The Justice Department has published guidance prioritizing English, the language in which it already conducts most of its business. This is the governmental equivalent of planting a flag in your own kitchen and announcing that breakfast has been liberated.

The guidance follows Trump’s March 2025 order naming English the official language. DOJ has opened a sixty-day public-comment period. A longstanding daily practice will now receive the full administrative treatment normally required to build a bridge.

Agencies are to review multilingual assistance, keep it where the law requires it or their mission needs it, and eliminate it where neither applies. That is not a blanket translation ban.

The Daily Heckler: five or six selected stories.
Political satire for your morning inbox.

DOJ’s Civil Rights Division enforces voting-language requirements under Section 203 of the Voting Rights Act. Those obligations remain. The department therefore gets to champion English while explaining why, in some of its own work, another language is necessary to help Americans vote.

Imagine the kitchen ceremony continuing. The official declares that only breakfast shall be served, except lunch when required and dinner when necessary to accomplish eating.

A committee is formed to determine whether the sandwich is mission-critical.

Meanwhile, the English-language instruction to prioritize English is ready for public comment.

Sixty days should be enough time to establish what “already” means.