Tag Archives: Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy

Another Serious Vehicle Accident Caused By A Non-English-Speaking Driver

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America has a problem right now with people who cannot speak English getting Commercial Driver’s Licenses (CDL’s). Not being able to read road signs or understand verbal commends impacts safety conditions on American roads.

On Thursday, Breitbart reported:

A Tennessee truck driver is dead after a Chinese national, who is not proficient in English and has a non-domiciled New York commercial driver’s license (CDL), allegedly crashed a tour bus — now federal transportation officials are investigating how he was cleared to drive.

“A Chinese national driving a motorcoach slammed into a vehicle in Tennessee, killing an individual and causing a major traffic jam this week,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy wrote in a post on social media. “And to make matters worse: this driver had a non-domiciled CDL from NY and couldn’t speak English!”

Earlier this week, Huang Yisong, a 54-year-old Chinese national, allegedly slammed a tour bus he was driving into the rear of a tractor-trailer while watching videos on his cell phone, the New York Post reported. Yisong failed an English-proficiency test administered by Tennessee Highway Patrol troopers. His immigration status is not clear at this time.

The State of New York issued a non-domiciled CDL to Yisong.

“It’s outrageous,” a Department of Transportation spokesperson told the Post. “Our team is already investigating New York’s opaque licensing practices that enable dangerous, foreign drivers to kill innocent Americans.”

This is a safety issue and needs to addresses immediately.

The article notes:

However, earlier this year, President Donald Trump signed an executive order requiring that trukers be proficient in English, Breitbart’s Nick Gilbertson reported in April.

“President Trump believes that English is a non-negotiable safety requirement for professional drivers, as they should be able to read and understand traffic signs, communicate with traffic safety officers, border patrol, agricultural checkpoints, and cargo weight-limit station personnel, and provide and receive feedback and directions in English,” the document notes.

Under the anticipated order, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy will be directed “to rescind and replace guidance to strengthen inspection procedures for compliance with English proficiency requirements,” per the White House document.

This isn’t an immigration issue–it’s a safety issue.

We Need To Make Our Roads Safer

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On November 20, Townhall posted an article about another fatal accident involving an illegal immigrant driving a semi truck. This is getting old.

The article reports:

Over the weekend, yet another illegal immigrant with a commercial driver’s license issued by the State of New York caused a multi-car collision resulting in the death of an Indiana National Guardsman. The illegal, Georgian national Goderdzi Gujabidze, 56, has since been arrested.

Gujabidze was driving an 18-wheeler in Boone County, Indiana, when he collided with a military Humvee and another vehicle. Indiana National Guardsman Terry Frye died on the scene, and three others were hospitalized.

When authorities attempted to communicate with Gujabidze, they encountered a “language barrier” that required “a translator.”

Officials discovered that the illegal immigrant had secured a non-domiciled Commercial Driver’s License (CDL) in New York after the Biden administration waved him across the border in San Luis, Arizona, in 2022.

The article concludes:

The Department of Transportation, led by Sean Duffy, initiated an audit of state records for CDL holders. California alone was found to have illegally issued 17,000 CDLs to foreigners. 

“What our team has discovered should disturb and anger every American,” Secretary Duffy said recently. “Licenses to operate a massive, 80,000-pound truck are being issued to dangerous foreign drivers — often times illegally. This is a direct threat to the safety of every family on the road, and I won’t stand for it. Today’s actions will prevent unsafe foreign drivers from renewing their license and hold states accountable to immediately invalidate improperly issued licenses.”

The federal highway funds allocated to the states that are issuing CDL’s to illegals need to be suspended until the practice is stopped. Unfortunately, I believe this move has been blocked by the courts.

Following The Rules Saves Lives

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On Friday, Breitbart posted an article about the recent deadly crash allegedly caused by an illegal migrant truck driver from India.

The article reports:

Jashanpreet Singh, 21, was charged Thursday by the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office with three counts of vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence and one count of DUI causing injury in the eight-vehicle pileup, ABC7 reported.

A Los Angeles County high school basketball coach and his wife were killed, with Pomona High School identifying the victims as Clarence Nelson and his wife, Lisa. The third victim’s identity was not publicly released by Friday. 

The article includes a statement by Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy:

“My prayers are with the families of the victims of this tragedy. It would have never happened if Gavin Newsom had followed our new rules,” Duffy said in a statement obtained by Breitbart News. “California broke the law and now three people are dead and two are hospitalized. These people deserve justice. There will be consequences.”

A report from the Department of Transportation (DOT) shows every step where California let Singh obtain his CDL against the department’s policies put in place following the state’s “significant compliance failures” revealed by a recent audit that found that 25 percent of non-domiciled CDLs sampled were issued improperly. 

The article notes:

On June 27, then 20-year-old Singh, claiming to be an asylum seeker, was issued a restricted, non-domiciled CDL. The license included a “K restriction,” which limited him to in-state operation, DOT said.  

On September 26, Duffy formally notified California of its compliance failures after a department audit revealed the staggering amount of improperly-issued CDLs. To fix the issue, DOT required California to pause issuance of non-domiciled CDLs, identify all unexpired non-domiciled CDLs that fail to comply with Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) regulations, and to revoke and reissue all noncompliant non-domiciled CDLs if they comply with the new federal requirements.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. Governor Newsom is attempting to put the blame on the federal government, but I don’t think that really works. The bottom line is that we have a lot of people in the country illegally who don’t speak English and are driving large trucks. That is not a good thing.

Common Sense Arrives

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On Friday, The New York Post posted an article about the federal funding for offshore wind projects.

The article reports:

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced Friday that $679 million in federal funding has been withdrawn for 12 “doomed” offshore wind projects – including three in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

The scrapped funding includes $10.5 million for Connecticut’s Bridgeport Port Authority Operations and Maintenance Wind Port project, $20.5 million for New Jersey’s Wind Port at Paulsboro and $48 million for Staten Island’s Arthur Kill Terminal. 

The Trump administration plans to spend the withdrawn funds on “real infrastructure” and “restoring American maritime dominance.” 

“Wasteful, wind projects are using resources that could otherwise go towards revitalizing America’s maritime industry,” Duffy said in a statement.

“Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg bent over backwards to use transportation dollars for their Green New Scam agenda while ignoring the dire needs of our shipbuilding industry,” Duffy said. “Thanks to President Trump, we are prioritizing real infrastructure improvements over fantasy wind projects.”

At a White House Cabinet meeting earlier this week, President Trump fumed that wind projects were “ruining our country.”

“We’re not allowing any windmills to go up,” the president said. “They’re ruining our country. They’re ugly, they don’t work, they kill your birds. They’re bad for the environment.”

In July 2024, I posted an article about an environmental disaster caused by the failure of a windmill blade off Nantucket in Massachusetts (article here). The failure not only caused the island to have to close beaches because of contamination caused by the disintegration of the blade, but oysters and mussels in the area were contaminated by hazardous fiberglass particles that can cause harm to humans.

In 2020, I posted an article about two Massachusetts town that put up wind turbines in 2016 and voted to remove them in 2020 after approximately 360 complaints from residents in the area. Complaints include shadow flicker, nausea, vertigo, sleep disturbance, headaches, anxiety and sound disturbances. The towns were Bourne and Plymouth. The windmills were situated on Route 25.

We don’t fully understand the impact of low-frequency vibrations on people. Until we do, it might be a good idea to keep windmills away from populated areas.

There may come a day when we find a practical, economical and safe way to harness wind energy, but we are not there yet.

At Least They Broke Ground

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Sixteen years ago, California and the federal government began funding a plan for high-speed rail that was to run from San Francisco to Los Angeles and Anaheim via the Central Valley. The state did actually break ground for the project, but in sixteen years, not one inch of track has been laid. The project was going to take until the end of the century to complete at a cost of $130 billion. 

On Wednesday, Fox Business reported:

California’s embattled high-speed rail project suffered a major setback after Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced the termination of $4 billion in unspent federal funding by the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA).

Citing 16 years of failure, no completed high-speed track, and escalating costs, Duffy declared the project, dubbed the “train to nowhere,” a mismanaged and over-budget “boondoggle.”

“This is California’s fault. Governor Newsom and the complicit Democrats have enabled this waste for years. Federal dollars are not a blank check – they come with a promise to deliver results,” Duffy said in a statement.

The announcement followed months of scrutiny after a comprehensive compliance review, plus failed attempts by the California High-Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) to address serious project deficiencies.

The article quotes President Trump:

“This boondoggle, led by the incompetent Governor of California, Gavin Newscum, has cost Taxpayers Hundreds of Billions of Dollars, and we have received NOTHING in return except Cost Overruns. The Railroad we were promised still does not exist, and never will,” Trump continued.

“This project was Severely Overpriced, Overregulated, and NEVER DELIVERED. Thanks to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, not a SINGLE penny in Federal Dollars will go towards this Newscum SCAM ever again. This was an ill-conceived and unnecessary project, and a total waste of Taxpayer money — But no more!”

The article concludes:

In addition to canceling $4 billion in unspent federal funds to CHSRA, Duffy directed FRA to review other obligated and unobligated grants related to the CHSRA project.

The 300-page damning report, released back in June, examined the project and found delays, missed deadlines, mismanagement, waste, skyrocketing costs, budget shortfalls and overrepresentation of projected ridership. 

Other key findings revealed that the project faced ongoing — and likely increasing — contractor cost overruns due to delays and that the CHSRA failed to finalize contracts for its high-speed trainsets on time.

The project was initially touted as a two-phase visionary system connecting Los Angeles to San Francisco, and later north to Sacramento, and south to San Diego.

The report states that despite the money already plowed into the project, there is a $7 billion funding gap to complete a subset of the first phase in the Central Valley from Merced to Bakersfield, known as the Early Operating Segment (EOS).

Since the project’s inception, it has been dramatically reduced from an 800-mile segment to a 171-mile segment. 

The federal government is not good at building infrastructure projects at a reasonable cost. I remember the “big dig” in Boston.

 

A Much-Needed Safety Measure

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On Monday, The Hill reported that President Trump signed an Executive Order requiring commercial truck drivers in the United States to be proficient in English. This makes a lot of sense. The electronic signs along the side of the road often warn of impending traffic jams or accident scenes that require caution. Truck drivers need to be able to read these signs. Often, at the scene of an accident, law enforcement officers are giving verbal instructions. Truck drivers need to be able to understand these instructions. Requiring truck drivers to be able to understand English makes our highways safer.

The article reports the content of the Executive Order”

“Every day, truckers perform the demanding and dangerous work of transporting the Nation’s goods to businesses, customers, and communities safely, reliably, and efficiently,” the order said.

Trump designated English as the country’s official language in an executive order in March. In his order Monday, the president said proficiency in English should be nonnegotiable for professional drivers.

“They should be able to read and understand traffic signs, communicate with traffic safety, border patrol, agricultural checkpoints, and cargo weight-limit station officers,” the order said. “Drivers need to provide feedback to their employers and customers and receive related directions in English.”

Under the order, a driver must be able to read and speak English “sufficiently to converse with the general public” to operate a commercial vehicle in the U.S.

“My Administration will enforce the law to protect the safety of American truckers, drivers, passengers, and others, including by upholding the safety enforcement regulations that ensure that anyone behind the wheel of a commercial vehicle is properly qualified and proficient in our national language, English,” the order said.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy will issue a new guidance on English proficiency testing and enforcement policies, according to the order. A violation of the English language proficiency requirement would put a driver “out-of-service,” the order said.

“You might not know, but there’s a lot of communication problems between truckers on the road with federal officials and local officials, as well, which obviously is a public safety risk,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a briefing Monday.

The decision was celebrated by Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association (OOIDA).

will issue a new guidance on English proficiency testing and enforcement policies, according to the order. A violation of the English language proficiency requirement would put a driver “out-of-service,” the order said.

“You might not know, but there’s a lot of communication problems between truckers on the road with federal officials and local officials, as well, which obviously is a public safety risk,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a briefing Monday.

The decision was celebrated by Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association (OOIDA).

This is something that has been needed for a long time. Congress needs to get moving and pass this Executive Order as law.

People Who Live Or Work In New York City Will Cheer This

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On Wednesday, The New York Post reported that the much-hated congestion toll in New York City will be going away. The Department of Transportation (DOT) under President Trump has pulled the previous approval of the toll.

The article reports:

New York City’s spectacularly unpopular congestion pricing scheme is on death row as the Trump administration announced Wednesday it is pulling its approval of the toll — slamming it as “backwards and unfair” — in a major blow to Gov. Kathy Hochul, The Post has learned.

The US Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration terminated the approval of the controversial program, according to a letter Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy sent to Hochul on Wednesday afternoon.

“New York State’s congestion pricing plan is a slap in the face to working class Americans and small business owners,” said Duffy, noting that commuters entering NYC have already financed the construction and improvement of city roadways through their taxes.

“But now the toll program leaves drivers without any free highway alternative, and instead, takes more money from working people to pay for a transit system and not highways. It’s backwards and unfair,” he said, blasting the program as harmful to small businesses in the Big Apple that depend on customers from New Jersey and Connecticut.

I have a nephew (who has since moved to North Carolina) that worked in New York City in the motion picture industry. The toll would have resulted in more than $100 a week in commuting expenses. There were times when he needed to bring his truck into the City for his job, and the extra expense would be a problem. The people paying this toll are not the people who can afford it–they are the working people who are afraid to ride the subways because of safety issues. During the 1960’s, I rode the subway every day when I commuted to school, but I wouldn’t want to ride it now. This tax needed to go away, and I applaud Secretary Duffy for ending it. Also, some serious effort needs to be made to clean up the subways and make them safer.