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 in something of a surprise, a Democratic effort to table and effectively kill the resolution succeeded, with five Republican House members voting in support and two voting “present.” (Every present Democrat supported the effort to table, which passed 215-207.)
The vote 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 was not immediately available to comment on the vote. In a statement yesterday, she accused Higgins of “seeking to punish [her] for doing what he and his caucus are too cowardly to do: conduct real oversight, stand up to this administration, and do [their] jobs.”
“If House Republicans think they
can make me run scared, they’re wrong,” she said.
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.
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