Trump scores federal court win against House progressive accused of assaulting ICE

A Biden-appointed judge, of all people, is the one who told Rep. LaMonica McIver that being a member of Congress doesn't come with a get-out-of-jail-free card. That's the detail worth sitting with here. This wasn't some Trump-picked judge doing the administration a favor. This was a jurist nominated by the other side looking at the legislative immunity argument and deciding it didn't hold water.

The claim itself was always a stretch. McIver's lawyers wanted the court to treat an alleged physical altercation with ICE officers as somehow protected "legislative" activity, the same category of conduct the Constitution shields when lawmakers are voting, debating, or drafting bills. Showing up at an ICE facility and getting physical with federal officers is not that. It's not close to that. Immunity clauses exist so Congress can function without the executive branch harassing members over their votes and speeches, not so a member can put hands on federal agents and call it constituent service.

What's striking is how quickly some corners of the party treated this as a sympathetic cause rather than an obvious legal reach. Members of Congress aren't above the law just because they show up somewhere with a title and a camera crew. If ICE officers were assaulted, that's a matter for the courts to sort out through actual evidence, not a talking point to be waved away with a constitutional technicality.

Give the judge credit for calling it straight. That's supposed to be the whole point of an independent judiciary, and it's refreshing when it actually works that way regardless of who did the appointing.