U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-Auburn) recently proposed legislation to make English literacy a requirement for obtaining a commercial drivers license in the United States. 

Over the weekend, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy posted a video that offers a textbook example of why executive action and that legislation is needed. 

The clip shows a semi traveling through a toll road in pre-dawn hours — going the wrong way. When a fellow trucker confronted the man, he was unable to speak English and had no clue what he was doing:

“This easily could have ended in disaster,” Sec. Duffy wrote. “Foreign truck drivers not being able to understand the rules of our roads is a crisis that is putting lives in danger. @USDOT is doing the work to fix it and SAVE LIVES!”

States like California are pushing to continue issuing CDLs to those who cannot prove English proficiency. Last week, USDOT began withholding $40.6 million from California over the practice.

“This is what happens when we hand out commercial driver licenses to people who can’t read or speak English. Thank goodness that no one was killed, as we saw a few months ago in Florida,” Tuberville told Yellowhammer News, referencing a situation where an illegal immigrant with a CDL made an illegal U-turn and killed a family of three.

“It’s dangerous and it’s irresponsible,” Tuberville added. 

“I appreciate President Trump and Secretary Duffy’s commonsense efforts to require all commercial truckers to speak and write in English, and I’ll keep pushing my bill in the Senate to make it permanent.”

Tuberville, along with U.S. Senators Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) and Bill Hagerty (R-Tennessee), introduced the Secure Commercial Licensing Act to require all CDL testing be conducted only in English.

Grayson Everett is the editor in chief of Yellowhammer News. You can follow him on X @Grayson270.