By CATHY BUSSEWITZ

LINDEN, New Jersey (AP) — At a trucking school in New Jersey, students are maneuvering 18-wheelers around traffic cones. Other future drivers look under hoods to perform safety checks, narrating as they examine steering hoses for cracks and leaks.

An instructor glides between speaking Spanish and English as he teaches Manuel Castillo, a native Spanish speaker, how to inspect a school bus. They’re using a printed script of English phrases to practice what Castillo would say during a roadside inspection.

Brushing up on English has taken on new urgency for future and current truck drivers after President Donald Trump issued an executive order saying truckers who don’t read and speak the language proficiently would be considered unfit for service.

“A driver who can’t understand English will not drive a commercial vehicle in this country. Period,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said last month while announcing enforcement guidelines that take effect on Wednesday.

Updated U.S. Department of Transportation procedures call for enhanced inspections to determine if commercial motor vehicle operators can reply to questions and directions in English, as well as understand highway traffic signs and electronic message boards.

Truckers who learned English as a second language are concerned they may lose their jobs if they make a mistake or speak with a heavy accent while under questioning. Some have worked to improve their English fluency by taking classes, reciting scripts and watching instructional videos.

“If it’s not the language that you prefer to use daily, you may get a little nervous and you may feel, ‘What if I say the wrong thing?’” said Jerry Maldonado, chairman of the board of the Laredo Motor Carriers Association, a trade association in Laredo, Texas, that represents approximately 200 trucking companies. “It’s going to be, at the end of the day, the interpretation of the officer, so that makes people nervous.”

The guidance applies to truck and bus drivers engaged in interstate commerce. It aims to improve road safety following incidents in which truck drivers’ inability to read signs or speak English may have contributed to traffic deaths, the Transportation Department said.

English requirement isn’t new

Requiring truck drivers to speak and read English isn’t new, but the penalty for not meeting the proficiency standard is becoming more severe.

To get a commercial driver’s license, applicants must pass a written test and be able to name the parts of a bus or truck in English as they check tire inflation, tread depth, lug nuts and coolants.

The revised policy reverses guidance issued nine years ago, near the end of then-President Barack Obama’s final term, according to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. In 2016, the agency said drivers whose English skills were found lacking could receive a citation but not be prohibited from working. Before that, the penalty was getting placed on “out-of-service status.”

“We have bridges that get hit because drivers don’t understand the signs on the bridges for things like height clearance,” Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association President Todd Spencer said.

Practicing English phrases

In Laredo, a border city where many residents speak a mix of English and Spanish, Maldonado’s association is offering free English classes on weekends to help truckers feel more confident in their ability to communicate.

“Everybody knows what a stop sign looks like,” Maldonado said. “But if there’s construction or if there is an accident five miles down the road, and they have to put up a sign — ‘Caution, must exit now, road closed ahead,’ and you are not able to read that or understand that, that could potentially be a safety issue.”

At Driving Academy in Linden, New Jersey, multilingual instructors teach students how to inspect vehicle parts in their first language and then provide explanations in English, according to founder Jonathan Marques. The school created scripts so students could practice what to say if they’re stopped, he said.

Related Articles

Federal Reserve’s Bowman says rate cut should be on table in July

Compass files lawsuit against Zillow over private home listings policy

Why target-date funds are great IRA investments

With its stock in sharp decline, Trump’s media company will buy $400 million of its own shares

May home sales barely move as high mortgage rates, prices, weigh on housing market

Students are advised to watch training videos as homework, while licensed truckers can listen to English language apps instead of music when they’re on the road, Marques suggested.

Instructor Paul Cuartas helps students prepare but worries that inspectors will now expect truckers and bus drivers to have perfect English. “I’m concerned because now for all the Spanish people it’s more difficult,” he said.

Castillo, who moved to the U.S. from Ecuador in 1993, said he has no problem understanding English but has been watching videos to study industry terms. “Some words I don’t understand, but I try to learn more English,” he said.

Asked whether he supports the president’s executive order, Castillo said he voted for Trump but doesn’t agree with the president’s push to deport some immigrants who haven’t committed crimes.

“He makes a lot of problems, especially for Hispanic people,” Castillo said.

GTR Trucking School in Detroit also has offered students ESL classes. Co-owner Al Myftiu drove a truck after moving to the U.S. from Albania in 1993. He said he wants to create a small book of phrases that truckers need to learn.

For students with a thick accent, “I tell them, ‘Slow down, speak slowly and people can understand you, and if you don’t understand something, you can ask,’” Myftiu said.

How it will work

Roadside inspections can be initiated over issues such as a faulty brake light or on a routine basis, and often take place at weigh stations.

The guidance directs inspectors who suspect a driver doesn’t understand what they’re saying to administer an English proficiency test, which includes both an interview and a highway traffic sign recognition component.

In the past, some drivers used translation apps to communicate with federal inspectors. The updated policy bars the use of interpreters, smartphones, cue cards or other aids during interviews.

Several truck drivers taking a break at Flying J Travel Center in New Jersey said they support Trump’s order, adding that drivers who heavily rely on translation programs probably wouldn’t be able to read important signs.

“We try to ask them questions about the business just to strike a conversation, … and they’re not able to communicate with us at all,” Kassem Elkhatib, one of the drivers at Flying J, said.

Fear of discrimination

It’s unclear how safety inspectors will decide whether a driver knows enough English because that portion of the instructions was redacted from the guidance distributed by Transportation Department.

The department advised motor carriers that drivers should be able to answer questions about shipping documents, the origin and destination of trips, and how long they’ve been on duty.

A trucker placed out of service and the company they work for are responsible for ensuring a language violation is corrected before the driver hits the highway again, the Transportation Department said.

Truck drivers who practice the Sikh religion already face discrimination in hiring and at loading docks, according to Mannirmal Kaur, federal policy manager for Sikh Coalition, an advocacy group. Now they are worried about inspectors making subjective, non-standardized determinations about which of them are proficient in English, she said.

“A truck driver who does speak English sufficiently to comply with federal standards but maybe they speak with an accent, or maybe they use a different vocabulary that the inspector isn’t used to hearing: Is that person then going to be subject to an English language violation?” Kaur asked. “And under the new policy, are they then going to be designated out-of-service, which could result in unemployment?”

Video journalist Mingson Lau contributed from Carneys Point Township, New Jersey.

By ERIC TUCKER

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Department of Homeland Security is warning of a “heightened threat environment” following U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear sites and the deputy FBI director says the bureau’s “assets are fully engaged” to prevent retaliatory violence, while local law enforcement agencies in major cities like New York say they’re on high alert.

Related Articles

Today in History: June 24, Sally Ride completes historic space shuttle mission

Supreme Court will hear case of Rastafarian whose dreadlocks were shaved by Louisiana prison guards

Early-season heat dome brings highest temperatures in years to parts of Eastern US

Weekend tornadoes kill 6 in North Dakota and New York, toss trees and train cars

Search continues for 1 person still missing after 7 killed when boat capsized on Lake Tahoe

No credible threats to the homeland have surfaced publicly in the days since the stealth American attack. It’s also unclear what bearing a potential ceasefire announced Monday by the U.S. between Israel and Iran might have on potential threats or how lasting such an arrangement might be.

But the potential for reprisal is no idle concern given the steps Iran is accused of having taken in recent years to target political figures on U.S. soil. Iranian-backed hackers have also launched cyberattacks against U.S. targets in recent years.

The U.S. has alleged that Iran’s most common tactic over the past decade, rather than planning mass violence, has been murder-for-hire plots in which government officials recruit operatives — including reputed Russian mobsters and other non-Iranians — to kill public officials and dissidents. The plots, which Tehran has repeatedly denied engineering, have been consistently stymied and exposed by the FBI and Justice Department.

“You run into this problem that it’s not like there’s this one sleeper cell that’s connected directly to command central in Iran. There’s a lot of cut-outs and middlemen,” said Ilan Berman, a senior vice president of the Washington-based American Foreign Policy Council. “The competence erodes three layers down.”

Whether Iran intends to resort to that familiar method or has the capacity or ambition to successfully carry off a large-scale attack is unclear, but the government may feel a need to demonstrate to its people that it has not surrendered, said Jon Alterman, a Middle East expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“The capability to execute successfully is different from the capability to try,” he said. “Showing you’re not afraid to do this may be 90% part of the goal.”

Hours after the attack on Saturday evening U.S. time, FBI and DHS officials convened a call with local law enforcement to update them on the threat landscape, said Michael Masters, who participated in it as founding director of Secure Community Network, a Jewish security organization that tracks Iranian threats.

The DHS bulletin released over the weekend warned that several foreign terror organizations have called for violence against U.S. assets and personnel in the Middle East. It also warned of an increased likelihood that a “supporter of the Iranian regime is inspired to commit an act of violence in the Homeland.”

“The amount of material that we’re tracking online is at such a fever pitch at the moment,” Masters said.

A plot against President Donald Trump

The Justice Department in November disclosed that it had disrupted a plot to kill Donald Trump before the 2024 election, a reflection of the regime’s long-running outrage over a 2020 strike that killed Iranian Gen. Qassim Soleimani.

The scheme was revealed to law enforcement by an accused Iranian government asset who spent time in American prisons for robbery and who is alleged to maintain a network of criminal associates enlisted by Tehran for surveillance and murder-for-hire plots.

The man, Farhad Shakeri, told the FBI that a contact in Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard instructed him last September to set aside other work he was doing and assemble a plan within seven days to surveil and ultimately kill Trump, authorities have said.

He said the official told him if he could not put together a plan within that timeframe, then the plot would be paused until after the election because the official assumed Trump would lose and that it would be easier to kill him then, according to a criminal complaint.

Shakeri disclosed some of the details of the alleged plots in a series of recorded telephone interviews with FBI agents while in Iran, the complaint said. The stated reason for his cooperation, he told investigators, was to try to get a reduced prison sentence for an associate behind bars in the U.S. Shakeri is at large and has not been apprehended.

A plot against John Bolton

John Bolton was ousted from his position as Trump’s national security adviser months before the Soleimani strike, but he nonetheless found himself targeted in a plot that U.S. officials say was orchestrated by a member of the Revolutionary Guard and involved a $300,000 offer for an assassination.

Unbeknownst to the operative behind the plot, the man he thought he was hiring to carry out the killing was actually a confidential informant who was secretly working with the FBI.

The Justice Department filed criminal charges in August 2022 even as the operative, Shahram Poursafi, remained at large.

A plot against Masih Alinejad

Sometimes the intended target is not a U.S. government official but rather a dissident or critic of the Iranian government.

That was the case with Masih Alinejad, a prominent Iranian American journalist and activist in New York who was targeted by Iran for her online campaigns encouraging women there to record videos of themselves exposing their hair in violation of edicts requiring they cover it in public.

Two purported crime bosses in the Russian mob were convicted in March of plotting to assassinate her at her home in New York City in a murder-for-hire scheme that prosecutors said was financed by Iran’s government.

Prosecutors said Iranian intelligence officials first plotted in 2020 and 2021 to kidnap her in the U.S. and move her to Iran to silence her criticism.

When that failed, Iran offered $500,000 for Alinejad to be killed in July 2022 after efforts to harass, smear and intimidate her failed, prosecutors said.

A plot against a Saudi ambassador

Underscoring the longstanding nature of the threat, federal prosecutors in 2011 accused two suspected Iranian agents of trying to murder the Saudi ambassador to the United States.

The planned bomb attack was to be carried out while envoy Adel Al-Jubeir dined at his favorite restaurant in Washington.

And as is common in such plots, the person approached for the job was not an Iranian but rather someone who was thought to be an associate of a Mexican drug trafficking cartel who was actually an informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration.

NEW YORK (AP) — Oil prices are dropping further, and stocks are rallying worldwide Tuesday on hopes that Israel’s war with Iran will not damage the global flow of crude, even if a tentative truce seemed to fray under fire in the morning.

The S&P 500 was 0.7% higher in early trading, following up on even bigger gains for stocks across Europe and Asia, after President Donald Trump said late Monday that Israel and Iran had agreed to a “complete and total ceasefire.” The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 289 points, or 0.7%, as of 9:31 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.9% higher.

The strongest action was again in the oil market, where a barrel of benchmark U.S. oil fell 4.9% to $65.12. Brent crude, the international standard, dropped 4.8% to $67.14.

The fear throughout the Israel-Iran conflict has been that it could squeeze the world’s supply of oil, which would pump up prices for gasoline and hurt the global economy. Iran is a major producer of crude, and it could also try to block the Strait of Hormuz off its coast, through which 20% of the world’s daily oil needs passes on ships.

But oil prices began falling sharply on Monday after Iran launched what appeared to be a limited retaliatory strike that did not target the production or movement of oil. They kept falling even after attacks continued past a deadline to stop hostilities early Tuesday. Trump would later said that the ceasefire was “in effect.”

Oil prices have dropped so much in the last two days that they’re below where they were before the fighting began nearly two weeks ago.

With the global oil market well supplied and the OPEC+ alliance of producing countries steadily increasing production, oil prices could be headed even lower as long as the ceasefire holds and a lasting peace solution can be found, said Carsten Fritsch, commodities analyst at Commerzbank.

Falling oil prices should take some pressure off inflation, and that in turn could give the Federal Reserve more leeway to cut interest rates.

Wall Street loves lower rates because they can give the economy a boost by making it cheaper for U.S. households and businesses to borrow money to buy a car or build a factory. But they could also give inflation more fuel. That latter threat is why the Fed has been hesitant to cut rates this year after lowering them through the end of last year.

The Fed has been saying repeatedly that it wants to wait and see how much Trump’s tariffs will hurt the economy and raise inflation before it commits to its next move.

Trump, though, has been pushing for more cuts to rates. And two of his appointees to the Fed have said in the last week that they may consider cutting rates as soon as the Fed’s next meeting next month.

Related Articles

Federal Reserve’s Bowman says rate cut should be on table in July

Compass files lawsuit against Zillow over private home listings policy

Why target-date funds are great IRA investments

With its stock in sharp decline, Trump’s media company will buy $400 million of its own shares

May home sales barely move as high mortgage rates, prices, weigh on housing market

Fed Chair Jerome Powell remains more cautious. He said again in prepared testimony set to be delivered to Congress later in the morning that the Fed is “well positioned to wait to learn more about the likely course of the economy before considering any adjustments to our policy stance.”

Such mixed messages had Treasury yields swiveling up and down in the bond market, but not moving all that much ultimately. The yield on the 10-year Treasury edged up to 4.35% from 4.34% late Monday.

The two-year Treasury yield, which more closely tracks expectations for Fed action, edged up to 3.85% from 3.84%.

In stock markets abroad, indexes rallied more than 1% everywhere from France to Germany to Japan following the announcement of the Israel-Iran ceasefire. Hong Kong’s jump of 2.1% and South Korea’s leap of 3% were two of the strongest moves.

By CHRIS RUGABER, AP Economics Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Federal Reserve will continue to wait and see how the economy evolves before deciding whether to reduce its key interest rate, Chair Jerome Powell said Tuesday, a stance directly at odds with President Donald Trump’s calls for immediate cuts.

“For the time being, we are well positioned to wait to learn more about the likely course of the economy before considering any adjustments to our policy stance,” Powell said in prepared remarks he will deliver Tuesday before the House Financial Services Committee.

Powell is facing two days of what could be tough grilling on Capitol Hill, as Trump has repeatedly urged the Fed to reduce borrowing costs. Powell has often received a positive reception before House and Senate committees that oversee the Fed, or at least muted criticism. Powell has also often cited his support in Congress as a bulwark against Trump’s attacks, but that support could wane under the president’s ongoing assaults.

Trump lashed out again early Tuesday, posting on his social media site: “I hope Congress really works this very dumb, hardheaded person, over. We will be paying for his incompetence for many years to come.”

In February, the last time Powell appeared before Congress, Rep. French Hill, the Arkansas Republican who chairs the financial services committee, urged Powell to ensure inflation returned to the Fed’s target of 2%, which typically requires keeping rates elevated.

Powell said in his written testimony that “ increases in tariffs this year are likely to push up prices and weigh on economic activity.”

He said the bump to inflation from tariffs could be temporary, or it could lead to a more persistent bout of inflation.

The Fed’s “obligation,” Powell said, “is … to prevent a one-time increase in the price level from becoming an ongoing inflation problem.”

The Fed’s 19-member interest rate setting committee, led by the chair, decides whether to cut or raise borrowing costs. They typically increase rates to cool the economy to fight or prevent inflation, and lower rates when the economy is weak to boost borrowing and spending.

The Fed’s committee voted unanimously last week to keep its key rate unchanged, though the Fed also released forecasts of future rate cuts that revealed emerging divisions among the policymakers. Seven projected no rate cuts at all this year, two just one, while 10 forecast at least two reductions.

At a news conference last week, Powell suggested the Fed would monitor how the economy evolves over the summer in response to Trump’s tariffs and other policies before deciding whether to cut rates. His comments suggested a rate reduction wouldn’t occur until September.

Yet two high-profile members of the Fed’s governing board, Michelle Bowman and Christopher Waller, have since suggested the central bank could cut its rate as early as its next meeting in July. Both officials were appointed by Trump during his first term and Waller is often mentioned as a potential replacement for Powell when his term ends next May. Powell was also appointed by Trump in late 2017.

Trump is urging the Fed to cut rates to save the U.S. government money on its interest payments affixed to the vast national debt. Yet the Fed has long resisted considering the government’s financing costs when making interest rate decisions, preferring instead to focus on the health of the economy and inflation.

Related Articles

Federal Reserve’s Bowman says rate cut should be on table in July

Compass files lawsuit against Zillow over private home listings policy

Why target-date funds are great IRA investments

With its stock in sharp decline, Trump’s media company will buy $400 million of its own shares

May home sales barely move as high mortgage rates, prices, weigh on housing market

Waller, in a television interview Friday, said that lowering the government’s borrowing costs is “not our job” and added that it was up to Congress and the White House to reduce the budget deficit.

Trump meanwhile, on social media Tuesday repeated his claim that the European Central Bank has cut its key rate ten times, while the Fed has not cut at all. In fact, in the last 12 months the ECB has reduced its rate eight times and the Fed has done so three times, all late last year.

The Fed’s cuts last year lowered its rate to about 4.3%. Yet since then it has put reductions on pause out of concern that Trump’s tariffs could push up inflation. The president has slapped a 10% duty on all imports, along with an additional 30% levy on goods from China, 50% on steel and aluminum, and 25% on autos.

Yet inflation has steadily cooled this year despite widespread concerns among economists about the impact of tariffs. The consumer price index ticked up just 0.1% from April to May, the government said last week, a sign that price pressures are muted.

Prices for some goods rose last month, but the cost for many services such as air fares and hotels fell, offsetting any tariff impact. Compared with a year ago, prices rose 2.4% in May, up from 2.3% in April.