More than 550 commercial driving schools in the U.S. that train truckers and bus drivers must close after investigators found they employed unqualified instructors, failed to adequately test students and had other safety issues, the federal Transportation Department announced Wednesday.
The move marks the Trump administration's latest effort to improve safety in the trucking industry. And unlike its actions last fall to decertify up to 7,500 schools that included many defunct operations, this latest step is focused on active schools inspectors identified as having significant shortcomings in 1,426 site visits completed in December.
The department has been aggressively going after states that handed out commercial driver's licenses to immigrants who shouldn't have qualified for them ever since a fatal crash in August. A truck driver who Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy says wasn't authorized to be in the U.S. made an illegal U-turn and caused a crash in Florida that killed three people. Other fatal crashes since then, including one in Indiana that killed four earlier this month, have only heightened concerns.
Duffy said 448 schools failed to meet basic safety standards. Inspectors found such deficiencies as employing unqualified instructors, failing to test students' skills or teach them how to handle hazardous materials and using the wrong equipment to teach drivers. Another 109 schools removed themselves from the registry of schools when they learned inspections were planned.
“American families should have confidence that our school bus and truck drivers are following every letter of the law and that starts with receiving proper training before getting behind the wheel,” Duffy said.
The list of schools officials want to decertify now are generally smaller ones, including a number of programs run by school districts. Five of the bigger, more reputable schools represented by the national Commercial Vehicle Training Association were audited but those all passed.
Jeffery Burkhardt, chair of the national trucking schools group, said established schools welcome the enforcement effort to eliminate bad schools that aren't meeting the standards. He said these audits mark the first time regulators have enforced the standards for driving schools that were passed in 2022.
“You know, the good players have no problem with it. Absolutely none,” said Burkhardt, who is also is senior director of operations at Ancora, which provides CDL training at colleges, community colleges and companies.
Another 97 schools are currently under investigation for compliance issues.
Part of the industry problem is that schools and trucking companies can essentially self certify themselves when they apply to begin operating, observers note, and questionable operations might not be caught until much later when the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration gets a chance to audit them.
It wasn’t immediately clear how many students were enrolled at these schools that are being decertified or how many graduated with questionable qualifications. A Transportation Department spokeswoman said officials may follow up on those graduates later. Burkhardt said that hopefully most of the unqualified drivers were weeded out before they got on the highway by the skills tests states administer before handing out commercial licenses.
There is steady demand for truck drivers because there is high turnover in the industry, and it has been difficult to attract enough drivers willing to spend days away from home delivering heavy loads. But there is some cushion in the industry right now because there are currently more drivers than needed in the midst of a 10% drop in shipments since 2022 owing to economic uncertainty. Nonetheless, many trucking companies still struggle to find enough well-qualified drivers with clean records.
Both the American Trucking Association and the Owner Operator Independent Drivers Association praised the decisive action to shut down “sham schools” that aren't meeting basic safety standards. Todd Spencer, President of the independent owners group, said the reliance of some companies on these questionable schools “fueled a destructive churn” in the industry.
“Rather than fix retention problems and working conditions, some in the industry chose to cut corners and push undertrained drivers onto the road. That approach has undermined safety and devalued the entire trucking profession,” Spencer said.
Besides threatening to withhold federal funding from states that don’t clean up their commercial driver’s license programs, the administration has demanded truck drivers meet English proficiency standards. California is the only state to lose funding so far with the federal government planning to withhold $160 million.
The Transportation Department is threatening to withhold $128 million from Illinois after the latest state audit announced earlier this week found problems with nearly 20% of the 150 licenses they reviewed. The most common problems uncovered in state audits across the country have been licenses that remained valid long after an immigrant's authorization to be in the U.S. expired and instances when the states couldn't show that they checked a driver's immigration status before giving them a license.
Problems have been found in 10 states so far, including North Carolina, Pennsylvania, New York, Minnesota, South Dakota and Texas.
FILE - Freight trucks travel northbound on Interstate 5 Highway, Sept. 3, 2025, in Tracy, Calif. (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez, File)
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Members of the United Nations Security Council called Wednesday for the Gaza ceasefire deal to become permanent and blasted Israeli efforts to expand control in the West Bank as a threat to prospects of a two-state solution, coming on the eve of President Donald Trump’s first Board of Peace gathering to discuss the future of the Palestinian territories.
The high-level U.N. session in New York was originally scheduled for Thursday but was moved up after Trump announced the board's meeting for the same day and it became clear that it would complicate travel plans for diplomats planning to attend both. It is a sign of the potential for overlapping and conflicting agendas between the United Nations’ most powerful body and Trump’s new initiative, whose broader ambitions to broker global conflicts have raised concerns in some countries that it may attempt to rival the U.N. Security Council.
British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said there is an opportunity for the U.N.'s most powerful body to help build “a better future” for Israelis and Palestinians despite the “cycle of violence and suffering” over the more than two-year war between Israel and Hamas.
“Gaza must not get stuck in a no man’s land between peace and war,” Cooper said as she opened the meeting.
In addition to the U.K., the foreign ministers of Israel, Jordan, Egypt and Indonesia attended the monthly Mideast meeting of the 15-member council after many Arab and Islamic countries requested last week that it discuss Gaza and Israel's contentious West Bank settlement project before some of them head to Washington.
“Annexation is a breach of the U.N. Charter and of the most fundamental rules of international law,” Palestinian U.N. Ambassador Riyad Mansour said. “It is a breach of President Trump’s plan, and constitutes an existential threat to ongoing peace efforts.”
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said ahead of the session that it was not drawing attention and that the focus of the international world would be on the Board of Peace meeting.
Saar also accused the Security Council of being “infected with an anti-Israeli obsession” and insisted that no nation has a stronger right than its “historical and documented right to the land of the Bible.”
The board to be chaired by Trump was originally envisioned as a small group of world leaders overseeing his 20-point plan for Gaza’s future. But the Republican president's new vision for the board to be a mediator of worldwide conflicts has led to skepticism from major allies.
While more than 20 countries have so far accepted an invitation to join the board, close U.S. partners, including France, Germany and others, have opted not to join yet and renewed support for the U.N., which also is in the throes of major reforms and funding cuts.
Mike Waltz, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., appeared to criticize countries that had not yet signed on to the Board of Peace, saying that unlike the Security Council, the board is “not talking, it is doing.”
“We are hearing the chattering class criticizing the structure of the board, that it's unconventional, that it's unprecedented,” Waltz said Wednesday. “Again, the old ways were not working.”
The Security Council is meeting a day after nearly all of its 15 members — minus the United States — and dozens of other diplomats joined Palestinian ambassador Mansour as he read a statement on behalf of 80 countries and several organizations condemning Israel's latest actions in the West Bank, demanding an immediate reversal and underlining “strong opposition to any form of annexation.”
In the last several weeks, Israel has launched a contentious land regulation process that will deepen its control in the occupied West Bank. Israeli Energy Minister Eli Cohen said it amounts to “de facto sovereignty” that will block the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Outraged Palestinians, Arab countries and human rights groups have called the moves an illegal annexation of the territory, home to roughly 3.4 million Palestinians who seek it for a future state.
The U.N. meeting also delved into the U.S.-brokered ceasefire deal that took effect Oct. 10. U.N. political chief Rosemary DiCarlo and Israeli and Palestinian civil society representatives gave briefings for the first time since the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attacks that launched the war.
“President Trump spoke of a golden era for the Middle East. That future is possible and can only be unlocked by resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, removing a central driver of instability and a fuel for radicalization,” warned Hiba Qasas, a Palestinian who is founding executive director of Geneva-based Principles for Peace Foundation.
Former Israeli diplomat Nadav Tamir, executive director of J Street Israel, echoed that, saying a strong coalition of Israelis and Palestinians believe the only way to end the conflict is through a two-state solution.
“Israel cannot remain the democratic homeland of the Jewish people if Palestinians are denied a homeland of their own. Our futures are interdependent,” Tamir said.
DiCarlo of the U.N. said this is “a pivotal moment in the Middle East” that opens the possibility for the region to move in a new direction. “But that opening is neither assured nor indefinite,” she said, and whether it will be sustained depends on decisions in the coming weeks.
“Our collective efforts must now consolidate the ceasefire in Gaza and alleviate the suffering of the population,” she said. “We need concrete progress toward stabilization and recovery, consistent with international law, to lay the foundations for lasting peace. The Board of Peace meeting in Washington, D.C., tomorrow is an important step.”
Aspects of the ceasefire deal have moved forward, including Hamas releasing all the hostages it was holding and increased amounts of humanitarian aid getting into Gaza, though the U.N. says the level is insufficient. A new technocratic committee has been appointed to administer Gaza’s daily affairs.
But the most challenging steps lie ahead, including the deployment of an international security force, disarming Hamas and rebuilding Gaza.
Trump said this week that the Board of Peace members have pledged $5 billion toward Gaza reconstruction and will commit thousands of personnel to international stabilization and police forces for the territory. He didn't provide details. Indonesia’s military says up to 8,000 of its troops are expected to be ready by the end of June for a potential deployment to Gaza as part of a humanitarian and peace mission.
President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump walk on the South Lawn to the White House after arriving on Marine One Monday evening, Feb. 16, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Allison Robbert)
FILE - The symbol of the United Nations is displayed outside the Secretariat Building, Feb. 28, 2022, at United Nations Headquarters. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)
