Trump advances anti-immigrant priorities with national language executive order

President Donald Trump signed an executive order March 1 declaring English as the official language of the United States, showing a commitment by his administration to enact xenophobic policies championed by anti-immigrant groups and white nationalist figures.

The executive order rolls back a 25-year-old mandate requiring organizations that receive federal funding to provide language translation assistance.

Designating English as the official language has been a longtime goal of the anti-immigrant movement and embodies the white nationalist vision of its founder and chief architect John Tanton. The late Tanton was a conservationist turned radical population alarmist and white nationalist who claimed a need for the U.S. to maintain a clear “European-American majority.” Tanton helped found a network of anti-immigrant groups devoted to carrying out his vision and legacy.

One of the groups in that network is ProEnglish, a Southern Poverty Law Center-designated anti-immigrant hate group whose main purpose is pushing for divisive and unnecessary measures to designate English as the official language of the U.S.

The group derides multiculturalism, calling it “destructive to society,” and has a history of embracing white nationalist figures. In a Feb. 14 post on X, ProEnglish wrote: “If you can’t speak the language, you can’t fully be part of the nation. English is essential for assimilation—it’s time to make it law.”

ProEnglish welcomed the news of Trump’s executive order in a press release. The group’s acting executive director, Stephanie White, said that “without public policies that reinforce the English tie [sic] that unite us, multilingual diversity could well become the undoing of our country.”

ProEnglish bragged in its fall 2024 newsletter about a meeting its board member Phil Kent had with JD Vance, where the now-vice president reportedly said that “official English” measures were “essential for America” and that English “has been a cornerstone of American culture for over 250 years.” As a U.S. senator from Ohio, Vance was the chief sponsor of the English Language Unity Act, the official English legislation ProEnglish lobbied for.

ProEnglish, formerly English Language Advocates, represents the second attempt by Tanton to establish an English-only advocacy group. In the 1980s, Tanton founded U.S. English, which pushed for English-only legislation at the state level. But Tanton was forced to step away from the group after racist memos attributed to him emerged. In the memos, Tanton proposed questions like, “Will Blacks be able to improve (or even maintain) their position in the face of the Latin onslaught?” and “As whites see their power and control over their lives declining, will they simply go quietly into the night? Or will there be an explosion?”

Tanton founded English Language Advocates in 1994. It was later renamed ProEnglish. ProEnglish was formerly a project housed under Tanton’s funding umbrella organization U.S. Inc. In 2022, ProEnglish assumed U.S. Inc.’s tax-exempt status and U.S. Inc. changed its name to ProEnglish, per Michigan business records. Unlike the other groups he founded, including the Federation for American Immigration Reform  and Center for Immigration Studies — which are both SPLC-designated hate groups —  Tanton remained actively involved with ProEnglish until 2017 and previously appeared as an emeritus board member.

ProEnglish pushed for the first Trump administration to repeal an executive order by former President Bill Clinton mandating language translation assistance. ProEnglish blogged about its staffers meeting with a Trump aide in 2018 to discuss “a variety of official English legislation issues.” Former Vice President Mike Pence was also a supporter of ProEnglish’s priority legislation while serving in Congress.

ProEnglish has been entangled with white nationalists over the years. Its former executive director, Robert Vandervoort, served as the head of the Chicagoland Friends of American Renaissance, a satellite for the SPLC-designated white nationalist group American Renaissance.

In 2012, Vandervoort’s ProEnglish sponsored a Conservative Political Action Conference panel on “The Failure of Multiculturalism: How the pursuit of diversity is weakening the American Identity.” The panel, which was moderated by Vandervoort, featured Peter Brimelow and John Derbyshire of the SPLC-designated hate group VDARE. During his remarks, Brimelow lamented multiculturalism and claimed bilingualism disadvantages those who only speak one language.

ProEnglish has been able to court members of Congress to support its divisive legislation. One of the group’s most strident advocates has been former Iowa U.S. Rep. Steve King. King was stripped of his committee positions in 2019 after peddling rhetoric on social media mirroring racist “great replacement” language, claiming, “We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies.”

As for Trump’s executive order, it received pushback from immigration advocacy organizations and members of Congress. The Congressional Hispanic Caucus issued a statement on X after news broke about the order, saying: “America has never had an official language—because we don’t need one. Trump’s plan to make English official is a direct attack on our diversity and history. Millions of Americans speak other languages, and that doesn’t make them any less American.”

Image at top: President Trump issued an executive order March 1 declaring English the official language of the U.S., a move long championed by anti-immigrant groups and white nationalist figures. (Credit: SPLC)