Feds withhold $40 million from California over trucker rules

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said on Wednesday his department would cut off $40 million in federal funds to California after Gov. Gavin Newsom refused to comply with rules requiring truckers to understand English.

The White House in April issued an executive order saying it intended to enforce a long-ignored federal law requiring truckers to know enough English to read road signs and hold conversations. The Transportation Department has since revoked the licenses of thousands of commercial drivers who couldn’t meet the requirements, Duffy said. California was the only state that refused to comply, he said.

In an interview clip the secretary shared, Duffy raised concerns that failure to comply with the law could cause deadly accidents, like a Florida truck driver crash in August that killed three. California had issued a commercial license to the driver, who was an illegal immigrant.

How did Newsom respond? The governor’s spokeswoman, Diana Crofts-Pelayo, told the Associated Press that California commercial truck drivers have a lower crash rate than the national average. 

Dig deeper: Read my report on the State Department’s rejection of a UN carbon tax.