Our growing embrace of English wasn’t the only thing S.I. Hayakawa and his crew were wrong about. All the kumbaya they insisted would happen if English was elevated in California unsurprisingly turned out to be a bunch of — excuse my Spanish — caca.

President Trump’s executive order puts his “America first” stamp onto the nation’s speech. But the effect might be muted.

English should be the official language of the United States, says a new executive order signed by President Donald Trump on March 1, 2025. The move