Politics
18 U.S.C. Section 31 defines motor vehicle as a vehicle used for commercial purposes. Congress wrote that. Not a fringe website. Congress. So why is every American paying a fee to drive their own vehicle for their own private purposes?
NewsOnScale Staff
August 21, 2026
Most Americans have never read 18 U.S.C. Section 31. Most politicians have not either. But buried in the federal criminal code is a definition that raises a question nobody in Washington wants to answer.
Congress defined motor vehicle as "every description of carriage or other contrivance propelled or drawn by mechanical power and used for commercial purposes on the highways in the transportation of passengers, passengers and property, or property or cargo."
And Congress defined "used for commercial purposes" as "the carriage of persons or property for any fare, fee, rate, charge or other consideration, or directly or indirectly in connection with any business, or other undertaking intended for profit."
Read that carefully. The federal government's own statutory definition of motor vehicle requires commercial use. A vehicle used for profit. A vehicle carrying passengers for fare. A vehicle transporting property for hire.
Not a father driving his kids to school. Not a farmer driving to town. Not a worker driving to their job. Not a family taking a road trip.
Congress wrote that. Not a fringe website. Not a political movement. Congress of the United States of America wrote it into federal law.
So why is every American paying a fee to drive their own vehicle for their own private purposes?
The Right to Travel Is Not in Dispute
The Supreme Court has repeatedly and clearly recognized travel as a constitutionally protected right. It is not a privilege the government grants. It is a right Americans hold by virtue of being Americans.
In Murdock v. Pennsylvania, 319 U.S. 105 (1943) the Supreme Court ruled that no state shall convert a liberty into a license and charge a fee therefore.
In Shuttlesworth v. City of Birmingham, 373 U.S. 262 the Court ruled that if the state converts a right into a privilege the citizen can ignore the license and fee and engage in the right with impunity.
The right to travel — to move freely, to go where you need to go, to live your life — is among the most fundamental liberties Americans possess. It predates the Constitution. It is recognized in the Fourteenth Amendment. It has been affirmed by the Supreme Court in cases stretching back more than 150 years.
Nobody serious disputes that Americans have a constitutional right to travel.
The Question Nobody Is Asking
The question is not whether Americans have the right to travel. They do.
The question is whether states have the constitutional authority to license and tax that right when the federal government's own statutory framework distinguishes between commercial transport — motor vehicles used for profit — and private travel.
When a trucking company moves freight for hire that is commercial transport. Federal law calls that a motor vehicle operation and regulates it extensively. The commercial operator pays fees, maintains licenses, submits to inspections, and operates under a comprehensive regulatory framework designed for commercial activity.
When a citizen drives their own vehicle to work, to the grocery store, to their child's school, to visit their parents — that is private travel. It is not commercial. No fare is charged. No profit is made. No business is conducted.
The federal government's own statutory language acknowledges this distinction. 18 U.S.C. Section 31 defines motor vehicle in commercial terms. Congress drew the line between commercial transport and private travel. Congress put that distinction into law.
The question is why states have been allowed to collapse that distinction — treating every American's private travel as if it were commercial transport subject to licensing fees, registration taxes, and the full apparatus of commercial motor vehicle regulation.
What a President Can Do
A president cannot unilaterally eliminate state driver licensing. States have independent constitutional authority under their police powers. Any honest answer to this question acknowledges that.
But a president has significant tools:
Direct the Department of Transportation to formally recognize the distinction between commercial motor vehicle operations and private travel in federal regulations — clarifying what the federal statutory framework already says.
Work with Congress to clarify the federal framework and create a constitutional basis for protecting private travel from state licensing regimes that exceed their authority under the federal structure.
Use the bully pulpit to make this a national conversation. The president of the United States citing 18 U.S.C. Section 31 and asking why states are taxing a constitutional right is a conversation that cannot be ignored.
Appoint federal judges who take the right to travel seriously and who will apply the Murdock and Shuttlesworth principles to modern licensing challenges.
Direct the Department of Justice to evaluate whether state licensing regimes that extend beyond commercial transport authority raise federal constitutional questions under the Fourteenth Amendment's Privileges or Immunities Clause and the recognized right to travel.
The Broader Pattern
This is not an isolated question. It fits a pattern that anyone paying attention can see.
Government has systematically converted natural rights into licensed privileges and charged Americans for the conversion. The right to travel became a licensed privilege. The right to earn a living became a licensed privilege. The right to build on your own land became a permitted privilege. The right to communicate became a regulated privilege subject to platform terms of service.
At every step the government or the private interests that captured it found a way to insert itself between the citizen and the exercise of their natural rights — and charge a fee for the insertion.
The federal definition of motor vehicle is one example. A small one in the scale of things. But it is documented. It is in the statute. Congress wrote it. And it raises a question that every American who has ever paid a registration fee or renewed a driver's license deserves to have answered honestly.
Why are you paying to exercise a right?
A Presidential Candidate Is Asking
JJ Johnson is a declared candidate for President of the United States in 2028. He is a Dixie County, Florida farmer who built ten deployed technology products independently — including quantum safe payment infrastructure, quantum safe voting infrastructure, and a crowdsourced government transparency platform — without investors, without a team, and without the approval of the concentrated interests that fund most presidential campaigns.
He is asking the question because he has read the statute. Because he understands the distinction between commercial activity and private liberty. Because he has personally experienced what happens when government and private platforms collude to suppress a citizen's rights — his presidential campaign website has been blacklisted on X, his accounts have been suspended five times, his videos have been systematically denied, and an unidentified helicopter with no transponder has circled his home.
A candidate who has lived the consequences of unchecked institutional power asking why Congress defined motor vehicle in commercial terms while states license every American's private travel is not making a fringe argument.
He is reading the law. He is asking the question. He is demanding an answer.
JJ Johnson is the founder of AMILLI AI, CORP, which operates NewsOnScale, and is a declared candidate for President of the United States in 2028. The statutory citations in this article are accurate and publicly verifiable at law.cornell.edu. This article represents the editorial position of NewsOnScale and the political platform of JJ Johnson for President 2028. It is not legal advice.