiency, LEP.gov, earlier this month after a memo from Attorney General Pam Bondi directed the agency to temporarily suspend all public-facing materials on language guidance.
Users who try to access LEP.gov now see a message that says, “the Department of Justice has temporarily suspended the operations of lep.gov, pending an internal review. These materials will be replaced when new guidance is issued.”
The department could take more than 200 days to issue that new guidance, according to the timeline outlined in Bondi’s memo.
NOTUS contacted 15 Cabinet agencies with questions about how they planned to implement the executive order and whether they were considering eliminating or altering any non-English resources.
A spokesperson for the Interior Department said in a statement that the agency was “committed to complying with all applicable executive orders and is currently reviewing existing language access guidance to ensure alignment with federal directives.” A spokesperson for the Energy Department said it was “complying with the executive order” and a spokesperson for the Health and Human Services Department said it would “continue to comply.”
The other agencies did not respond.
The possibility that some language resources could be inaccessible for the foreseeable future has prompted concern among members of Congress, especially lawmakers who represent districts with large populations of non-English speakers.
“These are steps that take this country backwards,” said Rep. Judy Chu. More than half the population in Chu’s southern California district speaks a language other than English at home, per U.S. Census data.
Chu and more than 50 other House Democrats sent a letter to Bondi in April demanding answers about the impacts of the English-language executive order. Chu told NOTUS this week that she has received “absolutely” no communication in response to the letter.
And Rep. Grace Meng, who chairs the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus and led the April letter alongside Chu, told NOTUS in a statement that the caucus “has heard from a handful of federal agencies, but not the Department of Justice, and none have given assurances that language access will be protected.”
Some resources previously available on LEP.gov are available elsewhere, like a poster that allows non-English speakers to identify their preferred language when interacting with law enforcement officers. But others, like an interactive mapping tool that showcased languages spoken in different communities, were exclusively housed on LEP.gov and are no longer available anywhere.
The DOJ’s site aggregated resources from various agencies for non-English speakers, including a page that showcased links to each agency’s unique process for filing a discrimination complaint under the Civil Rights Act. LEP.gov also included other compiled resources from various agency websites, like a set of links about reaching non-English speakers after natural disasters and other emergency situations and a collection of documents about best practices for displaying non-English information digitally.
Most of these resources are still available on individual agency websites but several are multiple years old and accessing them from agency websites’ landing pages is not straightforward.
Bondi’s memo suggested agencies reduce their non-English resources overall by operating some programs “exclusively in English” and using artificial intelligence, rather than interpretation and translation programs and employees, to communicate with non-English speakers.
“This initiative is not merely a return to tradition but a forward-looking strategy to enhance social and economic integration, offering all residents the opportunity to learn and embrace English as a means of achieving the American dream,” the memo said.
The artificial intelligence directive could be in conflict with existing guidance at some agencies. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, for instance, offers resources like Google Translate on its website for non-English speakers, but also has a disclaimer on the site that “machine translation technology may not always be accurate or a secure way to translate confidential or legal information.”
At least one government department, the Internal Revenue Service, is considering eliminating multilingual services for tax filers to adhere to the executive order, The Washington Post reported last week.
And several other agencies have already cut back on the language resources they offer. Around the same time the English-language executive order was signed, Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency cancelled several contracts for language and translation resources at federal agencies including the Interior Department and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, NOTUS first reported in March.
Chu told NOTUS she’s especially concerned about language access given the recent passage of Trump’s signature tax legislation, which created more stringent requirements for Americans to certify their eligibility for Medicaid, SNAP and other federal social-welfare programs.
“How are you going to be able to do that without any kind of translation services?” Chu said. “The paperwork burden will increase multifold, and we know that so many people will not have access to the language translations that they would need in order to comply.”
The LEP.gov suspension has also stoked worries among Republican members of Congress — including some who initially cheered the Trump executive order.
“I don’t understand why you’d make an issue out of it,” Rep. Carlos Gimenez of Florida said when NOTUS told him about the Justice Department taking down the website. “I understand what the president’s trying to do with one language. But, if somebody feels more comfortable, or may speak English but reads Spanish, I don’t have a problem either way.”
Gimenez, who represents a majority-Spanish-speaking district in south Florida, told NOTUS after the order was signed in March that cutting back on non-English resources could be “the right call.”
And Rep. María Elvira Salazar, who also represents a district in south Florida, declined to comment on the site suspension but acknowledged to NOTUS that she’s been “focused on immigration” and immigration resources. One page of the now-defunct LEP.gov website offered a compilation of multilingual immigration resources.
The site’s suspension comes on top of earlier rollbacks to language resources and guidance by the Justice Department. The department published a notice in the Federal Register in April that it rescinded guidance to federal funding recipients about how to comply with language nondiscrimination provisions in the Civil Rights Act. Experts told NOTUS earlier this year that rescinding such guidance could pave the way for civil rights noncompliance.
For Chu, the department’s moves are “just the beginning of a wave that we will see amongst the federal agencies,” she said. “It is very shocking because of what will come, which is that this will disenfranchise so many immigrants across this nation.”