Making our highways safe

More Than 550 Commercial Driving Schools to Close After Checks by Transportation Department

The five-day, on-site investigations yielded hundreds of notices of proposed removals, alleging the schools failed to meet the agency’s basic safety standards.

The Department of Transportation announced on Feb. 18 the removal of certifications for more than 550 U.S. commercial driving schools that train truckers and bus drivers.

The schools were employing unqualified instructors, using fraudulent addresses, and failing to properly train applicants for transporting hazardous materials, investigators found.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration deployed more than 300 investigators across all 50 states to conduct more than 1,400 safety operations.

After the investigation revealed hundreds of safety violations, the agency served notices to more than 550 schools informing them of their proposed removal from the national training provider registry, including one school that had previously provided training for operating school buses.

The announcement is the latest development in the Trump administration’s crackdown on the commercial driving training provider industry, following the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s nationwide audit last year.

The Transportation Department also imposed stricter English-language skills requirements for commercial truckers, resulting in more than 9,500 being removed from service for failing proficiency checks.

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Carnival wants relief from Environmental crimes/fines

Carnival hires D.C. lobbying firm to seek ‘relief’ from Trump regime for past environmental crimes

Yet as billions in revenue keep rolling in, redemption for the titanic company’s environmental sins have seemed less than urgent to chairman Micky Arison and his management crew.

Why? It’s a long and dirty story.

In 2017, Miami-based Carnival was fined a record $40 million after pleading guilty to federal felony charges that one of its Princess Cruise Lines vessels deliberately dumped thousands of gallons of oil-contaminated waste into the ocean near England and then falsified records to try and cover it up.

Two years later, Carnival and Princess got hit with another $20 million criminal penalty after admitting to six violations of probation “attributable to senior Carnival management” that included discharging plastic waste in Bahamian waters and for interfering with court-ordered independent inspections.

In 2022, Princess was fined an additional $1 million after pleading guilty to a second violation of probation for failing to establish an independent internal investigative office.

Carnival’s continued failure to fix the problem reflects “a culture that seeks to minimize or avoid information that is negative, uncomfortable, or threatening to the company, including top leadership (i.e. the Board of Directors, C-Suite executives and Brand Presidents/CEOs),” the court-appointed monitor and independent third-party auditor told U.S. District Judge Patricia Seitz in an October 2021 letter.

In July 2025, in a much-smaller offense that has gone largely unnoticed, the California Air Resources Board assessed a $28,000 penalty against Carnival’s Princess Cruise Lines for failing to use fuel within the state’s sulfur content limits when two of its ships entered the ports of San Diego and Los Angeles.

At the same time, perhaps seeking to get in on the action as President Trump wields his clemency power to help both human and corporate criminals, Carnival has hired a Washington lobbying firm to seek “administrative relief for environmental violations issued by EPA and DOJ.”

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Accountability Comes Knocking in Georgia

Stacey Abrams’ Nonprofit Implodes Amid Corruption Scandal

After years of headlines, fundraising drives, and carefully polished “voting rights” messaging, Stacey Abrams’ nonprofit, the New Georgia Project, is finally shutting down. The group’s board released a self-congratulatory statement full of glowing language about “milestones” and “community engagement,” but the reality is less inspiring.

This wasn’t a nonprofit that ran out of mission—it ran out of excuses. For a decade, Abrams’ political machine operated in the gray area between activism and campaign work, using lofty slogans to mask some very questionable behavior.

The Georgia Senate wasn’t buying the PR spin, and their patience finally wore thin. Lawmakers opened a serious investigation into the New Georgia Project’s finances and campaign coordination, and it’s the same Senate panel also digging into Fulton County DA Fani Willis’ politically charged prosecution of President Donald Trump.

That overlap isn’t coincidence—it’s a sign that Georgia’s political watchdogs are starting to notice the same familiar fingerprints on a lot of “progressive” projects. The investigation zeroed in on potential campaign finance violations and questionable firings inside Abrams’ nonprofit, raising new doubts about what the group was really up to behind closed doors.

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Hamas Terrorists claims Israel violated terms of Gaza ceasefire deal

Hamas Suspends Hostage Release

Hamas announced on its Telegram account on Monday that it is canceling the release of hostages on February 15 until further notice due to an Israeli violation.

In light of Hamas’s announcement, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu consulted with top security officials and has moved the security cabinet meeting to earlier on Tuesday, with it now being scheduled to take place at 11:00 a.m. local time.

One Israeli official told The Jerusalem Post that, in his view, Hamas did not attempt to sabotage the deal in its latest statement.

Another official told the Post that Hamas’s allegations of Israeli violations of the ceasefire agreement are “fake,” further arguing that the terror group could be attempting to reignite the conversation over a second phase.

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