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California’s own DMV quietly announced it will push the cancelation of roughly 17,000 nondomiciled commercial driver’s licenses back by 60 days — a delay that moves the action into March and flatly flouts the urgency of federal safety warnings. This is not a minor bureaucratic hiccup; these are big rigs and school buses carrying our kids and our commerce, and Americans deserve certainty that only properly vetted drivers are behind the wheel.
The federal government didn’t sit idly by: Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has already frozen $40 million in federal funds and warned that as much as $160 million could be withheld if California failed to meet the original January 5 deadline to clean up its licensing mess. That’s federal leverage for a reason — when a state’s policies put lives and supply chains at risk, Washington must act to protect the public.
Predictably, left-leaning advocacy groups sprang into action and filed suit, with the Sikh Coalition and the Asian Law Caucus leading a class-action to block the revocations and defend the livelihoods of the drivers involved. No one is anti-worker here, but suing to keep potentially unvetted drivers on the road while families and taxpayers bear the risk is exactly the kind of legal theater we’ve come to expect from radical activists and sanctuary-state politicians.
This controversy didn’t arise out of thin air; federal audits flagged licenses that remained valid long after immigration authorizations expired and pointed to tragic crashes that underscored the stakes. That’s why the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration moved to tighten eligibility for nondomiciled CDLs and why federal scrutiny is both reasonable and necessary to protect public safety.
Former acting DHS official Ken Cuccinelli and other conservative voices have been clear-eyed about the consequences of loopholes and half-measures, and the White House itself has signaled plans for an even tougher enforcement posture in 2026 — meaning more workplace and immigration enforcement that will force the issue nationwide. If the federal government is preparing to crack down harder next year, California’s delay looks less like prudence and more like political theater to dodge accountability.
Governor Newsom and his allies can posture about protecting immigrant livelihoods, but the undeniable fact is that states have an obligation to verify who is operating heavy commercial vehicles on American roads. Democrats running sanctuary regimes have repeatedly chosen politics over people, and taxpayers shouldn’t fund a system that prioritizes optics and lawsuits over English proficiency, verified authorization, and the safety of our children.
Patriotic Americans know what must come next: enforce the rules, protect our supply chains, and stop treating enforcement as a partisan talking point. If California won’t act decisively, the federal government should use every lawful tool to ensure our highways, schools, and communities are safe — and conservative voters must keep the pressure on until they do.
