Republicans’ Spanish-language rebuttal to this year’s State of the Union address will come largely from a politician who wants to make English the official language of the United States and sued to keep her state from printing voting materials in other languages.
Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), an immigration hard-liner, will deliver the traditional GOP rebuttal Tuesday night. Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-Fla.) will deliver the Spanish version of the Republicans’ response, but it remains unclear whether the congressman will read a translated version of Ernst’s remarks or give a more original speech.
House Republicans initially said in a Jan. 15 press release that Curbelo would read a translation of Ernst’s speech. But by Tuesday, after Mother Jones reported on the irony of broadcasting Ernst’s translated speech in Spanish given her positions, the press release had been edited. According to the Latin Post, which took a screenshot of the old version, the release no longer says that Curbelo’s remarks will be a translation of Ernst’s.
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Though English-only advocates portray Spanish as a foreign language, Spanish is hardly alien to the United States. According to the Pew Research Center, some 37 million people in the country spoke Spanish as of 2013, making the U.S. the fifth-largest Spanish-speaking country in the world.
Last year, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), a Cuban-American from South Florida, gave the GOP rebuttal to the State of the Union address in both English and Spanish for the first time.
