FIRST ON FOX: A Senate Republican is moving to advance one of President Donald Trump’s key State of the Union requests but says he doesn’t expect Senate Democrats to support it.
“The Dems are not acting rationally these days,” Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, told Fox News Digital. “And, of course, anything that they think is something that Trump would support or likes they sort of reflexively oppose.”
Cornyn plans to introduce legislation that would bar illegal immigrants from obtaining commercial driver’s licenses (CDLs) — a move Trump directly called for during his address Tuesday night, which received little reaction from congressional Democrats.
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The bill is named Dalilah’s Law after Dalilah Coleman, a young girl who suffered life-altering injuries in a 2024 crash in California allegedly caused by Partap Singh, an illegal immigrant from India who was driving a tractor-trailer.
Trump addressed the incident during his State of the Union speech and argued that “many, if not most, illegal aliens do not speak English and cannot read even the most basic road signs as to direction, speed, danger or location.”
“That’s why tonight, I’m calling on Congress to pass what we will call the Dalilah Law, barring any state from granting commercial driver’s licenses to illegal aliens,” Trump said.
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Like most legislation in the Senate, it would need Democratic support to clear the 60-vote filibuster threshold. Cornyn said he hoped, but did not expect, any Democrats to cross the aisle to back it.
“I mean, in a normal world, this would not be controversial,” Cornyn said. “But like the president said last night, ‘Those people are crazy.’”
That could be because the legislation would primarily affect blue states, such as California, whose commercial licensing standards have come under scrutiny from the Trump administration.
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Cornyn’s bill would require states to verify applicants through E-Verify before issuing a CDL. It would also penalize noncompliant states by making them ineligible for certain federal transportation grants and would create a federal felony offense for an illegal immigrant who travels in interstate or foreign commerce using a CDL.
The lawmaker described the legislation as building on Trump’s broader immigration agenda, particularly by removing what he views as an incentive for immigrants to enter the country illegally.
He noted that U.S. Border Patrol officials often discuss immigration in terms of push and pull factors. A push factor for illegal immigration includes people leaving their home countries because of poverty or “wanting a better life,” Cornyn said.
“You know, we all understand that,” Cornyn said. “But they talk about the pull factors, or the things that we do here that make it more likely that people will come to the country illegally, and this would be one of them.”