McIver beats back GOP censure effort in surprise vote

In the long history of the U.S. House of Representatives, only 28 members have been formally censured by a full vote of the House. Today, Republicans tried to make Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-Newark) into the 29th – and they failed.

A resolution supported by most House Republicans would have censured McIver for her conduct during a scuffle last spring at a Newark immigrant detention center, and removed her from her seat on the House Homeland Security Committee. But unexpectedly, a Democratic effort to kill the resolution succeeded, with five Republican House members voting in support of a motion to table and two voting “present.”

(Every present Democrat supported the motion to table, which passed 215-207; one of the Republicans who voted “yes” later said that was a mistake, but it was too late to change his vote.)

The outcome means that the resolution, spearheaded by Louisiana Republican Clay Higgins, won’t even come up for a proper vote at all, and McIver will remain uncensured and a member of all of her committees.

McIver said that the outcome came as something of a surprise to her, and that she will remain just as defiantly opposed to the immigration policies put forward by the Trump administration and congressional Republicans as she always has been.

“This whole situation, this whole ordeal, has been a political attack against me since the day I went to Delaney Hall,” she said. “I continue to be a critic of this administration, and I think they just want to find different ways to bully me and intimidate me while I’m here. I’m not going to back down.”

The Newark congresswoman, first elected just last year, became a Republican target after a May 9 incident at the Delaney Hall immigrant detention center, at which McIver and two of her House colleagues were conducting an oversight visit. Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, who had attempted to accompany the three congressmembers on the visit, was arrested for trespassing, setting off a brief scuffle involving McIver, federal immigration officers, and a group of assembled protesters.

The trespassing charges against Baraka were later dropped, but New Jersey’s controversial federal prosecutor, Alina Habba, instead charged McIver with assault, and later obtained an indictment from a grand jury. A trial has been set for November, but McIver has said the charges are politically motivated and asked a federal judge to dismiss the indictment.

Republicans in Congress, however, didn’t wait for the legal battle to come to a resolution before moving ahead with an effort to reprimand McIver. The resolution stated that McIver’s actions at Delaney Hall “do not reflect creditably on the House” and that her continued presence on the Homeland Security Committee, which has jurisdiction over immigrant detention facilities like Delaney Hall, “would represent a significant conflict of interest.”

“Censure is appropriate, and historically is well in line with what has happened,” Higgins said at a Homeland Security Committee meeting in June. “Generally, by this point, a member removes themselves from their committee involvement, certainly from a committee that has direct oversight in the arena wherein the charges are to be prosecuted.”

That was a viewpoint shared even by McIver’s three Republican colleagues in New Jersey, one of whom, Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-Dennis), chaired a subcommittee hearing in May that partially focused on criticizing McIver. “If you look at the video, she was pushing and shoving and physically involved, and that’s not acceptable,” Van Drew said prior to today’s vote.

Some congressional Republicans had floated even more extreme punishments such as expelling McIver from the House, but that was never a realistic possibility given that expulsion requires a two-thirds majority and Democrats – including, critically, House Democratic leadership – were staunchly opposed to any effort to punish her.

And they were joined, unexpectedly, by a small cohort of Republicans who said that they wanted to let other processes play out before resorting to censuring McIver and removing her from a committee; “I think it’s best to let Ethics Committee finish its report,” Rep. Don Bacon (R-Nebraska) told Politico. McIver said she hasn’t spoken with the defectors personally, but she did send notes of thanks.

“I do want to thank those Republicans that sided with us to see that this was wrong, and this should be a matter of [the Ethics Committee] and letting this case play out,” she said.

This story was updated at 11:19 a.m. on September 4 with comment from McIver.