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Wednesday, February 26, 2025

Trump Administration shuts down White House Spanish-language page, social media

by

34 days ago
20250122

With­in hours of Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s in­au­gu­ra­tion, the new ad­min­is­tra­tion took down the Span­ish-lan­guage ver­sion of the of­fi­cial White House web­site.

The site — cur­rent­ly https://www.white­house.gov/es/ — now gives users an “Er­ror 404” mes­sage. It al­so in­clud­ed a “Go Home” but­ton that di­rect­ed view­ers to a page fea­tur­ing a video mon­tage of Trump in his first term and on the cam­paign trail. The but­ton was lat­er up­dat­ed to read “Go To Home Page”.

His­pan­ic ad­vo­ca­cy groups and oth­ers ex­pressed con­fu­sion at the abrupt change and frus­tra­tion at what some called the ad­min­is­tra­tion’s lack of ef­forts to main­tain com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the Lati­no com­mu­ni­ty, which helped pro­pel him to the pres­i­den­cy.

The Span­ish pro­file of the White House’ X, @La­CasaBlan­ca and the gov­ern­ment page on re­pro­duc­tive free­dom al­so were dis­band­ed. Mean­while, the Span­ish ver­sions of oth­er gov­ern­ment agen­cies such as the De­part­ment of La­bor, Jus­tice and Agri­cul­ture re­mained avail­able for users on Tues­day.

Asked about the changes, White House prin­ci­pal deputy press sec­re­tary Har­ri­son Fields re­spond­ed Tues­day that the ad­min­is­tra­tion is “com­mit­ted to bring­ing back on­line the Span­ish trans­la­tion sec­tion of the web­site.”

Re­lat­ed Sto­ries

“It’s day two. We are in the process of de­vel­op­ing, edit­ing and tweak­ing the White House web­site. As part of this on­go­ing work, some of the archived con­tent on the web­site went dor­mant. We are com­mit­ted to re­load­ing that con­tent in a short time­line,” he said with­out elab­o­rat­ing.

Trump re­moved the Span­ish ver­sion of the page in 2017. At that time, White House of­fi­cials said they would re­in­state it. Pres­i­dent Joe Biden re­in­stat­ed the page in 2021.

The page’s re­moval co­in­cid­ed with Trump’s first-day wave of ex­ec­u­tive or­ders high­light­ed by the launch of an il­le­gal im­mi­gra­tion crack­down that was one of his key cam­paign pledges. Trump on Mon­day de­clared a na­tion­al emer­gency at the U.S.-Mex­i­co bor­der and an­nounced plans to send U.S. troops to help sup­port im­mi­gra­tion agents and re­strict refugees and asy­lum.

Ac­cord­ing to 2023 Cen­sus Bu­reau es­ti­mates, about 43.4 mil­lion Amer­i­cans — 13.7% of the U.S. pop­u­la­tion age 5 and old­er — speak Span­ish at home. The U.S. has no of­fi­cial lan­guage.

Mon­i­ca Rivera, a brand and com­mu­ni­ca­tions strate­gist in New York City of Puer­to Ri­can and Cuban de­scent, said the shut­down sends a clear sig­nal.

“There are 43 mil­lion Lati­nos who speak Span­ish as their first lan­guage and re­mov­ing ac­cess to in­for­ma­tion di­rect­ly from the White House draws a dis­tinct line as to who they are serv­ing and more dan­ger­ous­ly, sig­nals to the ad­min­is­tra­tion’s MA­GA base that we as Lati­nos are ‘oth­er’ and a less sig­nif­i­cant part of this coun­try,” Rivera said.

An­tho­ny Her­nan­dez, a para­le­gal in the na­tion’s cap­i­tal, wasn’t ini­tial­ly aware of the move and said it sug­gests what the com­ing years of a sec­ond Trump pres­i­den­cy would look like, with spe­cif­ic is­sues mak­ing head­lines while “mi­nor but equal­ly ma­li­cious things like that go un­no­ticed.”

“A move like shut­ting down the Span­ish White House page and X pro­file serves no pur­pose oth­er than to cut off re­sources for mil­lions of His­pan­ic Amer­i­cans and im­mi­grants at­tempt­ing to en­ter the Unit­ed States legal­ly,” Her­nan­dez said. “And it’s a slap in the face to the mil­lions of His­pan­ic vot­ers that sup­port­ed him in this re­cent elec­tion.”

Trump’s sec­re­tary of state, Mar­co Ru­bio, is Cuban Amer­i­can and speaks Span­ish. At his swear­ing-in Tues­day, he gave re­marks in Span­ish, thank­ing God, his fam­i­ly and Trump.

Mean­while, His­pan­ic lead­ers and com­mu­ni­ca­tion strat­e­gy ex­perts ex­pressed sur­prise with the page’s re­moval, giv­en Trump’s pop­u­lar­i­ty with cer­tain Lati­no vot­ers.

“If the White House is se­ri­ous­ly in­ter­est­ed in en­gag­ing with Lati­nos, the sec­ond largest group in this coun­try, then they need to make sure that up­dates can al­so be dis­trib­uted in Span­ish, a pre­ferred lan­guage for mil­lions in our com­mu­ni­ty,” said Frankie Mi­ran­da Pres­i­dent and CEO of the His­pan­ic Fed­er­a­tion.

He called that a way to en­sure “every­one is a part of the civic process.”

Kris Klein Hernán­dez, a U.S. his­to­ri­an spe­cial­iz­ing in race, gen­der, and sex­u­al­i­ty at Con­necti­cut Col­lege, said the con­tent re­moval from of­fi­cial White House web­sites not on­ly lim­its the ac­cess avail­able to Span­ish-speak­ing U.S. cit­i­zens and mi­grants but leads “some to ques­tion which con­stituen­cies the ad­min­is­tra­tion pri­or­i­tizes.”

Jeff Lee, for­mer deputy cab­i­net sec­re­tary and deputy di­rec­tor of ex­ter­nal and in­ter­na­tion­al af­fairs for for­mer Cal­i­for­nia Gov. Jer­ry Brown, said the move seems coun­ter­in­tu­itive giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to “show­case” pol­i­cy changes, es­pe­cial­ly ones re­lat­ed to eco­nom­ics and bor­der se­cu­ri­ty.

“I didn’t see any oth­er lan­guage medi­ums that got the ki­bosh. So I think that’s a re­al­ly in­ter­est­ing thing to sin­gle out — if that’s the case,” Lee said.

AP Vote­Cast, a na­tion­wide sur­vey of more than 120,000 vot­ers, found Trump won a larg­er share of Black and Lati­no vot­ers than he did in 2020, and most no­tably among men un­der age 45. Young Lati­nos, par­tic­u­lar­ly young Lati­no men, al­so were more open to Trump than in 2020. Rough­ly half of young Lati­no men vot­ed for De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Vice Pres­i­dent Ka­mala Har­ris, com­pared with about 6 in 10 who went for Biden.

By FER­NAN­DA FIGUEROA


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