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The Biden administration’s handpicked Transportation Secretary, Sean Duffy, has done what too few in Washington will do: enforce the law and protect American lives. After a federal audit uncovered systemic failures in how several states issued commercial driver’s licenses, Duffy moved to withhold massive federal highway dollars from recalcitrant governors who put politics ahead of safety. The stakes are real and concrete — federal officials gave New York 30 days to revoke illegally issued CDLs or face the loss of tens of millions in federal funds.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s sample review found glaring problems, including more than half of the New York non-domiciled CDLs in a sampled file being issued unlawfully, and large revocations in California after the audit. The DOT and FMCSA have begun peeling back layers of bureaucratic excuses to expose how temporary work papers or expired authorizations were treated as a free pass to hand out eight-year commercial licenses. Americans who drive our highways for a living or transport our families deserve better than a patchwork of politically motivated licensing that endangers everyone on the road.
This crackdown did not spring from politics alone — it flowed from tragedy. A deadly pileup last summer involving a driver with questionable credentials shocked the nation and forced the department to act, proving that lax enforcement has lethal consequences. When people die because a state refused to verify immigration status or enforce English proficiency for drivers hauling 80,000 pounds of cargo, talk turns into action, and rightly so. If state governments want federal money, they must meet federal safety standards rather than play sanctuary politics.
Conservative Americans should cheer Duffy’s refusal to blink; steering our tax dollars toward states that will not follow national safety rules is not governance, it is surrender. For too long, blue-run DMV offices have treated federal rules as optional, prioritizing virtue-signaling over vetting and enforcement that keep our families safe. The federal government has both the right and the duty to deny taxpayer-funded highway grants to jurisdictions that will not secure the highways or the people who use them.
This is not a narrow one-state story, either — the audit has flagged problems in California, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Texas, South Dakota, Colorado and Washington, and the DOT has already begun freezing or threatening funds in multiple places. Colorado was warned it could lose roughly $24 million for slow-walking the purge of invalid CDLs, while California and New York face far larger penalties if they don’t come into compliance quickly. Make no mistake: this is a nationwide effort to restore common-sense standards that protect American lives and livelihoods.
Patriots across the country should demand the same no-nonsense enforcement from Republican and Democratic leaders alike: revoke illegal licenses, verify legal status, require English proficiency where safety demands it, and stop letting politics turn our highways into hazards. Secretary Duffy’s move is the sort of unapologetic action this moment requires — a plainspoken defense of law, order, and public safety that every hardworking American can understand. If Washington won’t put the people first, then the department’s willingness to use the levers of funding is a welcome reminder that accountability still matters.
