Starting tomorrow in the US - you can fly without Real ID but it won't be easy.

post 9/11 there was a push to standardize all state IDs (including driver licenses, which is the form of ID most Americans carry) into a uniform standard developed by the feds.

there was enough pushback within certain states from the crank demographic that this was a federal government / mark of the beast conspiracy that many states began to resist it by refusing to comply and conform for years. it was a way to excite the base to grandstand against the federal ID.

eventually, the holdout states were told that their state IDs would not be compliant and could not be used for boarding planes. the workaround would be to maintain a passport, which does work as kind of a universal ID within the US. so this has never affected wealthier citizens in resistant states, who of course have all the right travel documents.

resistant states did ultimately offer compliant state IDs, but they cost extra and, at least at first, required applicants to travel to just one or two cities in the state to apply for one. completely unreasonable and onerous.

anyway, it's hilarious that it is still so cocked up. this is how deeply antagonistic states in the US can be towards working with each other in terms of paperwork. which, considering how deeply evil some states are towards their residents and they ways they prefer to abuse them, is par for the course.

RealID has documentation requirements that amount to that needed for a passport so they can do fed things with it. And in typical American fashion, they charge you $50+ for the privilege and still don't even give you a passport, just a new driver's license.