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Duffy Holds a Press Conference on Securing America's Roads, Feb. 21, 2026

February 21, 2026 · US Department of Transportation · 0:29:03

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

What happened

Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy held a press conference on “Securing America’s Roads” alongside the Administrator of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, in the Department of Transportation’s February 21, 2026 upload. Duffy laid out the administration’s account of how unqualified drivers obtained commercial driver’s licenses: that the prior administration did not enforce English proficiency rules, that states issued licenses unlawfully — 20,000 foreign driver’s licenses in California, 50 percent of licenses in New York, and 20 percent in Illinois, as he stated the figures — and that commercial driving schools had been allowed to self-certify their training quality. He described what he called “CDL mills,” where, as he stated it, a person can pay $800 or $1,000, receive no training, and be certified as having completed the schooling requirements.

Why it matters

This press conference is the fullest single statement of the trucking-enforcement campaign Duffy has made a signature of his tenure — the case behind the department’s English-proficiency enforcement action of August 2025 and its December 2025 press conference on New York’s non-domiciled CDL practices, both part of the record this chronicle is paging. The figures he states here are the administration’s evidentiary basis for that campaign, carried here as he stated them.

Scoreboard watch

Scoreboard watch: Secretary Duffy’s February 2026 figures on unlawfully issued commercial driver’s licenses in California, New York, and Illinois, as stated at this press conference. Flagged for the scoreboard editor; no entry is published from this page.

Sources: U.S. Department of Transportation, “U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy Holds Press Conference on Securing America’s Roads” (official upload, embedded above). Remarks and figures as delivered by Secretary Duffy at the press conference.