OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders, whose election as the state’s first female governor was historic in its own right, leaned into her pledge to bring a bold “conservative” agenda into office by signing several new executive orders on her first day after being inaugurated on Tuesday.
According to the outlet Blavity, Sanders signed an order that “banned the word Latinx from all government documents in one of seven executive orders issued within hours of beginning her term,” a decision that “represents the latest move in a series of ‘culture war’ policies adopted by Republicans in many states nationwide.”
The order bars official state documents in the future from using the term, while calling on state agencies to immediately replace it with the words “Latino” or “Latina,” as appropriate. In her order, she justified the ban a number of ways, per the outlet:
First, she cited a well-known Pew Research Center study that found only 3% of the Latino and Hispanic U.S. population use Latinx. The nation’s youngest governor’s executive order referred to Latinx as an example of “ethnically insensitive and pejorative language” that seeks to “remove gender from the Spanish language” and cited the Real Academia Española of Madrid, Spain, which has deemed the “x” suffix improper for the Spanish language.
Latinx became popular among activist circles, LGBTQ people of Latin American origins and various online communities. Proponents of the term argue that it is more inclusive than the gendered Latino/Latina terminology. However, critics of using Latinx say in addition to the word not being widely adopted, it is also an attempt to impose American standards on another language and a form of cultural erasure.
In all, Sanders, who worked as a White House press secretary for then-President Donald Trump, issued seven executive actions on her first day, with a number of them focused on various cultural issues, including ordering a review of Arkansas education policies to root out references to critical race theory and other left-wing ideology meant to serve as “indoctrination” of students.
“Sanders also banned the popular TikTok social media app from government devices, citing concerns that Chinese operatives could access Americans’ information through the app,” Blavity noted further.
During her inaugural speech, Sanders, 40, pledged to bring an “aggressive, bold, and conservative” agenda that will have a “generational impact” on the state after easily besting Democratic challenger Chris Jones.
“It is a pretty humbling thing,” Sanders told Fox News Digital during an exclusive interview before she was sworn into office. “As far as we know, we’ll be the first-ever father-daughter pair anywhere in the country, and so, you know, that is a pretty historic and amazing thing.”
Sanders has spent years in politics working on several campaigns. She said she “always thought” she would work “more behind the scenes” in politics, but it did not work out that way.
Her father, Mike Huckabee, was Arkansas governor from 1996 to 2007.
“And here I am, anything but after the last few years,” she told Fox News. “It certainly was not the path I envisioned, but it is one I’m extremely excited and enthusiastic about taking on.”
The newly sworn-in governor said she is “a little biased” but noted that her father is “certainly the best governor we’ve ever had here in Arkansas and one of the best governors we’ve ever had in the country.”
“He’s set the bar high, and I have very big shoes to fill,” Sanders said, going on to say there is “nobody more hopeful and more helpful in helping me achieve my goals.”
She then noted that education reform is high on her agenda.
“I’ve made no secret that the biggest priority I have for this session is a large-scale education reform package,” Sanders said. “I am really excited to work with our legislative partners to bring about education reform that, I think, will have a generational impact on our state.”
She says as a mother of small children, she is familiar with current education methods and standards, which she finds lacking.
“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 said, adding that they “all learn differently and all need different things.”
