In one of her first official acts as the new Governor of Arkansas, Sarah Huckabee Sanders issued an order prohibiting the use of the term “Latinx” in official government documents.
As Fox News reports, Sanders, who was sworn in on Tuesday, pointed to a recent poll from Pew Research which determined that a mere three percent of the population actually uses the term. The phrase “Latinx” was concocted by left-wing activists who have tried to remove the “gendered language” of Spanish, where adjectives and other attributive words often end in the letter “o” when in reference to men, or the letter “a” when in reference to women, such as “Latino” and “Latina.”
“Ethnically insensitive and pejorative language has no place in official government documents or government employee titles,” Sanders said in her executive order. “The government has a responsibility to respect its citizens and use ethnically appropriate language, particularly when referring to ethnic minorities.”
“One can no more easily remove gender from Spanish and other romance languages than one can remove vowels and verbs from English,” Sanders’ order continues. “It is the policy of the Governor’s administration to prohibit the use of culturally insensitive words for official state government business.”
Another executive order that Sanders will sign on her first full day in office will implement a ban on the use of TikTok on any state government devices. The social media app, where users produce short videos often featuring lip-syncing to famous songs, was developed and is currently owned by a Chinese company with ties to the incumbent Chinese Communist Party, and thus has been widely denounced as a security risk to American citizens’ private information.
Sanders went into further detail about her legislative agenda in a recent interview, saying that “the biggest priority I have for this session is a large-scale education reform package.”
“I am living it every day with a fifth-grader, a third-grader and a first-grader, and I feel the impact of education and what it means and what it means to each kid,” she added.
Sanders is the daughter of former Governor Mike Huckabee, who served from 1996 to 2007. Sanders rose to prominence in her own right by serving as the second White House Press Secretary under the Trump Administration, having previously served as Deputy Press Secretary under Sean Spicer, the first Press Secretary for President Trump. She left the post in July of 2019 after serving for nearly two years.
In 2022, she announced her bid for the same governorship that her father once held. With President Trump’s endorsement, she won the Republican nomination in a landslide with 83 percent of the primary vote, then went on to win the general election in another landslide, with 63 percent against Democratic nominee Chris Jones. She is the first female governor in the state’s history, and the first daughter of a former governor to become governor in her own right in American history. Her victory also marked the first time in the state’s history that Republicans had won three consecutive gubernatorial elections, as she succeeded two-term governor Asa Hutchinson.