Trump plans to sign an executive order requiring commercial truck drivers to speak English.
MAGA fans are rejoicing on social media in favor of President Donald Trump's plan to sign an executive order requiring commercial truck drivers to speak English.
Breitbart News reported that Trump would sign the order Monday evening because "President Trump believes that English is a non-negotiable safety requirement for professional drivers." Last month, Trump designated English as "the official language of the United States."
"This is such a big deal! So grateful for this, the roads will be much safer. Like many, I have seen many accidents or near accidents from unqualified drivers," posted @coffeegirlvegas.
https://www.rawstory.com/no-more-10-4-buen-amigo-social-media-reacts-to-new-trump-exec-order/Open linkView original on sh.itjust.works554
Comments147
Oh yea? You and many others have witnessed many accidents that were due to a truck driver’s inability to speak English?
You dumb bitch.
It’s already part of the federal commercial driver regulations too… so no. No they have not. The most they’ve seen is someone with a heavy accent and maybe broken English.
I’m willing to bet the most they’ve seen is some accidents involving trucks, with no knowledge of what happened or who was driving.
If it is already part of the rules, what makes this EO a bad thing? Sounds like it's just enforcing a status-quo that nobody had an issue with.
"Interpreters are prohibited during the administration of skills tests. Applicants must be able to understand and respond to verbal commands and instructions in English by a skills test examiner." CDL Standards
What's bad about performative actions in the form of executive orders applying rules to situations the president has clearly demonstrated he doesn't understand?
From my personal experience the bigotry towards non white non male folks in the industry can be pretty extreme, so off the very top of my head I can think of several ways a bombastic EO could inflame that worse. Not to mention I’d like my government to focus on fixing shit instead of meaningless performative bullshit
It's a power grab by the executive that will be used to, for example, harass minorities driving on the street. If it's already part of the rules then it doesn't need an executive order.
Because this EO isn’t about speaking English for road safety. The same way locking trans people out of bathrooms isn’t about protecting women. Or how deporting green card holders and naturalised citizens isn’t about US Security.
There are so many examples of this from the last 100 days. The US is honestly a lost cause at this point.
That's one of the infuriating things about these people. They'll just make up BS that makes Trump seem reasonable. Trump does this English only thing, and now suddenly non-english truck drivers causing accidents is a thing, something that's been a problem all along and thank Jesus he's finally fixing it. Even though this was never actually a real issue that anyone even imagined before today.
The number of truck drivers whos first language wasn't English who made deliveries for the distributer I worked with recently was high. The number of times that speaking to them came into the scope of their job was 0. They pulled up, backed a truck up at 3:30am once a week and handed us an invoice. They take a nap while we unloaded the back, then they left. Driving through the night doesn't require you to speak, it requires you to be awake and have decent eyesight/perception. They could have been missing their left leg for all we cared. Trucking is like clock work. If you want groceries with the freshest dates in stores when they open, you need as many people willing to drive overnight and early morning workers to get them from the distributors to the stores and on the shelves before anyone wants to wake up.
Being able to read English would be important, not so much speaking it.
Being able to identify traffic signs would be enough.
You don't actually need to be able to read, just memorize what the writing on a dozen-or-so signs means.
Meanwhile how many accidents are caused by dumb bitches on their phones?
Won't this disqualify half his illiterate base
to be fair it's about SPEAKING english, not READING english..
The point stands
i don't see why you might think i disagree ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Word history!
1784, a colloquial American English alteration of darnation (itself a minced oath in place of damnation), influenced by tarnal (1790), a mild profanity, clipped from phrase by the Eternal (God), for which see eternal.
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You are a monster ... I spend hours watching furniture and small engine restoration videos ... documentaries and history ... now you've given me a new branch of content to watch.
I can both simultaneously thank you and curse for this information. Regardless, I'm happy to have met you.
This is just an excuse for ICE to pull people over. And since they're a part of the executive branch, they care less about due process and laws.
Exactly.
I have a CDL, Class A with X endorsement.
This changes nothing. CDL manuals, exams, and paperwork are all in English. What I think Trump thinks he's doing is banning Mexicans from driving trucks in the US, but this is controlled by a reciprocity agreement between the US and Mexico. Surprise, Mexicans don't have to take American exams for a CDL when they can have a license issued by the Mexican government.
Basically all this is is white supremacist virtue signaling.
I would love to see the US go a month without Mexican truck drivers. The UK pulled the same stunt with Polish truck drivers. People were rejoicing at empty shelves and overflowing garbage bins.
Nah you're still thinking about it within the the UN/long peace legal framework. They can just do a decree that says no mexicans, and their extrajudidical thugs will take the signal to harass and murder truck drivers.
Are you going to stop them?
Truck drivers aren't the most progressive, but if they see fellow drivers getting harassed/attacked by four wheelers you can bet your ass they're gonna go Mad Max on their asses for that
I hope so 🙏
This is already a Commercial Driver's License requirement. What is the specific issue here?
"Interpreters are prohibited during the administration of skills tests. Applicants must be able to understand and respond to verbal commands and instructions in English by a skills test examiner." CDL Standards
Can't pull someone for "driving while brown", but you can pull someone over for "driving while not speaking English, which I just concluded from you being brown"
You don't need to speak English to know turn left and stop.
You're right. You just need to be able to read, write, and understand instructions. Wait that sounds like knowing the language
Just like reddit to downvote someone who actually knows what the fuck they're talking about because it doesn't sound right to you.
You're being down voted by others. Mostly cause what you said is stupid
And yet I know more than you and am correct. Maybe because you are just guessing and don't have actual first hand knowledge.
It is quite common to have CDL drivers that only speak Spanish whether or not they're supposed to be able to speak English.
They still understood enough English to pass the test in the first place. I'm assuming with your first hand knowledge you knew that. Or are you just guessing there's a lot of Spanish speaking people that got interpreters? This is about there already being a rule to speak English to get your license. It's not about what language they primarily speak. This is just political theater to make magats happy. You're just stuck on this "I have to be right or my online persona will be ruined". Chill man. You don't even sound smart online
CDL drivers have been required to speak English since 1936, though.
And enforcement was relaxed under Obama
I read comments like this and all I can feel is astonishment that anyone's life is so empty that they can dedicate time to caring about this.
Like, it sounds made up, but honestly whether true or not.. like, who cares? It's so trivial and life has so much to offer. This comment is the first and last time I'll ever think about this.
Well, it's fact. Some truckers and trucker's groups have theorized that the increase in CDL involved accidents since the relaxing of this rule are caused instead of simply correlated.
I actually agree with enforcing rules like this so even though trump's an asshole, this one might improve safety.
I think it would be great if you can list some credible source before asserting a fact.
Also I have a question, why do truck drivers speaking English makes the road more safe? As long as they understand the required knowledge, I don't see the language they speak matters in terms of safety, but that could just be my lack of understanding in this area.
Doesn't the US have a shitton of unstandardized road signs which are just words?
I feel like you have to have some English proficiency to understand them.
If all those signs were in Chinese, it would take a commercial truck driver about a week to memorize the writing for each and learn what it means.
You don't need to speak the language for that.
and if they were in Spanish, you may not even need a whole day.
But the inconsistency is the problem.
Take a look at the top signs about driving on the shoulder. Who is to say there aren't twenty more variations?
Maybe a couple of
"Driving on shoulder mandatory"
"Trucks on shoulder only"
"Passing on shoulder permitted"
"$100 fine for driving on shoulder"
"Keep shoulder clear"
"No trucks allowed on shoulder"
There doesn't seem to be any standard. It's just text.
It's in the news?
https://www.newsweek.com/trump-rolling-back-obama-era-english-language-requirement-truck-drivers-2065172
Quickest example I can come up with:
"Winter conditions ahead, reduce speed now."
You know what also happened in 2016? They revised the definition of "large truck" to include 329 more vehicles. By increasing the sample size you're going to see more accidents. Common cause of accidents is fatigue from drivers working too many hours. That gets better if there's less drivers and they have to know English though right?
The article states: "Republican Representative Harriet Hageman of Wyoming ... [states] a consistent rise in fatal truck crashes since its implementation."
Whereas your statement is "[Requiring truck driver to speak English improves safety] is a fact".
I am not saying what you said is necessarily wrong or the policy is necessarily harmful; but I feel we probably need more proof than "a republican representative said so", to assert a certain statement as "a fact".
BTW, neither you nor the news article provided the relevant data, which IMHO doesn't really inspire confidence in your argument. Let alone all the potiential confounding variable others have mentioned.
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
That'll surely fix our surplus of truck drivers! /s
Good news! With the tarriffs throwing cold water on freight all across the US, we won't need as many truck drivers!
...I really wish I was joking, but the fiance is OTR and freight has already slowed for him. Here's an article from February that talks about how it was already slower than expected.
Ouch. Things are about to get real harsh before they get worse. I hope you are prepared.
It's been speculated that Trump is doing this to prepare for the drop in cargo transport in the next few days. Me, I have doubts because nothing that Trump has said or done so far makes me believe that he or his sycophants are intellectually capable of that kind of rational planning. What do you think?
He has no goddamned clue what he's doing. Whoever is speculating that is welcome to point to even one time where Trump prepared to keep people from economic harm in such a fashion, but I've only ever seen him walk things back, not actually insulate someone from harm.
yet another thing that has no legal standing and only exists to make the idiots think trump is accomplishing something
So the party of small government is going to administer english tests to truck drivers? maybe create some kind of language registry with proficiency levels? sounds kinda woke
Running the entire economy via a central planning committee is exactly the sort of right-wing free market the GOP voters wanted. I guess? Up is down. The past is alterable. The past never had been altered. Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.
There's the double-think we've all come to know and love. Double plus good, party member
There was a video on ?imgur? in the past couple days, I didn't know if it was real. Guy says he was a truck driver and had stopped at a weigh station. He said they asked if he could read and write English; he said yes. They gave him a piece of paper to read, which he did; they then told him to write those words down on another piece of paper, which was filled with identical words in various handwritings. He said he saw a bunch of people off to the side in handcuffs, and said that if you couldn't speak or write English, you had to pay a $5000 "fine" on the spot, and that if you couldn't pay, you were arrested on the spot and your driving license immediately suspended. There was some condition (I don't remember what it was) where the trucking company might also have to pay a $10000 "fine".
The comments discussion pointed out that, if they had had $5000 to pay the "fine", it likely would've been taken in civil forfeiture. There was also a robust discussion on whether this was real or not, trying to find other sources, which were slim and primarily referenced questionable sources.
Edit: found the video, which apparently originated on Xitter, and was originally posted last month (I only saw it a day or so ago).
Think we are way past them being small government. They are the party of HUGE government. They want to regulate how you speak, to whom you speak, where you speak, what your name is allowed to be, what people are allowed to call you, where you are allowed to use the bathroom, whether or not you can access healthcare, how you pay for that healthcare, what you are allowed to eat, who you purchase things from, what medications you are allowed to be prescribed and monitor whether or not you are ovulating.
The party of states rights (in areas they're losing federally) makes yet another federal commandment in areas they want to gain ground on
There is already a federal clearing house for DoT drivers, this is for criminal checks and drug tests. They would just put it there.
I hate to be "that guy" ... but non English speakers on the road is kind of an issue.
I’m sorry, but the whole thing is ridiculous. Surely you are aware that there are countries (eg your neighbour to the north) that have more than one official language. As far as i know, only one city in Canada has bilingual signage, yet Canadians manage to drive safely all over the country without necessarily having proficiency in both languages. The european union has ??? languages and yet somehow manages to have safe roads. this is all part of trump’s pandering to the racist and xenophobic idiots who comprise his base.
I have to agree with @[email protected], though the issue is not really while going down the road.
Language barriers become an issue at pickups, drop offs, truck stops, weigh stations and anywhere else where you might need to follow a precise set of oddball instructions.
So, nothing to do with road safety.
If you go through all of the laws and regulations we truck drivers have to follow, you would find that only about half of them have a direct impact on road safety. Most of the others have an indirect impact only.
Commerical driving licenses already require English proficiency so this is a non-issue. Now ask yourself why this particular administration is trying to "solve" a non-issue via executive order and not an act of Congress. Hint: It's a power grab that will be used to the detriment of minorities.
Good thing we won't need so many of those when supply chains dry up from tariffs!
Trump can't even speak English.
Not sure about other states, but in mine, the ability to read and understand English is a requirement for getting a license...
Now you could make an argument that's not the same as speaking English, and my rebuttal is "should we ban mute, or speech-impared people from getting a CDL"?
I'm not really clear how they would even enforce this. They don't have a database or standard test for speaking english.
FBI: "Do you speak english?"
Driver: "Sí señor. Aber ich lerne auch Deutsch."
FBI: "Fatastich. Guten Abend."
Well those people are already Undesirables under the rule of el trumpo, so their answer is... yeah?
Fuck you shoresey
Tell your mom to stop faking jellyfish stings, I’m not going to pee on her
Shut up shorsey
Fuck you, T00l_shed! Your mom wants me so bad she said she’d do anything so I got her walking around with my phone playing my Pokémon Go.
Give your balls a tug, tit-fucker
As always another trump "policy" that'll backfire spectacularly
Probably won't matter much. No ships means nothing to haul
Who the fuck is supposed to drive the trucks then? I live in (upstate) New York and it seems like even up there a significant population of Mexican truck drivers.
Here, if they don't speak English, they are almost all Eastern European or Indian. Lots of Russian, Belarusian, Chechen, etc
How does being Mexican mean you don't speak English? Have you never met a bilingual person in your life?
If you ever followed American politics throughout history, you can see how this can easily be abused. Before, you had to take a test to determine if you were smart enough to vote. The test was the same for both whites and minorities, but it was graded differently depending on your race.
What defines "speaking English"?. Is it a basic level, being able to read road signs or being able to speak to dispatch, the loading crew, or ems at a fundamental level? Or is it college level? Will you even be tested if you're white?
With trumps many many anti-minority policies and rhetoric, and his abuse of ice, as well as setting up black sites and selling people to the El Salvadoran concentration camp, it's hard not to think that this will be abused in some way. This is in no way a pro-English law. This is an anti-minority law.
However, cause of how dot and cdls are set up now, I doubt that much will come out of it tbh
I don't think I said they don't speak English. It's usually pretty broken in my experience. They're usually just guys who work long hours at a hard job.
I've actually seen deliveries from all sorts of immigrant drivers, Ukrainian stands out.
That’ll help the shortage of drivers for sure 🙄
Executive orders are not laws. He can direct how the law in enforced, but he can't just unilaterally define new laws
I keep seeing comments from people pretending that the way it is meant to be is the way it is. Trump has said the law is what he says. There is no effective defense against him declaring laws if there is no enforcement. He has defied judges orders and will continue to do so. The EOs are laws because they are being followed and nobody is stopping them.
Saying he can’t do that comes across like a right wing talking point. Trying to convince people that he can’t do what he is clearly doing, so those who are opposed will just sit around thinking the natural order will take care of it.
And it’s working. Sure there have been some protests. But no where the amount needed to make a change. Trump is now a dictator, and far too many Americans are ok with it, directly and passively.
Actually there have been some massive protests against all this BS Trump has done. The media is just complicit and basically none of these protests have been covered in any mainstream outlets. The protests ARE there but if you are not driving by them on the way to work you probably do not even know about them. Thanks MSM~!@
Many laws are written to give the executive branch leeway in defining the details of how a law is to be implemented. This makes sense, assuming everyone is acting in good faith; technologies, science, standards, and best practices all evolve over time.
Laws are usually written in a way to ensure Congressional oversight, to prevent the executive either intentionally or accidentally from subverting their will. But with a treasonous President and a complicit Congress, here we are.... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Ah yes, those unqualified drivers that are being hired as professional truck drivers. It's their lack of English skills that are the problem.
How was their totally legitimate and law abiding employer supposed to know about their lack of ability or driving licence? They are the real victims here, being forced to hire them and all.
ah, there's the old rub. how many of trucking companies are going to be held accountable for hiring them? i'd wager it's just about as many farmers that get fucked for hiring lettuce pickers. oh yeah, how's that lettuce picking going now?
I guess he's not wrong
However this is useless as you need to speak English to get a commercial license
Perfect, he gets to make a big fuss for the racists, but doesn't actually have to change anything. That way there's less risk of breaking anything, and he's probably looking for a win right now.
It's a bit like decreeing that all English week day names must henceforth end in the letter 'y'. It's low risk, makes certain people think you're busy taking action, and leaves everyone else wondering what you're up to with this, taking some of the heat off of other issues.
People on both sides talk about how he's all powerful but the courts still have more authority. This whole thing proves it
That is not correct. There are many CDL drivers who only speak Spanish. If you're talking about the test, that's a joke.
Do they offer Spanish CDL classes?
Also how do they read the signs
You don't have to take a class. That's optional for people that don't know how to drive a truck. Anyone can read signs. They don't change. I've dealt with hundreds of CDL drivers and I've seen dozens that only speak Spanish.
The same people who said they would remove big government that tries to control everything and everyone
oh, they still want total control.. but only of those deemed 'unworthy'. the 'big' government they want to get rid of is only the bits that watch what they (the rich fucks and their companies) do and might enforce laws that they break.
US economy crashing again in 3...2...1...
Still
I'm assuming it's just a way to sneak literacy tests into something. You can speak english, but can you speak it well enough to pass a subjective test administered by someone who hates you for being hispanic?
Classic authoritarian tactics:
Target a marginalized group with an issue that you've framed as ridiculous or politically suicidal to disagree with, get public opinion riled up by manipulating their grievances through exploiting their internal prejudices, and make everything an extension of preserving national security. Once you've manipulated enough people into giving you extralegal power, simply expand the circle of 'national security threats'.
In just a few months we've watched Trump:
steal the power of the purse and the power to enact tariffs from Congress,
create a precedent for the unconstitutional arrest, detainment, and removal of legal residents and dissenting citizens,
iterate his intentions to restart American expansionism into Canada and Greenland,
Successfully twist the arm of media companies, law firms, and universities into doing his bidding,
And his other executive order directs Dept. Of Homeland Security, DoJ, and DoD to create a plan for implementation of military and national security assets to "prevent crime and protect public safety".
Welcome to the 'find out' stage.
You’re 100 percent dead-on.
And alongside this point, I really wonder how many of the kids that were shouting at everyone to not vote because of the “doing a genocide thing” would have done things differently if they had actually believed us all when we tried to tell them this shit would happen.
And I mean truly and honestly. Not the front they put up when they don’t want to publicly own their part in causing this to happen.
Because I can say that as a voter, I am not at all in the “find out” phase. I already knew this would happen. There was never anything to find out.
Oh definitely not - he has been attacking the Clean Air act.
Not in Trump's America. Making breathability a requirement could limit some broligarch's freedom to do business.
So cops pulling people over for a Language check?
This is just for show
Can anyone explain how knowing English would reduce traffic accidents? Is it because of detour signs?
Can you please elaborate with some examples if possible? I'm trying to picture this from highways and roadways here in Florida, but I am struggling to get your gist. I will look again on the way home tonight. However I am not a trucker or cdl so I might be oblivious to some.
Wow, that video conveys exactly the difference, thanks. Seems like a USA stubbornness thing, akin to imperial vs metric system, oy vey.
Saying that quiet part out loud again. The obvious ingredient is racism
Which will be ignored like the rest of his Executive Orders that don't actually have anything to do with the Executive.
I keep on thinking of the mad tv skit with the woman who says she can't understand people with accents.
Is there any such requirement for ships in international waters?
English seems a bit too narrow, but I could see one of maybe 10 languages being a requirement (English, Spanish, French, German, Arabic, Mandarin, Russian, Portuguese, etc)
Or perhaps, like the UN requires, at least three on this list.
Not sure about ocean shipping, but English is the standard language for Air Traffic Control. Specifically, Aviation English, but that came about through a specific need. The dangers of an air traffic accident are much higher, the training requirements for an air traffic controller or pilot already more involved then a truck driver, and English being the most spoken language in the word, when you include second and third languages, made English being the standard the most logical. I don't know Aviation English, but I would assume it strips out any regional slag or local idioms.
Truck drivers don't need a common language because traffic signage is designed to be readable without knowing being fluent in the language. If you can read the numbers and memorize what the sign shapes mean, you're fine. If something goes wrong, you can pull off to the side. Something you can't just do in an airplane.
Seems more and more like every headline could be: Senile Old Man Yells at the Sky*.
*with the authority of the US government.
Oof that will crash the trucking industry.
It was going to mostly crash anyway, when the ships stop coming next week, due to the tariffs.
Seattle port looking awfuly vacant and que them for drivers is 0-25 minutes.
How so?
I'm not sure how you could possibly get a CDL without speaking English. Also trucking is a good way to lose money.
Trucking is the quickest way to make $100k/year. It ain't easy hours but demand for drivers is insanely high. My company at one point was offering $15k signing bonus for drivers.
I personally know at least a dozen that I work with daily at work that do not have any English fluency whatsoever.
Actually it's helped my Spanish skills lol
I had no idea that was possible
I dunno how they did it. They're third party contract drivers.
But we do live in a very Spanish-speaking part of the country so it was probably as easy as finding a friendly enough bi-lingual examiner at the DMV.
Literally no trumpees anywhere can tell you their top three works of literature.
This is fact.
Unless it's the old testament, the new testament, and the headlines of faux news
That’s informational text, not literature.
My severely undereducated state rep trumpee Angela Rigas replied to me that her top three works of literature are the bible, constitution, and declaration of independence. She had no response when I told her those aren’t literature.
I was being sarcastic, because I know you'd get a lot of extremely similar answers.
Besides... the Bible is fiction
Fiction would count as literature. I’d say it goes in the self-help section next to the Tony Robbins cassette tape series.
Later: "Okay, my executive order is in effect. But what the hell is a lorrie?"
*sniff sniff*
Smells like your food is about to cost even more.
So, they will arrest people for not obeying an executive order that, and IANAL, has no basis in law? How will they be identifying these drivers? What is the justification for pulling them over?
If they're brown, pull 'em over.
If you have to take off your sunglasses to understand their accent, arrest 'em
-From the official executive order.
It does seem like an excuse to call ICE.
Combine with ignoring due process, and it looks like a way to get at immigrants.
No, they'll just add it as a requirement to do any work with federal jobs or something.
The executive office in the us has so many levers of power it can pull that they don't really need laws anymore.
This is an unpresidented act
He's just trying to solve the issue he caused with the shipping slump.