This article examines 180 texts that together form a newspaper-mediated debate of language policy in reaction to U.S. Senate legislation declaring English the national language of the United States. Drawing on theories of genre networks and intertextuality, the paper examines the ways in which dominant texts and ideologies within this corpus of texts are taken up, dropped, and perpetuated through linked genres over a 37-day period. The analysis begins by describing the social backdrop in which the debate occurred and the Senate legislation and discussion. Next, the paper details the newspaper framing of the Senate legislation and the subsequent uptake of an assimilationist ideology, through a range of discursive strategies employed by both newspaper writers and readers.