Trump Administration Shuts Down 270 Truck Driving Schools, Says California Is Worst Offender While California Sues Over Wind Lease Buyouts

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) stood in Detroit on Monday, August 31, and announced the federal government is shutting down 270 commercial driver training schools nationwide.

According to the Department of Transportation, 110 schools are being removed under emergency executive authority because they're linked to more than 5,000 commercial driver's license holders who failed English-language proficiency tests. Another 160 schools are being targeted for removal over unlicensed instructors, missing paperwork, and inadequate facilities. In one case, Duffy said, a school's "classroom" was the back of an open semi-trailer.

Federal officials said drivers certified by these schools have been connected to 239 commercial motor vehicle deaths. "When schools certify underqualified drivers, these drivers get behind the wheel of an 80,000-pound truck, and they kill people," Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration Administrator Derek Barrs said, according to the Daily Wire.

Barrs specifically cited Platinum Plus Truck Driving School in Fresno, California, which certified 36 drivers later cited for English violations. One of those drivers, Barrs said, killed someone in Oklahoma.

Marcus Coleman and his 7-year-old daughter Dalilah joined the press conference. Dalilah suffered a traumatic brain injury, cerebral palsy, and developmental delays after an 18-wheeler driven by an immigrant from India struck their vehicle in the Mojave Desert in 2024, according to the LA Times.

California Named, But the Numbers Tell a Mixed Story

Sen. Mullin didn't soften his language. "By far, the worst abusers are in California under Gov. Newsom's leadership," he said, per the LA Times. Duffy added that licenses issued unlawfully in California, New York, and Illinois end up on trucks that travel nationwide, meaning violations often surface far from where the license was issued.

But when reporters pressed for a state-by-state breakdown, DOT initially declined to say how many of the 110 closures were in California. The agency later told Fox News, as reported by the LA Times, that 11 of the closed schools are in California, 10 are in Florida, and 13 each are in Pennsylvania and Texas. Two other states had more schools shut down than the state officials singled out by name as the country's biggest offender. DOT did not explain that gap.

Separately, the Department of Homeland Security said it arrested 95 illegal immigrant truck drivers earlier in August, 76 of whom held California-issued CDLs and six with New York licenses, according to the Daily Signal. Mullin also said investigators found licenses issued with "no name given" listed for the driver.

A Legitimate Safety Concern, With Some Rough Edges

The underlying safety argument has real weight. Federal law has required English proficiency for commercial drivers for decades, and DOT says more than 28,000 drivers have been pulled off the road for failing that standard since June 2025, with over 30,000 illegally issued licenses voided and roughly 8,000 schools closed since the start of the second Trump administration, according to the Epoch Times. Duffy has blamed Obama-era rule changes that let schools self-certify, and Biden-era border policy, for the pipeline of under-qualified drivers.

At the same time, the administration hasn't released a full list of the 270 closed or targeted schools, and it shut 110 of them down under emergency executive authority rather than a standard hearing process. No school named in these reports has publicly responded, and no source here documents an appeal process for a school contesting its closure. The broader fraud numbers, 5,000-plus failed English tests and 239 linked deaths, are serious on their face.

The Justice Department also formed a new Joint Task Force Crossroads of America, combining all nine U.S. attorneys' offices in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, while Homeland Security Investigations conducted a same-day sweep of more than 200 schools across 23 states and says it's sitting on over 1,000 leads involving CDL-related fraud, according to FreightWaves.

California's Other Fight: Offshore Wind

The trucking crackdown wasn't the only clash between Washington and Sacramento this week. California Attorney General Rob Bonta and the California Energy Commission filed a lawsuit Friday against the Trump administration and offshore wind developer Golden State Wind, according to Utility Dive.

The suit challenges a deal in which the developers, backed by the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Ocean Winds, agreed in April to accept $120 million from the federal government to cancel their Morro Bay lease, after winning that lease at auction for $150.3 million. California's lawsuit calls this the "TotalEnergies model," referencing a March deal in which TotalEnergies agreed to give up two leases off North Carolina and New York, worth a combined 4.2 gigawatts of capacity, for $928 million, money TotalEnergies agreed to reinvest in U.S. oil, gas, and LNG production.

California's filing calls the pattern "the cynical logic of an extortion racket," alleging the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management first devalues the leases through regulatory action, then dangles a buyback offer developers can't refuse given their fiduciary duty to investors. That's an allegation in a legal filing, not a proven fact, and the Trump administration has not issued a public response in these reports.

California says it invested more than $100 million building port and transmission infrastructure to support offshore wind, expecting the projects, including a separate 1.5-gigawatt Invenergy lease near Morro Bay that was also cancelled, to deliver jobs and clean power. No court date has been set, and it remains unresolved whether a judge will find the federal buyback structure exceeds BOEM's legal authority or was a lawful exercise of lease administration.