The nation’s second largest teachers’ union wants to block the Trump administration from accessing CDL driver records that would determine if any truck drivers or school bus drivers are illegal or fraudulently certified.
[UPDATE] The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) has joined a lawsuit seeking to stop the DOT from accessing commercial driver’s license (CDL) records from the CDLIS database operated by the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators, which contains information about 17 million people.
A U.S. District Court in California has since issued an injunction against the DOT while the lawsuit advances through the court system. The DOT is expected to appeal.
The legal fight is over ongoing actions being taken by the Trump administration to get illegal immigrants and unqualified drivers off the road following numerous deadly crashes caused by truckers who never should have been on the road. At least 30 Americans were killed in crashes caused by illegal truck drivers in 2025, including a high school basketball coach and his wife, and numerous others have been killed and maimed in 2026.
The DOT, along with other agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), have been working to shut down “sham schools” that don’t provide proper or complete training to its students and who give CDLs to illegal immigrants who can’t speak or read English or identify road signs. On September 8, DHS officials launched a new tipline so everyday Americans can report CDL fraud.
“Too many American lives have been lost or permanently changed because illegal aliens who have no business being on our roads have been granted CDLs,” DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin said.
The agencies have also engaged in law enforcement stings to take illegal drivers off the road and implement policies to strengthen English language requirements.
However, it’s not just blue states fighting these safety efforts but the AFT, which is supposed to focus its resources on representing teachers and improving academics, not lobbying for foreign drivers.
But that’s exactly what they’ve been doing. In November 2025, the AFT challenged a new DOT interim rule that strengthened compliance requirements for states issuing non-domiciled CDLs to drivers from outside the U.S; they said they were concerned that the rule could negatively impact school bus drivers.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia issued a stay, blocking that rule at the request of AFT.
DOT issued a new final rule earlier this year with similar provisions which was also challenged, but the D.C. Circuit refused to issue a stay so that rule is now in place as the lawsuit proceeds. A three-judge panel heard oral arguments on its merits earlier this week.
But while that suit continues, AFT now wants to block DOT from accessing data showing who exactly is driving semi-trucks and buses on American roads.
AFT claims that they only want to protect the privacy and personal information of its members, which include approximately 13,500 CDL holders, many of them school bus drivers and maintenance drivers.
AFT President Randi Weingarten said that the AFT “must protect them and their privacy against the vindictive nature of this president and his cronies. Just like we sued the Department of Government Efficiency for trying to mine personal information from millions of working-class Americans, today we intervene against the U.S. government’s attempt to strong-arm the AAMVA to turn over CDL holders’ private information. This illegal demand puts millions of people’s personal data up for grabs without their consent, people who had no choice but to provide their personal information to the states so they could simply work, and who have no way to remove it from the database.”
However, according to DOT Secretary Sean Duffy, Weingarten is seeking to protect illegal aliens who aren’t qualified to drive the buses transporting America’s children. He wrote on X, “WHAT ARE THEY HIDING?”
Though AFT made no direct claim about foreign drivers in this suit, AFT revealed in its previous legal challenge that it is defending foreign drivers over the DOT’s efforts to protect Americans.
This new legal action isn’t about CDL holders’ data or rights, it’s about obstructionism and the effort to protect illegal drivers and schools’ source of cheap labor, no matter how it affects Americans or their children.
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Why Are Teachers’ Unions Fighting a Highway Safety Rule?
{Published on November 19, 2025} When the Department of Transportation announced a new emergency rule cracking down on the granting of commercial drivers’ licenses (CDLs) to unqualified, illiterate, or illegal immigrants, most reasonable people cheered.
The action came in the aftermath of two horrific accidents caused by CDL-holding illegal immigrant truck drivers in which numerous people were killed.
Unfortunately, those reasonable people didn’t include union bosses, most notably the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) and the American Federation of Teachers, the nation’s second largest teachers’ union. Together, they immediately filed a lawsuit challenging the DOT’s actions.
Last week, a panel of judges for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia granted a stay of the rule changes.
The ruling will allow many illegal and illiterate CDL holders to keep on driving — for now.
That judges appointed by Democratic presidents would halt an action of the Trump administration is a surprise to exactly no one, but why would a teachers’ union, of all groups, go out of their way to try to keep dangerous truckers on the road?
According to the petition, AFT is representing the interests of its members, which apparently include “members with non-domiciled licenses.”
Non-domiciled licenses are granted to foreign nationals, but to be eligible, applicants must have legal status, federal work authorization, and meet all requirements for a standard CDL. That latter includes a clean driving record, English language proficiency, and the knowledge and ability to pass a written driving and skills test.
Sadly, though, it has become apparent that many non-domiciled CDL holders are either illegal immigrants, were improperly granted work authorization by the Biden administration, or do not meet federally mandated CDL requirements.
So, who are these non-Americans that are members of the AFT and have non-domiciled CDLs?
Well, as the AFT and the AFSCME proudly tell us in a press release: School bus drivers.
You would think that a union would welcome the opportunity to assure parents and government officials that their bus drivers are all fully legal, fully capable of understanding road signs, and boast the safest possible driving records.
Instead, the response was political — and hyperbolic. Here’s how Randi Weingarten, president of the AFT described the DOT’s efforts to increase highway safety for all drivers:
“For the Trump administration, the cruelty is the point. This is a spiteful and illegal rule issued with no justification except to hurt hundreds of thousands of lawful immigrants with work authorization who only want to build a better life for themselves and their families. Many AFT members require a CDL to work as school bus drivers—and right now we are seeing people turned away from training for these positions. Their American Dream will be dashed or deferred, all because of the pettiness of the president and his advisers.”
Actually, the point is to protect the rest of the driving public from illegal and incompetent CDL holders like Harjinder Singh.
Singh is an illegal immigrant who last August made a sudden illegal U-turn on a Florida highway, causing three people to die. Later, crash investigators found that the Indian native was able to correctly answer just 2 of 12 questions on an English proficiency test and could only properly identify 1 of 4 traffic signs.
The point of DOT actions is also to make sure that those entrusted to drive our children’s school buses are in this country legally and can tell which side of the highway they are supposed to drive on.
That teachers would side with illegal immigrants over schoolchildren isn’t really a surprise to anyone who has been keeping up with the mission of many of America’s public sector unions, especially teachers’ unions.
When the average American thinks of teachers’ unions, they probably assume their time and resources are spent fighting for better schools, higher teacher pay, and greater student safety and learning outcomes.
But that’s not what teachers’ unions actually do, especially not America’s largest unions, the National Education Association (NEA) and the AFT.
These teachers’ unions are socialist grift organizations that funnel money to left-wing politicians, champion left-leaning political platforms, lobby against people and policies that try to improve schools, work to indoctrinate students, and deliver railing speeches that sound more like a socialist politician vilifying her opponents than an organization that is supposed to advocate for teachers and children.
Both Weingarten and NEA President Becky Pringle have previously or currently serve as committee members for the Democratic National Committee. Weingarten served there for 23 years.
In keeping with their party’s platform, their priorities are advancing abortion, promoting racial division and climate change policies, indoctrinating students into LGBT ideology, and destroying parental rights.
That’s not me saying that. That’s the unions speaking for themselves.
And they are so opposed to parents having any control over their children that Weingarten and other union heads backed the Department of Justice’s effort to label concerned parents as domestic terrorists.
That’s right: These teachers’ unions would weaponize the FBI and DOJ against parents in order to advance their agenda.
And it’s not just the NEA and the AFT. Local teachers’ unions also put politics and profit before pedagogy.
The point that everyone needs to recognize is this: Teachers’ unions don’t advocate for teachers, and they certainly don’t advocate for students and better schools. Instead, they want to control as much taxpayer money and as many students as possible to advance the left’s agenda.
Meanwhile, too many kids across the nation, particularly in blue cities, can’t read or do even the simplest math problems.
Americans have to recognize that these unions don’t care about Americans; they don’t even care about public employees.
Last month, Jashanpreet Singh, a non-domiciled CDL holder and illegal immigrant, drove his truck (while high on drugs) into the back of a line of stopped cars, killing three people — among them long-time high school basketball coach Clarence Nelson and his wife.
Why aren’t the AFT and the AFSCME fighting to protect teachers, students, public employees, and parents from people like Singh?
Why aren’t they fighting for American workers to get jobs driving trucks and school buses at a fair wage rather than supporting the influx of unqualified immigrant drivers — an influx that not only lessens the number of job openings available for Americans but drives down their wages?
At some point, Americans must admit what the unions will never confess. They are not defending the people they claim to represent. They are defending their politics and their power. And until the public stops giving them the benefit of the doubt, these unions will keep sacrificing American workers, families, and entire communities on the altar of their ideology.
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