> I personally have a hard time believing that a “Real” ID that does not verify citizenship or residency is meaningfully different from my current one.

I guess that's because you haven't renewed your driver's license yet?

I did last year, precisely because I had to fly, and had to bring a bunch of new documentation I never needed for my previous driver's licenses, including, yes, multiple proofs of both citizenship and residency, and then had to go through a whole additional process because of a slight name discrepancy between documents that they had to get a supervisor to make a judgment call on. It's a totally different verification process that is actually quite meaningfully different.