Nationwide CDL Scandal: 550+ Schools Fail Safety Standards, Face Shutdown

There have, in recent months, been several high-profile incidents involving serious injuries and deaths caused by immigrant truck drivers who can't speak or read English, and who have inexplicably been given commercial driver's licenses (CDLs) regardless. It stands to reason that one shouldn't be driving a massive 18-wheel rig (or anything else, for that matter) if one can't read and understand road signs, and yet California, in particular, has been licensing these people to do just that.

The Department of Transportation, under Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy, has been looking into that and other matters involving the issue of CDLs, and as a result, 550 (!) commercial driving schools may be forced to close.

More than 550 commercial driving schools in the U.S. that train truckers and bus drivers must close after investigators found they employed unqualified instructors, failed to adequately test students and had other safety issues, the federal Transportation Department announced Wednesday.
The move marks the Trump administration’s latest effort to improve safety in the trucking industry. And unlike its actions last fall to decertify up to 7,500 schools that included many defunct operations, this latest step is focused on active schools inspectors identified as having significant shortcomings in 1,426 site visits completed in December.

Yes, you read that right; close to a third of the schools investigated will be closed. And, yes, many are in states like Governor Gavin Newsom's California, who have been issuing CDLs to people who are functionally illiterate in written English.

The department has been aggressively going after states that handed out commercial driver’s licenses to immigrants who shouldn’t have qualified for them ever since a fatal crash in August. A truck driver who Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy says wasn’t authorized to be in the U.S. made an illegal U-turn and caused a crash in Florida that killed three people. Other fatal crashes since then, including one in Indiana that killed four earlier this month, have only heightened concerns.
Duffy said 448 schools failed to meet basic safety standards. Inspectors found such deficiencies as employing unqualified instructors, failing to test students’ skills or teach them how to handle hazardous materials and using the wrong equipment to teach drivers. Another 109 schools removed themselves from the registry of schools when they learned inspections were planned.

I'm not sure which is more alarming: The number of schools shut down post-inspection, or the number that already knew they weren't up to speed and closed when they knew the inspectors were coming.

THE ESSEX FILES: Kansas Is Right to Put Citizenship on Driver's Licenses

Not only are our nation's commercial truckers given control of an enormous rig capable of doing tremendous damage to smaller, non-commercial cars and trucks in a mishap, but these rigs are also an irreplaceable part of our nation's economy. The vast majority of goods manufactured, imported, assembled, bought, and sold in this country are transported at least in part by commercial truckers. We depend on these men and women, who wrangle these big rigs on every highway and byway in the country, and we should be able to depend on them being properly trained and experienced to drive them safely. That means being able to speak and read English proficiently. Every road sign in the nation is in English. Every map is in English. Every police officer and every (well, most) non-commercial driver these people interact with speaks English.

Now we see our nation's system for educating and issuing CDLs to these people has been, in significant part, a scam. But now it's a scam that's being shut down, thanks to a presidential administration that is actually doing some good.

Editor’s Note: The 2026 Midterms will determine the fate of President Trump’s America First agenda. Republicans must maintain control of both chambers of Congress.

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