CARSON, Calif.—Rep. Nanette Barragán (D-Calif.) joined Federal Communications Commission member Anna Gomez and Carson City Mayor Lula Davis-Holmes on Tuesday to demand that FCC Chair Brendan Carr immediately publish the implementation requirements for the agency’s multilingual Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) rule in the Federal Register—a necessary step to activate this life-saving policy unanimously approved by the agency in October 2023.
The delay has been blamed on a regulatory freeze imposed by President Donald Trump, who signed an executive order in March declaring English as the official language of the United States.
Gomez and Holmes said the delay in publishing these implementation requirements has stalled critical improvements to the WEA system that would make emergency alerts accessible in more than a dozen languages, including Chinese, Korean, Tagalog and Vietnamese.
“In emergencies, every second counts—and every word must be understood,” Barragán said. “We’ve seen what happens when communities don’t get accurate information in their language. It leads to panic, confusion and danger. Chairman Carr’s delay is not just bureaucratic, it’s reckless.”
The press conference comes after a false evacuation alert that was sent out to residents in Los Angeles County during the January wildfires, which caused widespread chaos when a technical glitch sent a county-wide warning intended for a single neighborhood. This was confusing for all 10 million L.A. County residents who received the alert, but especially for the 2.5 million residents who are classified as having limited English proficiency. When disaster struck, many non-English speakers were left unsure of what was happening, compounding confusion and fear.
“As we see an increase in natural disasters such as wildfires, floods, and hurricanes, expanding access to life-saving information is becoming more and more important,” Gomez said. “We cannot play politics with public safety. It’s time for the FCC to allow this process to move forward so that more people can receive the critical information they need in their chosen language.”
Added Davis-Holmes: “When lives are on the line, there’s no excuse for delay. In a city as diverse as Carson, our residents need to receive nationwide emergency alerts in the language they understand. This is about equity, safety and respect. I join Congresswoman Barragán and Commissioner Gomez in calling on Chairman Carr to do what’s right—act now and publish the implementation requirements.”
Barragán, Gomez and Davis-Holmes urged Carr, a Republican, to publish the implementation requirements immediately to start the 30-month compliance clock, requiring mobile service providers to install alert templates on Americans’ phones that would automatically translate alerts into the devices’ default language.
The push has strong backing from the top Democrat on the Senate Telecommunications Subcommittee and the current and former Chairs of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, and Congressional Black Caucus, whose members represent communities most impacted by language-access failures.
The archived livestream of the event is here.
