Opinion: As Trump Pushes English Only, New Polling Shows Families Embrace Bilingualism

So much of the Trump administration feels unprecedented —U.S. immigration agents using lethal force against citizens in Minneapolis, National Guard troops mobilized in communities across the country; comprehensive efforts to deny taxpaying immigrant families access to basic public services — that it’s possible to miss when its behavior is actually reanimating old U.S. traditions. 

For example, as dramatic as the Trump administration’s demolition of the U.S. Department of Education feels — this simply delivers on a core, decades-old Republican Party priority, one the GOP only really suspended from 2000 to 2008. 

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The administration’s sustained campaign against multilingualism in government programs, society and schools is another of those throwback moves. It might feel new, it might feel unthinkable in a country like ours, one with an exceptional history of linguistic diversity — from German-language Texas newspapers to Univisión and Navajo-language radio stations, to polyglot sports stars past and present and Bad Bunny’s upcoming performance in Spanish at next month’s Super Bowl. But the current crusade against America’s many non-English languages is actually another atavistic revival of a longstanding conservative project. 

While this monolingual project has found periodic success in the past, the administration’s position occupies surprisingly unpopular turf in the present. New polling data from families of school-aged kids suggest that this move runs counter to Americans’ current views on multilingualism — particularly in U.S. schools. 

Polling and focus group data from a November 2025 study I published at The Century Foundation suggest that Trump’s English-only agenda is unpopular. My co-authors and I conducted a half-dozen focus groups in English and in Spanish with 64 Latino families across California — and used the results to construct a survey that we administered to a diverse group of 1,000 families in the state. 

We found overwhelming family interest in bilingualism. Fully 94% of families that speak a non-English language at home said that it was “very” or “extremely” important that their child grow up speaking multiple languages. Perhaps more surprisingly, 55% of monolingual English-speaking families agreed. 

Bilingualism isn’t just popular as a value or a possible set of skills for children. Families we spoke with made it clear that they’re enthusiastic about enrolling their children in bilingual or dual language K–12 programs. Nearly two-thirds of families speaking a non-English language at home “strongly” agreed that it was helpful to have their children learning two languages at school, and another 30% “somewhat” agreed. 

Further, when we asked respondents to rank their interest in bilingual education programs on a scale of one to 10, their average rating was a 7.9. More than three-quarters of respondents ranked their interest in bilingual education at seven or higher. Latino families showed similar levels of interest, with 40% rating their interest in bilingual education as 10 out of 10. 

We focused on California families for this study because it, along with Massachusetts and Arizona, hosted a surge of English-only political crusading just a few decades ago. Around the turn of this century, conservatives fought to ban bilingual education and establish English as the “official” language in their states and across the broader country. The organizations, like ProEnglish, carrying this “English-Only” banner were overt in linking their war on multilingualism to an anti-immigrant, anti-multicultural agenda. 

A few years earlier, while running for president in 1995, Republican Sen. Bob Dole said, “With all the divisive forces tearing at our country, we need the glue of language to help hold us together. If we want to ensure that all our children have the same opportunities in life, alternative language education should stop and English should be acknowledged once and for all as the official language of the United States.”

Many of these 1990s vintage, English-only policies have been withdrawn or reversed by legislation or by voters in state referenda, but the Trump administration breathed new life into them in 2025. Last March, the president signed a largely symbolic executive order designating English as the official language of the United States and rescinding non-binding guidance on when federal agencies should provide services in multiple languages. In July, the administration released new guidance discouraging federal agencies from offering translation services and instructing them to “prioritize English.” 

If this feels negligible — a minor issue far too insignificant to be politically salient — consider that attacks on multilingualism are (inevitably) attacks on highly popular education programs like dual language immersion schools. The administration’s aggressive detention and deportation campaign is already reducing the daily linguistic diversity of U.S. schools by raising absenteeism rates for children of immigrants and English learners. 

Should it continue, reduced immigration will shrink the country’s multilingual student population. Not only are linguistically diverse English learners key to the success of popular dual language programs, they’ve been buttressing school enrollment levels in districts across the country. 

Put another way: our data indicate that Trump’s immigration agenda may somehow have even more room to fall as it erodes the multilingual vision of American society that people like. 

Many Americans have already soured on harsh detention policies that are sweeping up U.S. citizens, violently attacking and/or disappearing law-abiding community members and imprisoning children. Opposition to these policies will only grow as the administration’s ugly treatment of immigrants begins harming the schools of more families — whatever languages they speak at home.