When Congress passed the law to federally standardize the identification requirements to board a domestic flight, I was 9 years old. Now that I am almost 30, the Trump administration is finally allowing this 2005 legislation to go into effect.
Go into any airport in America, and you’ll see Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s doll-like visage gently lecture us that starting on May 7, travelers will need a so-called Real ID to board a flight if they aren’t otherwise using a passport. A Real ID is just a driver’s license or state ID, but one that requires proof of citizenship or lawful residence, a Social Security number or evidence that the applicant is not eligible for one, and proof of the applicant’s name, date of birth, and residential address. The rest of the security standards are all burdens on the state, not the Real ID applicants themselves. While the state must store the ID photo and cross-reference the veracity of the applicant’s submission, the Real ID looks, feels, and operates no differently than the same license most of us have had for decades. If you have renewed your license at any point in the last eight years, like the majority of people, you probably have a Real ID. You can check to see if your ID has a little star in the top right corner, and also note that Real ID is required to enter a few select federal facilities, not just flights.
For some reason, everyone is freaking out about this. Despite Kentucky achieving Real ID certification nearly six years ago, state senators are now haranguing Noem to postpone the deadline, even though it has already been pushed back multiple times since it was supposed to go into effect in 2008. A bipartisan coalition in Maine is trying to pass a law that claims it would opt the state out of Real ID entirely. Left-wing organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union continue to brand the law as racist and discriminatory, and libertarian Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) has called upon Trump to refuse to enforce the law.
But here’s the thing: Everything you hate about Real ID is just what you hate about the Transportation Security Administration and the Department of Motor Vehicles, and Massie and company have nobody in the world to blame other than Congress. If Massie wants to be able to board a flight without a Real ID, he should get his colleagues to pass a law to do it, and while they’re at it, maybe abolish the far bigger violation of civil liberties and heartbreaking waste of money, the TSA.
In fact, Trump refusing to enforce the law as written would be a far greater abuse of executive power than the alternative.
MILLIONS DO NOT HAVE A REAL ID. HERE’S WHAT TO KNOW BEFORE THE MAY DEADLINE
The REAL ID Act allows the homeland security secretary to grant an extension to a state only if the state “provides adequate justification for noncompliance” with Real ID certification. But all 50 states have been certified compliant for half a decade now. Noem would have no legal justification to delay enforcing the requirement. Refusing to do so would be an actual overstep of executive power.
Congress can and should dramatically scale back the power of the Department of Homeland Security and eliminate the TSA entirely. But it’s not up to Noem to bail lawmakers out of the responsibility of doing their jobs. If five years wasn’t long enough for you to get your Real ID, let alone 20 years to prepare for the possibility, get Congress to fix it, not Trump to enact another temporary extension for a permanent problem.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
