The Scene of the Bureaucratic Crime
Somewhere along the tangled interstate between Sacramento and Washington, a $40 million pile-up just occurred, not of metal, but of politics.
At the wheel: U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, waving the rulebook like a traffic baton. In the passenger seat: California’s Gavin Newsom, rehearsing his best “we’re totally complying” smile.
The federal government, in its infinite wisdom, has decided to withhold $40 million in highway funds from California, not for potholes, not for pollution, not even for the occasional bridge that collapses into the Pacific, but because California allegedly failed to enforce English proficiency tests for commercial truck drivers.
That’s right. Not emissions. Not safety violations. Not the existential despair of America’s truck stops. English grammar.
The Catalyst: A Crash, a Scapegoat, a Speech
The whole fiasco was sparked by a deadly crash in Florida involving a foreign-born driver who made an illegal U-turn, killing three people. He was licensed in California, where, brace yourself, he later failed an English proficiency test.
Cue national outrage. Cue soundbites. Cue the political vultures circling.
Duffy thundered that this tragedy proved the need for “English enforcement.” Because clearly, if a man can’t read a road sign in English, he must also be incapable of avoiding a truck-sized catastrophe. The logic is poetic. Also insane.
Never mind that fatigue, overwork, and endless corporate freight schedules kill far more people than misplaced prepositions. No, this was about English. Because in America, every disaster must have a culture war sequel.
California’s Counterspin: “We’re Totally Fine, Thanks”
Newsom’s office, never one to miss a chance at moral high ground, pushed back. California’s fatal accident rate is lower than the national average, they reminded everyone, a statistic that sounds noble until you remember that being “less deadly than the rest of America” is a very low bar.
Behind the curtain, the state likely spent the weekend frantically googling “how to retroactively teach truckers English.”
Meanwhile, somewhere in a CalTrans meeting room, a group of bureaucrats debated whether “merge left” should count as a full sentence.
The Federal Fix: English Class on the Shoulder of I-5
To get the $40 million back, the Department of Transportation now demands that California inspectors test drivers’ English during roadside stops.
You can almost see it: an officer leaning against a semi, clipboard in hand.
“All right, sir, before I can let you proceed, please conjugate the verb to yield.”
Or perhaps a multiple-choice test:
Question 3: When you see a sign that says STOP, you should:
A. Stop.
B. Philosophically reflect on the word stop.
C. Phone Governor Newsom for clarification.
If this plan sounds absurd, that’s because it is. But absurdity is now a national pastime.
The Subtext: Language, Labour, and the Lines We Draw
Underneath all this performative patriotism lies something older and uglier, a debate about who gets to belong, who’s allowed to work, and whose mistakes are politically useful.
When systems fail, it’s easier to point at language than infrastructure. Easier to say “They can’t read the signs” than “We’ve built a system that drives people to exhaustion.”
English becomes the new border checkpoint, a way of deciding who’s “safe enough” to drive on the same road.
The Final Irony: Grammar as Policy
So here we are: a $40 million standoff over sentence structure.
The nation’s highways are crumbling, logistics chains are cracking, and truckers are burning out, and the federal solution is apparently a vocabulary quiz.
It’s almost poetic. The empire that once prided itself on building roads now fines you for mispronouncing them.
Somewhere, a trucker is sipping burnt coffee at 3 a.m., laughing bitterly at the news.
The politicians may argue over “proficiency,” but he knows what really matters:
keeping the wheels turning, in any language that gets the job done.
Final Thought: America, the Land of Perfect Grammar and Potholes
In the end, the Duffy–Newsom feud will fade into another footnote of performative outrage. California will tweak a form, Duffy will declare victory, and the $40 million will return to patching the same cracked highways.
But it’s worth pausing on the irony:
The country that can’t keep its bridges standing is now policing adjectives.
America, fluent in everything except sense?
Until Next Time
Discover more from Dominus Owen Markham
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