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Duffy Delivers a Major Announcement on Safety and Trucking, Sep. 26, 2025

September 26, 2025 · US Department of Transportation · 0:32:36

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy held a press conference to announce a major initiative addressing non-domiciled truck licensing and roadway safety, in the Department of Transportation’s September 26, 2025 upload, alongside the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s chief counsel, Jesse Elison, as the department’s description names him. Duffy called the non-domiciled commercial driver’s license process — licenses to operate an 80,000-pound truck issued to foreign drivers who are not U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents, as he defined the category — absolutely broken, a threat to public safety, and a national emergency requiring action now, as he stated the case.

He grounded the announcement in three fatal crashes he attributed to non-domiciled drivers as he presented them: a March 14 crash in Texas in which a driver failed to brake into a line of traffic, a 17-vehicle pileup that killed five people including two children; a May 6 crash in Alabama in which a driver with less than six weeks’ experience hit four vehicles at a red light on his third day with his carrier, killing two; and an August 12 Florida Turnpike crash in which a driver attempted an unauthorized U-turn, killing three, the driver having been issued a CDL improperly by Washington state and previously ticketed for speeding, as Duffy stated the records. The administration’s review, he said, had found over 25 percent of non-domiciled licenses issued illegally, as he stated the figure. Elison detailed the new rule’s expected effect as he stated it: about 190,000 non-domiciled CDLs affected under the rule, against more than 60,000 non-domiciled CDLs issued in California alone, where a sample of 145 of the over 3,000 licenses issued in June had been reviewed; the funding consequence for non-compliant states starts at $160 million in the first year, as he stated it.

Why it matters

This September announcement is the rule-making center of Duffy’s trucking-safety campaign: the October 31 update paged on this site reports its enforcement, and the December 12 New York press conference presses its state-compliance deadline — the three together are the campaign’s full public record, from rule to arrests to the money lever.

Scoreboard watch

Scoreboard candidate: the non-domiciled CDL initiative announced September 26, 2025 — over 25 percent of such licenses stated to have been issued illegally, with about 190,000 licenses affected under the rule as stated by the FMCSA chief counsel. Flagged for the scoreboard editor; no entry is published from this page.

Sources: U.S. Department of Transportation, “Secretary Duffy Delivers Major Announcement on Safety and Trucking” (official upload, embedded above). Remarks and figures as delivered by Secretary Duffy and Chief Counsel Elison at the press conference.