As the transfer of power from Barack Obama to Donald Trump took place on Friday, the White House website changed at an alarming rate. Gone were the LGBTQ rights, health care, and climate change pages. Also noticeably absent was the Spanish-language version of the White House site. According to Latino Rebels, the .gov has included a Spanish companion site since George W. Bush’s days. In addition to running a Spanish-language site, the Obama Administration also posted updates on La Casa Blanca Twitter account. The Trump Administration’s @LaCasaBlanca has yet to send out a tweet.
It’s natural for the website to see changes with each incoming president – after all, policies can wildly differ from person to person – but given Trump’s hostility toward these groups, it felt like there was something more nefarious at play. With more than 57 million Latinos in the United States and with more Spanish speakers in the US than in Spain, the missing website has riled up a sizable community. Even Spanish Foreign Minister Alfonso Dastis spoke out against the disappearance of the website. “We regret that the Spanish version of the website was deleted,” he said, according to The Guardian. “It doesn’t seem like a good idea. We believe it is not a good idea to give up on such a communication tool, given that this is a country with 52 million Spanish speakers.”
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer held the new administration’s first press briefing on Saturday to boast about the attendance at Trump’s inauguration (#alternativefacts, which the media has disputed) instead of speaking about more pressing matters. On Monday, Spicer held another press briefing and finally addressed the missing Spanish-language pages.
“We hit the ground running on Day One,” he said, according to The Washington Post. “There was a lot of work to do, and we had done a lot of work on the website to make sure that we were prepared to get as much information up as fast as possible. We are continuing to build out the website both in the issue areas and in that area. But we’ve got the IT folks working overtime to continue to get all of that up to speed. Trust me, it’s going to take a little bit more time, but we’re working piece by piece to get that done.” So it’s coming. We just don’t know when.