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Why Illiterate Foreign Truck Drivers Are A Much Bigger Issue Than You Think
The national media has spent so much time talking about foreign affairs, particularly in the last few days, that it’s worth taking a step back and considering, at some length, the life-or-death issues that Americans face every single day within our own borders.
Outlets like CNN and MSNBC (which has now been rebranded to “MS Right Now” or “MSNBC Right Away” or “MS No Ones Watching” or something along those lines) would prefer to talk about, say, Zelensky’s attire for five hours. But that kind of coverage doesn’t address very basic questions, such as: Is it safe to drive on the freeways in this country? If I’m taking my family on a vacation, or even if I’m just on my daily commute, can I have any degree of confidence that I won’t be sharing the roads with incompetent criminals driving 18-wheelers who can’t even read the road signs, and who could obliterate my entire family in an instant? That’s a question that has a very discouraging answer in a lot of places in the world. So what’s the answer in this country?
In an effort to secure the nation’s roadways, just a few months ago, the Trump administration made a significant change to the way that truck drivers are regulated in this country. The Department of Transportation announced that commercial motor vehicle drivers who cannot demonstrate proficiency in the English language should be placed “out of service.” The change, the administration announced, would “ensure consistent, nationwide enforcement” of this very important qualification. After all, if you can’t read the road signs, then you have no business operating any kind of vehicle, much less an 18-wheeler.
In practical terms, there are two phases to this test, which often takes place on the roadside after a driver is pulled over. In phase one, drivers are not allowed to cheat by using any cue cards or smartphone apps. That might seem like a pretty obvious restriction, but the Obama administration had allowed it. Instead, drivers are required to “respond to official inquiries and directions in English,” as they carry on a basic conversation about their trip, their cargo and their qualifications. Then, in phase two, officers are supposed to assess the driver’s ability to understand highway signs — including standard signs and electronic signs, which are more dynamic.
By all accounts, these are not particularly difficult tests. For example, here’s a recent video from a trucker in Arkansas, which already had a similar English language test for truckers:
Credit: @truckingtalent/YouTube.com
Well, that’s reassuring. As long as you can answer a couple of very basic questions, and write “only two lines, a paragraph,” then you’re good to go.
And yet, as simplistic as this test is, it caused a lot of panic among truckers who can’t speak a word of English. So, in recent weeks, they’ve made the argument that they’re just doing their best, and it’s wrong for Donald Trump to be mean to them. Watch:
Credit: NesNation/YouTube.com
This was the state of play, as of last week. The Trump administration, using its authority to regulate the highways and interstate commerce, issued an order saying that truckers can either speak English, or lose their license. And the only truckers who had an issue with it, predictably, were the ones who can’t speak the language.
In the meantime, several Democrat-run states and law enforcement agencies have announced that they wouldn’t comply with the new directive. As a spokesman for the California Highway Patrol put it, “CHP has not implemented any enforcement changes in response to recent federal guidance requiring commercial drivers to speak English, as it is not part of California law.”
WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show
So let’s break down exactly how this mandate is being enforced, or ignored, by the states.
According to research published on the website “Overdrive,” so far this year, “California inspectors have logged just one English Language Proficiency (or ELP) violation away from the border zone, and inspectors did not place that driver out of service.”
We’ll put the rest of their data on the screen right now.
Credit: Overdrive by Fusable
As you can see, states like Texas, Wyoming, Colorado, Iowa, Arkansas, Missouri, and Arizona have been recording a relatively high number of truck drivers who have been removed from service because they failed the English language proficiency test. At the same time, the raw numbers themselves still aren’t particularly large. This data runs from June 25 to July 20, so it includes a bit less than a month. And in that period, Arizona recorded 157 ELP violations, but only 43 of those drivers were removed from service. Texas recorded more than 1,800 ELP violations, and only 6 drivers were removed from service (and all 6 of those drivers were caught in the interior of the state, away from border counties). In Colorado, all 41 ELP violations resulted in the driver being removed.
So there’s a lot of variability here. Some states are taking the Trump administration’s order seriously. Some are making half-hearted attempts. And other states, like California, are openly violating the order. They’re refusing to implement the new requirement at all.
The consequences of this approach, as the Department of Transportation laid out yesterday, led directly to the deaths of three people on the Florida Turnpike last week.
Credit: @RT_com/X
We covered this case yesterday. The driver, an illegal alien from India, made an illegal U-Turn with his 18-wheeler across several lanes of traffic, blocking traffic and leaving a van going 80 miles per hour with nowhere to go — except right into the trailer. As it happens, the driver of the truck wasn’t simply an illegal alien who had no business in this country. He was also illiterate. And he was clearly in violation of the Trump administration’s new order on English proficiency.
Credit: U.S. Department of Transportation
From the Department of Transportation: “During The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration interview with the driver, investigators administered an English Language Proficiency (ELP) assessment. … The driver failed the assessment, providing correct responses to just 2 of 12 verbal questions and only accurately identifying 1 of 4 highway traffic signs.”
Before we go any further, that needs to be repeated. The driver who just wiped out an entire passenger van, by executing a very illegal U-Turn, could only answer 16% of the questions correctly on his English exam. He could only identify 25% of the traffic signs he was shown.
Credit: St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Office, Florida
With that in mind, take a look at the U-Turn sign on the road where this crash happened in Florida. It clearly communicates that no U-Turn is allowed, except “For official use only.” Any English speaking person would understand exactly what this means. But if you’re a foreigner from India who can barely speak English, you might interpret this sign very differently. You might not understand what “official use” means. You might not even understand what the “No U-Turn” sign means. These are very basic, fundamental concepts, but if someone can only identify 1 out of 4 traffic signs that you show him, the odds are pretty good that he doesn’t grasp any of this.
But as we return to the report from the federal government, things only get worse.
Again from the Department of Transportation:
Additional preliminary findings include:
On July 15th, 2023, Washington State issued the driver a regular full-term Commercial Driver’s License (CDL). Asylum seekers or individuals without legal status are NOT eligible for this type of license.
On July 23, 2024, California issued the driver a limited-term/non-domiciled CDL. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is investigating the issuance of this license to determine whether it was issued in accordance with Federal regulations.
On July 3, 2025, the New Mexico State Police conducted a roadside inspection of the driver and issued a speeding ticket, but there is no indication that an ELP assessment was administered. New Mexico has not yet begun enforcing ELP as an out-of-service condition, despite the requirement being in effect since June 25, 2025.
In other words, the state of Washington unlawfully issued a standard commercial driver’s license. There’s no question that decision was illegal. Then, the state of California issued a “non-domiciled CDL,” which as we discussed yesterday, is somehow legal, even when the driver is an illegal alien. And then, to top it off, police in New Mexico had a chance to take away the driver’s license when they pulled him over for speeding. But they failed to perform the English language proficiency test that the Trump administration required.
Every single state that had a role in this crash — including Washington, California and New Mexico — needs to face immediate consequences. By refusing to enforce the federal government’s order, they clearly contributed to the deaths of three people on the Florida Turnpike last week. If they had done their jobs, there’s a very good chance that these people would be alive.
Now, it’s true that, under our Constitution, states don’t have to obey every command from the federal government. So normally, as long as they’re not actively obstructing federal agents, it’s difficult to compel states to enforce any particular federal rule. But there are some rules that the federal government can, indeed, pressure the states to obey. Article One of the Constitution grants the federal government the power to regulate commerce among the states, which includes the highway system. That’s why, back in the 1980s, Congress passed the “National Minimum Drinking Age Act,” which handed out a financial penalty to any state that allowed people under the age of 21 to purchase alcohol.
Congress made the case that young drunk drivers were a major threat to interstate commerce, because they’d often kill people using the highways. And therefore, Congress asserted that it had the authority, under the Constitution, to withhold 10% of the federal highway funding from any state that refused to enforce the new drinking limit. That was a significant amount of money that states needed in order to maintain their roads. And the pressure worked. The states mostly fell in line. In 1987, when the Supreme Court heard a dispute over the law, Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote an opinion upholding the authority of Congress to apply some financial pressure on the states, as long as that pressure served a valid federal interest.
Protecting our highways from foreigners who can’t speak English, or identify highway signs, is obviously a very compelling, “valid” federal interest. So the federal government needs to start punishing every single one of the states that allowed this crash to take place. That’s allowed by our Constitution. It’s obviously the right thing to do. And it needs to happen before more families are pancaked under 18-wheelers. If there’s one thing the Trump administration can do, immediately, to protect Americans, it’s to withhold federal funding from every state that is ignoring the federal rules on English language proficiency.
This isn’t simply another 80-20 issue. This is a 99-to-1 issue. People are unanimous on this. After our show yesterday, we received so many comments from truckers (and people who are in the trucking industry) who are echoing this sentiment. Here are just a few:
I’m a freight broker. I have to speak to and deal with these foreigners EVERY DAY. It drives me absolutely nuts, as it does for all brokers. So many of them don’t understand a lick of English, forcing me to speak to their dispatchers to convey messages back and forth.
As a Trucker in Virginia, I’ve seen translators take the test for unqualified drivers all the time.
I’m from Ohio. If you get hit by a foreigner, there’s a 100% chance they do NOT have insurance and you’ll be footing the bill (at least your deductible). It’s waaay out of hand here. They never get in any legal trouble for it either.
I traveled the globe in the military, there are very few places in the world that as a culture cares about safety of others like ours. Death in many of these places is so commonplace, and unless they catch you with the knife in your hand actually stuck in the body, it is pretty much oh well, sucks to be that guy.
I am Canadian and have a trucker friend who has been driving for twenty years. He cannot get jobs anymore because Indian drivers are undercutting all the established truckers.
As an American truck driver who travels all over the lower 48, I am reading this story from the Kenworth Sleeper in my semi. I second every point made and am glad to finally see, what those of us in the industry have known a long time, being brought to light on a national stage.
There are thousands of comments like this. The conclusion is pretty clear: Truckers have been trying to raise the alarm for many, many years. And now that mainstream attention is finally focused on this very obvious issue, they’re demanding some sort of serious federal response, for once. They should receive it. That’s what we voted for.
For their part, Democrats have made it clear that they’re willing to fight — violently — to keep the status quo. You may have seen this video that’s been circulating. People calling themselves “Marines,” who aren’t speaking any English, are threatening to confront ICE agents. Watch:
BREAKING: 25 U.S. MARINES are reportedly patrolling the San Fernando Valley, California, to confront ICE agents
“We Marines are crazy… we don’t care… they better leave because I’ll [bust them]… we’re 25 Marines out here in the San Fernando Valley.” pic.twitter.com/B91zXrS7zU
— Unlimited L’s (@unlimited_ls) August 18, 2025
Credit: @unlimited_ls/X
Meanwhile in San Bernardino, officers who attempted to arrest an illegal alien were just attacked by the local residents. Watch:
Full video of the scuffle outside the home of the San Bernadino illegal aliens who fled federal agents in their truck, hitting two of them. pic.twitter.com/AonkCPmpE2
— Kim “Katie” USA (@KimKatieUSA) August 17, 2025
Credit: @KimKatieUSA/X
The whole neighborhood should be placed under immediate surveillance and investigation. They’re all fighting with law enforcement officers. We all know they’re not Americans. Investigate every single one of them. And if they’re illegals, then deport them.
That’s what it takes, at this point. It could not be any more clear that we’re dealing with two options here. One option is to ruthlessly crack down on foreigners who have violated our sovereignty, and who endanger the lives of American citizens. The other option is to allow these foreigners to ruthlessly attack law enforcement officials and terrorize American citizens on the highways. Those are the choices.
States like California, New Mexico and Washington have decided where they stand on this issue. They’ve decided to defy the federal government for the express purpose of replacing Americans with unqualified foreigners who will happily kill them on the roadways. They’re very clear about where they stand.
Now the federal government has to make it clear where it stands. The Trump administration must use its authority, under the Constitution, to pressure every noncompliant state into compliance. Before any more Americans are slaughtered by truck drivers who can’t even read a stop sign, any state that’s enabling this lunacy must face consequences. That’s how the federal government enforced the drinking age. They can do it again. We have the capability to save thousands of lives, just by compelling states to enforce a regulation that’s already on the books. We can make the interstate ten times safer than it already is, virtually overnight. And if there’s one issue that every single trucker — except the illegal ones — can agree on, it’s that we’re long overdue for exactly that kind of transformation.
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