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Trucking has always been one of the great pathways to the American dream. No college degree required — just the ability to read road signs, pass a commercial driver's license test, and put in honest work behind the wheel. With average salaries at sixty thousand dollars per year, trucking is a solid and dignified living that has supported American families for generations.
But that pathway is being blocked, and American families on the road are paying for it with their lives.
Eighteen percent of truck drivers in this country are foreign born, and two hundred thousand of them are not citizens. Drivers who learned to operate a vehicle in another country are not prepared for high-speed American interstates or electronic highway signs flashing weather and travel alerts in English. President Trump laid out the facts this summer: last year alone, illegal aliens with commercial driver's licenses (CDLs) caused at least thirty fatalities and many more seriously injured. Since Trump took office in January 2025, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy reports that two hundred and thirty-nine people have died in crashes caused by non-English-speaking truck drivers. Most of those fatal accidents involved drivers who received their CDLs from Gavin Newsom's California.
Secretary Duffy has been high gear. The Department of Transportation has shut down one hundred and ten driving schools so far for violations of English language proficiency requirements. These are the worst offenders. Another one hundred and sixty schools were closed for inadequately trained instructors. In August alone, Customs and Border Protection arrested ninety-five illegal aliens working as truck drivers. Eighty-two of whom had received their licenses from California and New York.
Yet, twenty-one Democrat-controlled states and the District of Columbia sued to block the Department of Transportation from even obtaining the records needed to identify who these foreign drivers are. A federal judge ordered DHS to return subpoenaed documents and not look at what was already collected.
And these issues don’t even scratch the surface of the problems the Transportation Department faces in air travel! From aging technology and infrastructure to rampant DEI problems, the hiring and training processes for commercial pilots and air traffic controllers is in desperate need of work, and Duffy’s department has been full speed ahead there as well.
There is much work to be done in reforming our executive agencies. Stay informed and engaged with all these topics at PhyllisSchlafly.com, and join us again for the Phyllis Schlafly Report.
