Trump Announces Dangerous Plan to Replace Immigrant Truckers

The White House is planning to strip commercial drivers licenses from undocumented immigrants and effectively automatically transfer them to military veterans.

“My administration will soon take historic action to get illegal alien truck drivers who are just killing a lot of people—they can’t read signs, a lot of them are on drugs or alcohol, and they shouldn’t be driving these things. They came in totally illegally and they—we don’t want ‘em,” Trump said Wednesday at a defense and innovation summit in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

“But they are driving all over American roadways and we’re going to replace them with proud American veterans,” Trump continued. “We’re going to take veterans and we’re going to teach them a lot about driving trucks.”

“And in many cases they know we’re going to say any American who has driven a truck for our military will automatically be eligible for a commercial drivers license,” he said, noting that while left-wing politicians are opposed to the idea, it doesn’t matter because “we’re the ones who are running it.”

The announcement comes two weeks after Pennsylvania State Trooper Michael Pahira Jr. was struck and killed by an undocumented immigrant driving a semi truck. The driver, Michael Bon, has since been charged with vehicular homicide and involuntary manslaughter. ICE filed a detainer for Bon the day after his arrest, according to a Homeland Security press release.

The initiative to strip noncitizens of commercial drivers licenses has already begun. Roughly 200,000 immigrants had their commercial licenses revoked in March, preventing them from driving semi trucks, buses, and tractor trailers despite the fact that they had already passed the tests and met the requirements to drive such vehicles.

Beyond that, it’s not clear what type of vehicle handling in the military would provide adequate experience or training for a commercial license stateside. Granting such licenses to untested drivers could make the roads less safe.

During negotiations with the U.S. in Switzerland last month, the Iranian government reportedly warned Vice President JD Vance that President Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law Jared Kushner were undermining the chances of a peace deal.

Drop Site News reports, citing an unnamed Iranian official, that Iranian negotiators believed Witkoff and Kushner were more interested in trying to profit off the talks in financial markets than reaching a lasting agreement. The Iranians were also worried about Kushner and Witkoff leaking information to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to Drop Site.

The Iranians sent a private message to Vance through an intermediary following earlier communication through Pakistani mediators. Those earlier communications reportedly included written documentation that “individuals close to President Trump” were using the war and diplomatic talks to manipulate markets.

“Even before the Islamabad talks kicked off [in April], we had already sent multiple messages to Trump through the Pakistanis, warning them about [Witkoff’s] overall destructive role in the previous negotiation,” the Iranian official told Drop Site. When the U.S. didn’t address the Iranians’ concerns, they sought to communicate with Vance “through an exclusive channel.”

Drop Site said it couldn’t confirm whether the intermediary delivered the message, although the Iranian official said his government was confident Vance got it. The Trump administration denied everything.

“A message of this nature was never conveyed to the Vice President or his team,” an unnamed U.S. government official told Drop Site. “Additionally, any insinuation that the other members of the president’s trusted negotiating team are operating under motives other than serving the president and delivering on his mission is false.”

Additionally, White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly further denied the report and attacked Drop Site.

“No such message was ever transmitted to the United States. It’s sad that Drop Site News ‘reporters’ are so filled with hate for America and devoid of respect for themselves that they have become full-throated propagandists for the Iranian regime,” Kelly said.

With negotiations breaking down and hostilities resuming between the U.S. and Iran, the Iranian government does have an incentive to make the Trump administration look worse than usual. Unfortunately, even if this report is false, the White House’s track record makes it seem all too plausible.

Market manipulation has become all too common in Trump’s second term, particularly during the Iran war, with Trump making carefully timed statements that seem designed to create short-term stock gains. Suspiciously timed bets on prediction markets during the war also raised suspicions that insider trading was taking place within the White House, with the Trump administration even warning staff not to bet on world events.

It’s not the first time the business activities of Kushner, a real estate developer, seem to have overlapped with his work for the Trump administration, either. He and Witkoff reportedly pitched real estate projects and an investment fund to sweeten a deal with Iran. Kushner is also involved in the administration’s plans for Gaza reconstruction, where he has floated real estate projects too.

Bedrock civil rights milestones are at risk of withering away under the Trump administration—including in the physical sense. Hot conditions in a new National Park Service exhibit under the Lincoln Memorial are imperiling rare 1860s copies of the Emancipation Proclamation and Thirteenth Amendment, Emma Uber of City Cast DC reported Wednesday.

Uber cites unnamed NPS staff members who are concerned that “screens designed to shield the records from harsh light have been defective and temperatures inside the display case have repeatedly reached more than 80 degrees.”

For reference, the National Archives advises families to store their archives below 75 degrees, and it keeps its own display featuring the Constitution and Emancipation Proclamation at 67. A preservation specialist told Uber that historic documents should not be stored in environments exceeding 75 degrees, “and even then … that level of heat is only safe if humidity and light are carefully controlled.”

The documents at the Lincoln Memorial Undercroft carry Abraham Lincoln’s original signature, and—a detail perhaps more likely to move the Trump administration’s top brass—they’re worth millions of dollars.

An NPS spokesperson assured Uber in somewhat vague terms that the documents are “cared for.” But while on the scene at the undercroft, the reporter spied unsubtle evidence of the heat problem: a fan conspicuously directed toward the display case. “The Park Service did not respond to questions about why the fan was there,” Uber reports.

President Donald Trump’s protracted Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool saga may not be ending anytime soon. Records first reported Wednesday by The Independent offer a clue as to how long the public’s view of the monument may remain obstructed by fencing that currently surrounds the pool’s perimeter.

Trump’s renovations to the Reflecting Pool, including installing an “American flag blue” lining, have been dogged by algal blooms and peeling paint, requiring repeated drainings and refillings. Further, at least according to the president, progress has been stymied by left-wing vandals.

Meanwhile, the project’s price tag has rocketed from an initial estimate of $1.8 million to more than $16 million, and its deadline has been pushed from July 4 to who knows when.

Purportedly to fend off those alleged saboteurs, fencing now surrounds the pool. Workers have also added opaque mesh screens to the barrier. Chain-link fencing was first installed on June 23—more than three weeks ago as of Wednesday—by the Department of the Interior.

Records show that the federal government awarded an in-progress $37,000 contract to a construction company, National Construction Rentals, for “REFLECTING POOL TEMPORARY FENCE” that started last week. According to the contract summary, the contract is not set to end until January 8, 2027.

The revelation raises questions: Is the renovation going to take that long? Is the possibly illusory specter of left-wing defacement really expected to persist for almost half a year longer? If the administration’s past handling of the Reflecting Pool renovation is any indication, we’re not likely to get clear or sensible answers anytime soon.

The Trump administration is being sued over its sanctions on the International Criminal Court.

Two American nonprofits, Democracy for the Arab World Now, or DAWN, and the Taxpayer Alliance Against Genocide, or TAAG, sued White House officials in federal court Wednesday. The lawsuit is a response to President Trump’s February 2025 executive order, which placed sanctions on ICC judges, prosecutors, and Palestinian human rights groups seeking to investigate alleged U.S. and Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

The lawsuit alleges that the sanctions violate the Constitution’s First Amendment right to free speech and “unconstitutionally restrict Americans from seeking justice on Palestine at the ICC,” including by “limiting what Americans can say to an international tribunal or to foreign advocates, as well as by limiting their ability to associate with the sanctioned parties.”

As a result of Trump’s order, DAWN and TAAG said that they have avoided filing submissions to the ICC and working with those hit by the sanctions, like Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur for Palestine, out of fear of facing criminal charges themselves.

“The Trump administration is using the blunt instrument of economic sanctions not only to punish human rights defenders, but to police the political expression ​of millions of Americans,” said Omar Shakir, executive director of DAWN, in a statement.

Trump’s 2025 executive order followed a similar attempt to target the ICC in his first term. That attempt was blocked by a judge in 2020 and formally rescinded under President Biden in 2021. This lawsuit comes two days after Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the Trump administration would seek to dismantle the court, possibly through tools such as travel bans, visa revocations, increased sanctions against the ICC and its affiliates, and diplomatic pressure on countries to withdraw from the ICC.

In an op-ed column for The Wall Street Journal, Rubio called the court “a standing world tribunal with near-unlimited reach, empowered to override the courts and constitutions of the U.S. and other sovereign states—and to prosecute and arrest our citizens … backed and run by a powerful network of leftist nongovernment organizations, smug globalists, and hostile Third World governments united by their enmity toward the U.S.”

Late last month, three ICC judges sued the Trump administration over sanctions imposed against them, which left them unable to access any assets in the U.S. or engage in any transactions with American entities, including through the “provision of funds, goods or services.” Wednesday’s lawsuit seeks to protect Americans who are trying to seek justice for Palestine from the same fate.