Language Ban by Decree - How Trump Deprives Millions of the Right to Understanding

With a single stroke of the pen, the Trump administration has torn down one of the central pillars of citizen-oriented policy history: access to the federal government for people who do not speak perfect English. Attorney General Pam Bondi ordered in an official memorandum on July 14, 2025, that all federal agencies must discontinue the previous language support for individuals with limited English proficiency. It is a move that deeply undermines the very identity of a diverse democracy - and abruptly ends a decades-long, bipartisan tradition of inclusion and mutual understanding.

The basis for this directive is the implementation of Trump’s Executive Order 14,224, which declares English the sole official language of the United States. According to the Justice Department’s rationale, a “shared language” creates “a common foundation for public discourse” and increases the “efficiency” of governmental operations. But behind the well-sounding vocabulary of administrative logic and efficiency thinking lies a clear political message: those who are unable to understand complex administrative forms, court orders, or medical instructions in English will henceforth be systematically excluded - not by accident, but by design. The new memorandum, which we have obtained, breaks with a civil society principle that has grown since the civil rights movement of the 1960s: that government information must be made accessible to all people, regardless of their background or native language. Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and even Ronald Reagan allowed translations, funded language services, and supported multilingual civic centers. Because they knew: democracy does not thrive on exclusion, but on participation. das uns vorliegt, bricht mit einem zivilgesellschaftlichen Grundsatz, der seit der Bürgerrechtsbewegung der 1960er-Jahre gewachsen ist: dass staatliche Informationen allen Menschen zugänglich gemacht werden müssen, unabhängig von ihrer Herkunft oder Muttersprache. Barack Obama, George W. Bush und sogar Ronald Reagan ließen Übersetzungen zu, finanzierten Sprachdienste und unterstützten mehrsprachige Bürgerzentren. Denn sie wussten: Demokratie lebt nicht vom Ausschluss, sondern von Teilhabe.

What Trump and Bondi sell as efficiency is in truth a deliberate shift in the balance of power: the state now speaks with only one voice - and those who do not understand it are left behind. People with migration backgrounds, refugees, first-generation working-class families, Indigenous citizens whose mother tongue is not English - all of them will be marginalized in subtle but effective ways. Information poverty becomes the new criterion for exclusion. And while the memorandum speaks of a “pathway to integration,” it in fact creates new barriers. Integration is no longer to be achieved through understanding, but through enforced linguistic adaptation. In this way, the supposedly technocratic document reveals itself as part of an ideological agenda. It is not the first step - but a consequential one. Because those who control language also control access, power, and truth. And those who limit official communication to English turn administration into a fortress - rather than a bridge.