

If you attack them the law is on their side even if they don’t identify themselves:
[18 U.S. Code] Section 111 makes it a crime to “forcibly assault, resist, oppose, impede, intimidate, or interfere with” federal officials engaged in their duties. But here’s the problem: You don’t even need to know they’re federal officials. You can be convicted for shoving someone you think is just someone yelling in your face, even just placing them in “reasonable fear of harm” without physical contact—if they turn out to be a plainclothes agent. That’s not hypothetical. That’s precedent, courtesy of the Supreme Court over 50 years ago.
Which means this: An undercover agent embedded in a protest, a public meeting, even a constituent town hall could claim to have been “impeded,” and the federal government can treat that moment as a federal crime. Under the current administration’s appetite for authoritarianism, that’s not a loophole, it’s a feature.
From what I’ve read about reconciliation bills, provisons need to be mainly about the budget rather than policy. What does banning AI regulation at lower levels of government have to do with the federal budget?