A stroke of the pen makes it final: President Bush signed into law the Iraq war supplemental, which includes a controversial provision giving the secretary of homeland security the power to waive all law when securing U.S. borders. The provision was conceived originally in the previous Congress as a measure to give DHS the power to waive several specified environmental laws in order to expedite construction of fencing in the San Diego area. Reps. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) and David Dreier (R-CA) pushed an expanded version in the conference committee working on the 9/11 bill, which almost failed to reach an agreement until House GOP leadership promised that an immigration reform bill would be a top priority in this Congress. That promise was realized early when the 109th Congress convened. The House moved quickly to pass H.R. 418 (the REAL ID Act), an immigration bill better known for restricting the rights of persons seeking asylum and for implementing more stringent national standards for driver's licenses. The Hunter/Dreier language from the previous Congress was included as section 102 of that bill. The REAL ID Act faced an uncertain future in the Senate, so House Republicans guaranteed its passage by attaching that bill as a rider to the emergency supplemental spending bill for the Iraq war. Although some in the Senate at first threatened to delay the spending bill unless the REAL ID Act rider was stripped from it, the Senate Democrats caved into the political pressure to pass the Iraq spending bill at all costs. The fix was in when Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) told the press, "I've had a senator come to me and say, 'We're going to filibuster this.' I said, 'Get real. It's not going to happen. It's a defense bill.'" A USA Today story that was first to report Reid's concession is also an example of a larger pattern of incomplete reporting that has failed to inform the public of the imminent passage of this provision to give Homeland Security the power to waive all law. USA Today described it charitably as allowing DHS only to "waive local environmental laws to allow the federal government to complete a 14-mile fence near San Diego that separates the United States and Mexico." This provision will instead give the secretary of homeland security unprecedented power to waive any and all law, environmental or otherwise, anywhere in the vicinity of the borders, in order to expedite construction of fences and barriers and remove obstacles to the detection of illegal immigration. USA Today was not alone in this failure to describe the bill accurately. The version of the measure that came out of the House-Senate conference committee left the breadth of this new power intact. A part of the measure stripping the courts of any power to hear cases arising from the decisions to waive law still denies access to the courts but was revised to permit court review of constitutional claims. Given that existing case law already demands access to the courts for constitutional claims, this revision is not a real improvement. Another change requires DHS to publish its decisions to waive the law in the Federal Register before they can go into effect. The Senate passed the Iraq spending bill unanimously on May 10, and the White House signed it into law the next day. Already, some states are threatening not to comply with the driver's license standards.