Friday’s executive order will roll back a policy from 2000 signed by former President Bill Clinton requiring that government agencies and federal funding recipients “ensure that their programs and activities normally provided in English are accessible to LEP (low-English proficiency) persons”.

Agencies will be allowed to still provide that language access to non-English speakers, according to White House officials.

Republicans have led efforts in the past to label English as the country’s official language, with members of the House as recently as 2021 introducing legislation on it that failed.

Those who have opposed those efforts say that the country does not need an official language, pointing to the high numbers of people who speak it and to the country never having one, while also saying establishing one could promote discrimination against non-English speakers.

During his presidential campaign last year, Trump included non-English languages in his statements calling for stricter immigration policies.

“We have languages coming into our country. We don’t have one instructor in our entire nation that can speak that language,” he told a crowd of supporters in February 2024.

“It’s the craziest thing – they have languages that nobody in this country has ever heard of. It’s a very horrible thing,” he said.

And during the 2016 campaign he said, “This is a country where we speak English. It’s English. You have to speak English!”

When the US was founded, most residents spoke English and those writing the country’s constitution did not feel it was necessary to enshrine it as the official language and also did not want to alienate fellow new citizens who spoke German or other languages, according to most scholars.

The languages currently spoken the most in the US after English are Spanish, various Chinese languages, Tagolog, Vietnamese and Arabic, according to the Census Bureau. Another approximately one million people use American Sign Language, according to experts.

Approximately 180 countries around the world designate official national languages, and most countries recognise multiple official languages. However, several countries besides the United States do not have an official language, including the United Kingdom.

There are more than 30 US states which have designated English as the official language, while Alaska and Hawaii have also bestowed official status on several native languages.

Authorities from at least 18 other countries have been involved and the operation is still continuing, with more arrests expected in the next few weeks, Europol said.

In addition to the arrests, so far 272 suspects have been identified, 33 house searches have been conducted and 173 electronic devices have been seized, according to the agency.

It also said the main suspect was a Danish national who was arrested in November 2024.

The statement said he “ran an online platform where he distributed the AI-generated material he produced”.

After making a “symbolic online payment”, users from around the world were able to get a password that allowed them to “access the platform and watch children being abused”.

The agency said online child sexual exploitation was one of the top priorities for the European Union’s law enforcement organisations, which were dealing with “an ever-growing volume of illegal content”.

Europol added that even in cases when the content was fully artificial and there was no real victim depicted, such as with Operation Cumberland, “AI-generated CSAM still contributes to the objectification and sexualisation of children”.

Europol’s executive director Catherine De Bolle said: “These artificially generated images are so easily created that they can be produced by individuals with criminal intent, even without substantial technical knowledge.”

She warned law enforcement would need to develop “new investigative methods and tools” to address the emerging challenges.

The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) warns that more sexual abuse AI images of children are being produced and becoming more prevalent on the open web.

In research last year the charity found that over a one-month period, 3,512 AI child sexual abuse and exploitation images were discovered on one dark website. Compared with a month in the previous year, the number of the most severe category images (Category A) had risen by 10%.

Experts say AI child sexual abuse material can often look incredibly realistic, making it difficult to tell the real from the fake.

[BBC]