It helps that this one was entirely pointless except for generating more contracts to hand to pals, like a lot of the stuff around that time—say, when they created Homeland Security rather than just beefing up existing structures that served similar purposes (easier to direct contracts to friends and companies you own large stakes in when you’re setting up a totally new department with an excuse to get all-new everything!)

Like this doesn’t actually matter, at all, for security purposes. Which is why nobody’s cared enough to make it go faster.

> What is it with America and laws being pushed off indefinitely?

For this specific regulation, it's illegal to prevent someone who passes physical security screening and has paid their fare from boarding a plane.

So, if FedGov didn't provide a mechanism that they could point to that technically doesn't require passengers to present ID to board domestic fights, then they're still technically compliant with the law.

That's why TSA hasn't been able to just say "Fuck you, you don't get to fly if you don't have a federally-issued internal passport.".

> For this specific regulation, it's illegal to prevent someone who passes physical security screening and has paid their fare from boarding a plane.

Cite? Not that I'm doubting, just never heard this mentioned during the last news cycle around REAL ID when it "went in to effect" months ago. I didn't really look in to it any further as I've had a compliant ID for long enough it expires next year plus a passport so it didn't affect me.

Gilmore v. Gonzales (2006) sort of dealt with this. Dude wanted to fly, refused to present ID, refused the heightened security check, was told he couldn't fly. He sued, it went to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court ruled that because the heightened security check was an option, the claimant's freedom of movement was not restricted.

There's a bunch of case law about freedom of movement, which is pretty radically protected in the United States. Not only can the federal government not put up unreasonable impediments to interstate travel, individual states and even private companies can't, either. Since American's aren't required to have ID (interestingly, this might be more political than legal, I can't find any case law enshrining the right to not have ID, just a lot of public outcry and backpedaling any time it's suggested), requiring one to travel interstate would be a significant impediment.

In this case the problem is that the fed is the one who runs the TSA and created the Real ID rules, but the states are the ones that actually issue the IDs meeting those rules. The fed couldn't force the states to implement the rules and the states didn't want to spend money on something they didn't really care about.

Of course, they didn't really care about it because it's mostly just security theater and thus the fed was never going to start turning people away simply for not having a compliant ID (which is still true). If there were much more valid reasons for why everybody needs to have a Real ID then states would have put more effort into getting everybody to have one.

There's also the separate the issue that the Real ID rules are questionable and it's not always easy for someone to get a Real ID even if they want one.

In this particular case, it's because Americans have somewhat unusual deep-seated distrust of our own government, which has lead to pretty well-organized opposition to any federally mandated form of identification. Officially, the only two real semi-universal lists of American citizens available to the federal government are A) Social Security numbers (which aren't ID, they're just a unique identifier, and aren't legally mandated, just incentivized), and B) The Selective Service Registry, which IS legally mandated, but only for fighting age men. (Fun fact: this is why American men still need to register for the draft, despite the US not having a draft since Vietnam. This registration does not suggest that the US is any closer to re-instating the draft than any other country that eliminated their draft, as it would still take an act of congress, just as most countries can reinstate their draft with an act of parliament. The reason we have to register is that officially, the federal government otherwise has no idea who is even eligible to be drafted).

> What is it with America and laws being pushed off indefinitely? Do other countries have similar problems?

Well, it’s a big country that is really kind of like 50 different smaller countries that do a lot of important things in a common manner but also do a lot of other things in very different ways. It’s hard to get all 50 states to move in the same direction.

There's 50 governments responsible for implementing this law. A few more I guess. Not 2 branches.