There is no more White House, only White House. The presidential residence’s Spanish-language website disappeared minutes after Donald Trump was sworn in to become the 47th president of the United States. Those who have tried to access the page since Monday’s inauguration have encountered an error message: “Page not found,” says the notice, in English, of course. Likewise, the White House’s social networks in Spanish have disappeared: “This account does not exist,” warns X about the profile @LaCasaBlanca.
The deactivation of the Spanish website is part of a broader renovation of the official online portal of the White House. The website sports a new Trump-style design: visitors to the page are now greeted with a 30-second advertising video. The montage shows Trump getting off a Marine One helicopter during his first term. He is seen greeting his followers and members of the Army, always giving his characteristic thumbs up. There are images of his rallies, the pens he uses to sign laws and even a bald eagle, the national bird of the United States.
After the recording, which looks more like a campaign video than a presidential one, users are directed to the website’s home screen, which includes an image of Trump pointing, with large white letters below that read—in English— “America is back.” “Every day I will fight for you with every breath in my body. I will not rest until we have the strong, secure, and prosperous America that our children deserve and that you deserve. “This will truly be the golden age of the United States,” adds the message signed by the Republican.
The landing page for White House Spanish communications — whitehouse.gov/es/ — also went dark in 2017, but had been restored in 2021 during President Joe Biden’s term. There has been a White House website in Spanish at least since Bill Clinton’s presidency. This time, the Republican Administration has also deleted other components of the website, such as a contact form that asked users for their pronouns. The site now features three main pages: news, administration, and affairs.
While the Spanish page only shows one option: “Go to the home page.” According to reports and screenshots from the first hours of the change on the website, this notice previously read: “go home”, or “go home”. Critics of the new Administration interpreted it as a message directed to the immigrant community, since the Republican has promised that he will deport millions of immigrants who are in the country, the vast majority of them Spanish speakers. Although that button has already been changed.
During the 2016 election campaign, Trump said in a debate that immigrants who want to be in the United States “have to speak English” because this is a country where “English is spoken, not Spanish.” More recently, during the campaign before the elections on November 5, the then-candidate warned that immigrants are introducing languages into the country “that no one in this country has heard of.” “It’s very horrible,” he said.
According to Census Bureau data, the number of people in the United States who spoke a language other than English at home has tripled since 1980. In 2022, nearly 68 million people spoke a language other than English at home. This is a figure that has only increased since then with the arrival of new immigrants.
The data further shows that the Hispanic population is the largest minority group within the United States, which also makes Spanish the most common non-English language spoken in homes. This language accounted for 61.6% of non-English languages spoken in American homes through 2022. The next closest was Chinese, at 5.1%.
