A former advisor to Doug Burgum is pressing President Trump to take the next step on language policy: stop calling it English and start calling it American. Rob Lockwood made the case on "Fox & Friends" Saturday, arguing that the nation's approaching 250th anniversary is the right moment to break from a linguistic label he calls a "relic of the regime" Americans left behind two and a half centuries ago.
The pitch builds on an executive order Trump signed in March 2025, the first in U.S. history to formally designate English as the official language at the federal level. Lockwood, who laid out his argument in a Washington Post op-ed, wants the president to go further and rename the language itself.
It is a bold idea, and it will draw predictable scorn from the usual corners. But the underlying impulse, that a self-governing republic ought to speak its own name with confidence, is not new. Lockwood told Fox News that Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Noah Webster, the godfather of Webster's Dictionary, all discussed the concept of an American language distinct from the King's English.
To understand why Lockwood's proposal has any traction at all, you have to start with what Trump already did. On March 1, 2025, the president signed an executive order designating English as the official language of the United States. The White House framed it as overdue common sense, stating that "our Nation's historic governing documents, including the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, have all been written in English" and that "it is therefore long past time that English is declared as the official language of the United States."
The order did more than put a label on a map. It rescinded a Clinton-era mandate that had required federally funded organizations to provide language assistance to non-English speakers. Under the new policy, federal agencies and federally funded organizations can now decide whether to continue offering documents and services in languages other than English.
The order itself spelled out the rationale plainly: "Establishing English as the official language will not only streamline communication but also reinforce shared national values, and create a more cohesive and efficient society."
More than 30 states already had official-English laws on the books. The federal government was the laggard, and White House officials said the measure was intended to promote unity and help immigrants integrate into American society.
This was not just a signing ceremony and a photo op. The Justice Department followed up with operational guidance directing federal agencies to comply. Attorney General Pamela Bondi made clear the administration intended to back the order with action.
Bondi said the department "will lead the effort to codify the President's Executive Order and eliminate wasteful, virtue-signaling policies across government agencies to promote assimilation over division." The DOJ announced it would inventory existing non-English services and develop plans to phase out unnecessary multilingual offerings. Funds freed up from those programs could be redirected toward English-language acquisition and proficiency efforts, in other words, toward helping people learn the language rather than building a permanent bureaucracy around avoiding it.
That distinction matters. Critics of official-English policies reflexively cast them as hostile to immigrants. But redirecting resources toward English acquisition is the opposite of hostility. It is an investment in the one tool that most reliably opens doors in American economic and civic life. The administration's approach treats English fluency not as a cultural litmus test but as a practical gateway to participation.
Trump's broader rebranding instincts have already drawn rare praise from across the aisle when applied to restoring national landmarks and civic spaces. The language question operates in the same vein, an assertion that American identity is worth naming and protecting.
Lockwood's argument starts where the executive order left off. If the United States has finally named an official language, why keep calling it by the name of the country Americans fought to leave?
On "Fox & Friends," Lockwood put it bluntly:
"Enough with English. Enough with American English. Let's call it what it is: American."
He tied the proposal directly to the calendar. America's 250th birthday is approaching, and Lockwood argued the milestone demands more than fireworks and speeches.
"If there ever was a time to take a stand for America and for speaking American, the 250th anniversary of freedom is it."
The anniversary is already shaping White House planning. In January 2026, Trump displayed a signed executive order in the Oval Office outlining plans to launch an IndyCar race on the streets of the nation's capital as part of the America250 celebrations. Lockwood wants the language question to join that list of commemorative acts, something with staying power beyond a single weekend.
The broader political context is hard to ignore. While Trump has been pressing Senate Republicans to advance major legislation, the cultural dimension of his second term has moved just as aggressively. The January 2025 renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America was one early signal. The English-language executive order was another. Lockwood's pitch is an extension of that same instinct, the idea that names carry weight and that a confident nation does not outsource its identity.
Lockwood framed the stakes in generational terms:
"Changing a language is permanent. It's something that will be with us for the rest of our lives."
That is precisely what makes the idea appealing to its supporters and alarming to its critics. Executive orders can be reversed. Budget line items can be zeroed out. But a language name, once it takes root in textbooks, street signs, and everyday conversation, is far harder to undo. Lockwood clearly sees that durability as a feature, not a bug.
Whether the proposal gains any formal traction remains an open question. Trump has not publicly responded to Lockwood's pitch. No specific mechanism, an additional executive order, a congressional resolution, or some other instrument, has been outlined. The idea sits, for now, in the realm of advocacy rather than policy.
But the political ground has shifted in ways that make the conversation possible. A decade ago, the notion of an official U.S. language at the federal level was itself considered a fringe position by much of the Washington establishment. Trump made it policy with the stroke of a pen. The pace of White House announcements in the second term suggests the administration is not shy about using executive authority on cultural questions.
On the campaign trail in 2024, Trump himself spoke about the sheer number of languages entering the country, telling audiences, "We have languages coming into our country. We don't have one instructor in our entire nation that can speak that language." The remark captured a frustration shared by millions of Americans who see a common language as the most basic requirement of a functioning society.
Meanwhile, Democrats have struggled to articulate a coherent counter-narrative on questions of national identity and civic cohesion. Their difficulty explaining their own unpopularity to voters suggests the cultural ground is not moving in their direction.
The United States broke from Britain in 1776. It built its own constitution, its own legal system, its own military traditions, and its own economic model. It developed a vocabulary, a set of spellings, and a spoken rhythm that Noah Webster recognized as distinct enough to warrant its own dictionary more than two centuries ago.
And yet the language Americans speak every day still carries the name of the country they left. Lockwood's argument is simple: that gap between reality and label is worth closing, and the 250th birthday of the republic is the right time to do it.
Reasonable people can disagree about whether renaming a language by executive action is the right vehicle or whether the change would carry any practical effect beyond symbolism. But the underlying question Lockwood raises is one that most Americans, if they stopped to think about it, would probably find hard to dismiss: If we already speak our own language, why not call it ours?
A nation that won't name what it speaks may have forgotten what it fought for.
