DEI Deadlier Than DUI? Biden Transportation Policies Lead To Major Interstate Pileup

April 11th, 2025 Leland Freeman

Fatal crashes involving 18-wheelers are often blamed on intoxicated drivers. And that’s often absolutly the case.
One of the gnarliest pileups in recent memory — a semi-truck which plowed through 18 vehicles just outside of Austin, Texas in March, with three adults, one child, and a baby dying at the scene — seemed to be yet another incident involving an impaired truck driver. An estimated $150 million in legal damages are being sought in one of the year’s worst crashes.
But the suspected truck driver’s toxicology came back clean. Yet he was also found to be unqualified because he hastily received his commercial driver’s license due to a DEI policy.

This particular stretch of Interstate Highway 35, a main artery stretching from Texas to Minnesota, also does not apparently have an emergency shoulder following recent widening efforts.

The fingers are being pointed at all levels.

First, the facts …

At 11:30 p.m. March 13, an 18-wheeler owned by ZBN Transport LLC (contracted by Amazon Logistics)  crashed into eighteen vehicles that were stuck in traffic going south On I-35 going south between Parmer and Howard Lane. The suspected driver, Solomun Weldekeal Araya, 37, was initially charged with five counts of intoxicated manslaughter and two counts of intoxicated assault in connection with the crash. It wasn’t until early April 2025 when the toxicology results came back as clean with no drugs alcohol or marijuana in Araya’s system and he was sober.  His attorney advocated for a lowered bond and release from jail due to that fact.

What also came out since the crash is that Araya was issued a “Non Domicile CDL,” a commercial driver’s license that is a special issuance to individuals who are not residents of the United States but who are legally present in the United States for seeking to operate commercial vehicles.  These non-domicile CDLs were issued by the Biden administration like candy regardless of the qualifications of the drivers themselves, allegedly to help ease supply chain woes and a shortage of drivers.

Then some questions …

This brings up the question: Are the standards for these non-resident aliens the same as residents and citizens of the United States, or are they watered down due to DEI?  The answer to that is clear since Araya was videoed shortly after the crash:

 

What observers at the scene originally thought was drunken gibberish may have been an attempt at communication as Araya does not seem to understand or communicate in English in an effective manner.
Another disturbing fact is these non-domicile CDLs were also apparently given out without even verifying the identity of the driver themselves.

The initial labeling of a DUI was cover for the fact that the driver was sober but unqualified.  And since Araya Is a foreign national there is great concern that if he is released from jail on bond that he will skip the country because he is a flight risk.

With transportation safety, any  claim and regulation needs to be data driven, and the facts also show that 80% of trucking accidents seem to be caused by the holders of non-domicile CDLs.

… where standards have been ignored with regards to qualifications due to DEI policies …

 

The other side of the story is the condition of I-35 is a death trap through the Austin area. The Texas Department of Transportation manages the construction of all Texas highways and with I-35 they have created a temporary configuration where both the north and southbound lanes have been pushed together into the space of only half the road.
Six lanes are in the place of what used to be three and the width of the lanes has been narrowed, The section of the road where the crash had occurred had been reduced further down to one lane according the the NTSB.

While according to photos of the crash there were emergency shoulders on the left side of I35, there were none on the right side of I35 and further south there are no emergency shoulders at all.
TxDOT’s rationale is this is the quickest way to widen the freeway by temporarily removing the road from half the right-of-way but in reality has created a very unsafe road with no breakdown lanes with no way to pull off of a vehicle stalls which is the very environment where this crash happened. No one could get out of the way and since this is an interstate the Department of Transportation signed off on this configuration.  In a report by Austin TX NBC Affiliate KXAN on April 10, 2025, detailing the NTSB’s latest preliminary report which states that the truck hit two vehicles immediately, then traveled another 0.1 miles or 528 feet striking the other sixteen vehicles.  What was also touched on in this report is the attorney for Araya stated that there has not been any update to the charges from the Travis County District Attorney’s Office and that the charges related to DUI are still in effect and have yet to be dropped.

Trying to label the crash as DUI hides the fact that this section of I-35 is unsafe, just as much as it hides the fact that the driver was unqualified and was only given a license due to DEI.
Regarding the qualifications of the driver to be able to read and comprehend English, there used to be a English language requirements for CDL holders not unlike the English language requirement for FAA pilot ratings which is an international standard set by ICAO since 2008.  However The Obama administration rescinded the English proficiency requirement for CDL holders in 2016.

This prompted Members of Congress to propose legislation mandating that CDL holders need to read and comprehend English fluently.

In this new era of DOGE, We can only hope that these actual facts actually get up the chain of command at the Department of Transportation to Secretary Sean Duffy himself. First, the condition of I-35 itself and why such a heavily trafficked road was allowed to be in such an unsafe configuration during this construction that is going to last several years. Second, are the non-domicile CDLs and DOT medical certifications that are being handed out like candy due to DEI.

Look to the skies, too

On a related note regarding our nation’s pilot shortage an an uptick in dangerous situations: Why is it that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA, also under the Department of Transportation) has been allowed to create a medical purgatory of red tape when DOT seems to have no standards for commercial vehicle drivers, who are often screened by the same doctors?
There’s a clear double-standard at play: the FAA is cognitively profiling pilots who were taken out of the skies following simple discoveries like ADHD in elementary school or seeing a doctor for a routine heart screening. Meanwhile, non-domicile CDL drivers are handed medical certificates with no scrutiny.
If nothing else, this entire situation proves that the DOT/FAA medical certificate process is more political than about safety of transportation and should be abolished — whether it’s DOT on the roads or FAA in the skies. Anyway you shake it, people have died because of DEI and this won’t be the last time unless the policies change.

It’s time for these commercial transport jobs to go back to U.S. citizens and vetted green card holders.  It’s time to abolish the bias against qualified citizens and the bias towards unqualified non-domical migrants, leveling the playing fields for all regarding qualifications and DOT/FAA medical certifications, ending the weaponization of the medical certificate process.

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