No Spanish on White House site

Press secretary doesn’t say if Spanish web pages will return

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has taken down the White House’s Spanish-language website, and in the process may have kicked off another fiery English-only debate.

It was unclear Monday whether the elimination of Spanish was permanent; White House press secretary Sean Spicer did not directly address the use of Spanish during his briefing for reporters.

Some scholars saw the decision as a sign of the president’s “America first” message of protectionism and worried that the absence of Spanish will be taken as an affront to those who identify with the language.

“The removal of Spanish says something about English monolingualism, but it also says something about the speakers of Spanish,” said Phillip Carter, a sociolinguist professor at Florida International University in Miami. “Are you in or are you out? Suddenly they’re out.”

The United States, whose population includes about 52 million Spanish speakers, doesn’t have an official language. The founders debated it, but the idea was abandoned because Americans spoke so many languages that making English the only official one might be considered tyrannical — the reason many American residents had fled their home countries.

Still, battles over languages have persisted, particularly in communities that find themselves hosting large numbers of non-English speakers.

The White House “espanol” page, which appears to have been taken down after 5 p.m. Friday, was not the only page removed. Pages dealing with LGBT issues, climate change, health care and civil liberties also disappeared.

Spicer said the White House computer team was “working hard” to build the website, but he did not say whether Spanish content would return.

“We’ve got the IT folks working overtime right now to continue to get all of that up to speed. And trust me, it’s just going to take a little bit more time but we’re working piece by piece to get that done,” he said.

Trump’s rhetoric on language during the campaign fueled concerns. During the Republican primary last year, Trump criticized Jeb Bush, a former governor of Florida and a fellow Republican candidate, for speaking Spanish. “He should really set an example by speaking English in the United States,” Trump said.

During the campaign, Trump alienated many Latinos with a series of critical comments. He said Mexican immigrants included criminals and rapists. He criticized New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez, the nation’s only female Hispanic governor, and accused a U.S. district judge of being biased against him because he was of Mexican descent.

More than 61 million people in the U.S. speak languages other than English in the home, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.