Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has a number he’s not shy about repeating.
Duffy wants to make sure no future president can ever repeat one Barack Obama mistake.
And what he’s announcing now could lock this in for good, which is exactly why the Left is furious about it.
A Safety Rule That Existed Since 1937 — Until Obama Gutted It
Federal regulations on English proficiency standards have existed for commercial drivers since 1937.
That’s not a typo. Nearly ninety years of settled policy. Truck drivers operating on American highways were required to read and speak English. It was a basic, obvious safety standard that nobody seriously disputed for generations.
A 2016 policy introduced during the Obama administration prohibited inspectors from placing drivers out-of-service solely for failing English proficiency evaluations. Instead, non-compliant drivers were merely issued minor administrative citations and allowed to keep driving on America’s roadways.
Think about that for a second. A driver fails a test proving he can’t read road signs on American highways, and the Obama-era response was essentially a parking ticket. Keep on driving. Have a nice day.
Lowering these standards resulted in a steep drop in driver standards and led to fatal crashes in Florida and Colorado where investigations concluded drivers were unable to read English warning signs or communicate with law enforcement during routine inspections.
People died. And the policy that contributed to those deaths sat on the books for years while the Biden administration did nothing to reverse it.
Duffy Brought the Hammer Down — and Now He’s Making It Stick
In April 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order requiring truck drivers to speak English. Duffy moved quickly to back it up with enforcement teeth.
“Federal law is clear, drivers who can’t read or speak English — our national language — or understand road signs are unqualified to operate 80,000-pound big rigs on America’s highways,” Duffy said.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is now moving to codify guidelines that enforce English Language Proficiency requirements for commercial motor vehicle drivers into a new rule.
By turning this guideline into a codified rule, future administrations will not be able to weaken ELP requirements like the Obama administration did, allowing unqualified drivers to remain on US roads.
That last part matters. Guidelines can be rescinded with a memo. Codified rules require a full rulemaking process to undo. Duffy isn’t just enforcing the law — he’s building a wall around it so the next Democrat administration can’t quietly dismantle it again the way Obama did.
“Today, I am proposing to lock English proficiency rules into federal regulations FOR GOOD — so no future administration can ever undo them,” Duffy wrote on X. “Barack Obama weakened this rule and allowed illegal truckers onto our highways, but THAT IS NOT HAPPENING AGAIN.”
“Over 26,000 unqualified drivers have already been pulled off the road. GET READY FOR MANY, MANY MORE,” Duffy concluded.
The new rule also standardizes enforcement across all states and sets the same standard at both the northern and southern borders for truckers crossing into the United States. It sets the same work prohibition citation standard across all states.
And then there’s the Florida crash that put all of this in sharp relief.
Harjinder Singh was operating a commercial semi-truck with a trailer on the Florida Turnpike in Fort Pierce when he allegedly attempted a U-turn in an unauthorized area before the trailer jackknifed and collided with a minivan, killing all three of its passengers, according to officials.
The crash involved a driver who was an Indian national and did not speak English or have legal authorization to be in the United States, according to Florida and US officials.
Singh was given a CDL test following the crash and failed, according to Duffy.
“This crash was a preventable tragedy directly caused by reckless decisions and compounded by despicable failures,” Duffy said.
States That Won’t Comply Are Finding Out There Are Consequences
California, predictably, decided it had a better idea.
The Trump administration plans to withhold $40 million from California over its refusal to enforce English language requirements for truckers, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said.
“California is the only state in the nation that refuses to ensure big rig drivers can read our road signs and communicate with law enforcement. This is a fundamental safety issue that impacts you and your family on America’s roads,” Duffy said.
California issued a commercial license to the driver involved in the Florida crash. California, Washington and New Mexico may lose millions of dollars in federal funding if they continue to fail to enforce English Language Proficiency requirements after an investigation into the deadly crash in Florida revealed the states made significant failures regarding the illegal immigrant truck driver who made an illegal U-turn.
The states were given 30 days to get their enforcement in line with federal standards. Whether they comply or keep playing politics with highway safety is their call — but the funding consequences are real.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio added another layer of pressure. “The increasing number of foreign drivers operating large tractor-trailer trucks on US roads is endangering American lives and undercutting the livelihoods of American truckers,” Rubio said in a post on X. The administration followed that statement by pausing the issuance of worker visas for commercial truck drivers.
What’s worth stepping back to appreciate here is how long this problem was allowed to fester. The English proficiency standard for commercial drivers dates to 1937. A single Obama-era memo in 2016 effectively neutered it. Inspectors who caught non-compliant drivers couldn’t do anything meaningful about it. The citations piled up, the standard eroded, and Americans died in crashes that investigators later traced directly to drivers who couldn’t read the signs warning them of danger ahead.
Duffy’s enforcement push since April 2025 has already removed more than 26,000 unqualified drivers from the road. That number is going to keep climbing as the codified rule takes effect and states that have been dragging their feet run out of runway to stall.
The broader point Duffy keeps making is a simple one: “When a driver can’t read a ‘Steep Grade,’ ‘Runaway Truck Ramp,’ or ‘Do Not Enter’ sign, people die.” That’s not a policy argument. That’s physics. And it’s the kind of thing that should have never required a presidential executive order to fix in the first place.
But it did require one, because a previous administration decided that enforcing a basic safety standard was less important than keeping unqualified drivers on the road. The families of the three people killed on the Florida Turnpike are living with the consequences of that decision.
Duffy isn’t just cleaning up a regulatory mess. He’s making the case, with real numbers and real enforcement actions, that putting American families first on the highway means having drivers who can actually read the road they’re driving on. The rule being codified now is the insurance policy that guarantees the next administration can’t quietly undo it with another memo.
Sources: US Department of Transportation press release; Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration press release; Washington Examiner; Breitbart; FreightWaves; Fox News; Spectrum News; Deccan Herald