The order is expected to be largely symbolic but would be a victory for America’s English-only movement, which has long had ties to efforts to reduce immigration and restrict bilingual education.
When he was first seeking the presidency in 2015, Donald J. Trump mocked his rival Jeb Bush, who at times answered questions in Spanish.
“This is a country where we speak English, not Spanish,” Mr. Trump said.
A decade later, Mr. Trump, now in his second term as president, is seeking to make what was once a political jab the official policy of the United States.
On Friday, a White House aide said Mr. Trump was planning to sign an executive order designating English as the official language of the United States. The official did not say when the president would do so.
The order is expected to be largely symbolic but would be the biggest victory yet for the country’s English-only movement, which has long been tied to efforts to restrict bilingual education and reduce immigration to the United States. More than 30 states have already designated English as their official language.
While more than three-quarters of Americans speak only English at home, there are about 42 million Spanish speakers in the country and three million speakers of Chinese.
The planned executive order would rescind a Clinton-era mandate that required agencies and recipients of federal funding to provide language assistance to non-English speakers, but would allow agencies to keep current policies and provide documents and services in other languages, the White House official said. News of the planned order was reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal.