Response Center

This order designates English as the official language of the U.S. as part of a push to make the country less welcoming to non-English speakers.

This Executive Order designates English as the official language of the United States and revokes a quarter-century-old executive order intended to make public services more accessible to people with limited English proficiency. The United States has never before had an official language, nor is there a clear legal basis for doing so. This order is consistent with a widespread effort by the Trump administration to make public services less accessible. While the messaging of the EO is clear in its effort to stigmatize people who do not speak English, it does not direct agencies to take specific actions other than removing prior guidance related to the revoked EO.

This order issues a new Civil Service Rule that would make it easier to fire civil servants and shrink the federal workforce.

This order means that even high-performing new federal employees (known as probationary employees) will be automatically fired at the end of their first or second year unless agency political leadership takes action to keep them. The new rule applies to all probationary federal employees across the entire government (except those who have been recently transferred, promoted, or assigned for the first time to a supervisory or managerial position). It requires agencies to actively affirm that probationary employees advance the public interest and should continue in the federal service before finalizing their appointments. Otherwise, employees will be terminated at the end of their probationary period. Currently, probationary workers may only be laid off due to performance or conduct, but the order adds the needs and interests of the agency as a reason for possible termination, potentially inserting ideology into the process. The order instructs political appointee agency heads, rather than the usual career employee supervisors, to make that determination, leaving new federal employees' continued employment at the discretion of political appointees

This order conditions federal funding on ending school-based COVID-19 vaccine mandates.

This order directs the Secretary of Education to create guidelines for all schools, educational agencies, and universities to end COVID-19 vaccination requirements for in-person education. This will likely apply to only a very small number of schools and universities, because most schools that have a COVID-19 vaccine mandate apply it only to staff and not to students. However, it will endanger populations most vulnerable to COVID-19 and its documented possible complications, such as students, teachers, and members of their communities with underlying medical conditions. This also encourages anti-vaccine movements, endangering public health writ large, and potentially lays the groundwork for broader assaults on school vaccine mandates.

Challenged

Updated:

9/3/25

This is some text inside of a div block.

This policy, which requires Mexico's agreement, will send asylum seekers to Mexico for months or longer to wait for their asylum hearing, where they will be placed at risk.

In the first Trump administration, the Remain in Mexico policy (formally called the "Migrant Protection Protocols") sent tens of thousands of asylum seekers to dangerous and inadequate conditions in Mexico to await their asylum hearings. These asylum seekers often had to wait for months in parts of Mexico the U.S. State Department had classified as extremely dangerous, where many of them were kidnapped, extorted, raped, and even murdered. Because they were in Mexico, they had a much harder time locating a U.S. immigration attorney to help them prepare for their asylum hearings, and the vast majority of people subjected to Remain in Mexico did not have legal counsel for a complicated process in which their lives were often on the line. The Remain in Mexico program also gave far too much discretion to front-line Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents to determine whether to apply exceptions for children, people in medical emergencies, and asylum seekers with other pressing circumstances.

Underway

Updated:

9/3/25

This is some text inside of a div block.

This is some text inside of a div block.

This order directs agency heads to lower the costs of housing, healthcare, and other necessities, in part by cutting regulations intended to protect consumers and the climate.

This order claims to address Americans' higher costs of living, but it will have no immediate effect. It directs agency heads to "deliver emergency price relief," in part by cutting policies that protect consumers and communities, and to implement some changes that agency heads lack the authority to carry out on their own.

Underway

Updated:

9/3/25

This is some text inside of a div block.

This order claims to end federal government censorship and directs the Attorney General to investigate the Biden administration for its efforts to combat disinformation.

This order does not alter anyone's First Amendment rights. The federal government is already prohibited from unconstitutionally abridging the free speech of any American citizen. This order claims that the Biden administration, in its attempts to combat "misinformation," "disinformation," and "malinformation," unconstitutionally coerced social media companies to censor Americans' speech on online platforms. The order directs the Attorney General to consult with the heads of executive departments and agencies to "investigate the activities of the Federal Government over the last 4 years" for unconstitutional censorship and to prepare a report recommending "appropriate remedial actions" based on the report's findings.