Conservatives everywhere were outraged earlier this year when a group of Democrats, including New Jersey Rep. LaMonica McIver, clashed with federal agents outside a Newark ICE detention facility in a scenario that ultimately led to the congresswoman’s indictment.

This week, a handful of Republican lawmakers, however, defected to join House Democrats to effectively kill a measure designed to censure McIver for her involvement in the fracas, as the Daily Mail reports, surely disappointing a significant number of their constituents, not to mention the White House.

Confrontation spurs federal charges

As detailed in a June press release from the Justice Department, McIver’s legal troubles originated from the aforementioned incident on May 9, which took place outside the Delaney Hall Federal Immigration Facility.

McIver declared that she was present at the site in order to conduct a congressional oversight inspection, and her visit happened to coincide with an immigration protest rally.

According to the allegations leveled in the resulting federal indictment, the congresswoman forcibly impeded and interfered with federal officers attempting to arrest an individual outside the building.

After a dispute concerning Newark Mayor Ras Baraka’s ability to access a secured area of the facility, McIver engaged with federal agents and “slammed her forearm into the body of one law enforcement officer and also reached out and tried to restrain that officer by forcibly grabbing him. McIver also used each of her forearms to strike a second officer,” the press release explained.

Indicative of the severity of the allegations facing McIver, if she is convicted, the lawmaker could face up to eight years in prison for a forcible impeding and interfering charge, eight years in prison on another iteration of the same charge, and a possible additional year in prison on a third criminal count.

Censure push defeated

Despite the seriousness of those allegations, McIver was spared the shame of a House censure this week, thanks in part to a group of Republican colleagues.

Though Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA) forced a vote on the censure measure, fellow Republicans, including Rep. Don Bacon (NE) refused to join in, opining that it would be better for a pending Ethics Committee probe to play out before any such action is taken.

Also voting to reject the censure measure were Republicans Mike Flood (NE), David Joyce (OH), Mike Turner (OH), and David Valadao (CA).

Voting “present" instead of supporting the censure push were Republicans Andrew Garbarino (NY) and Nathaniel Moran (TX).”

Democrats praise outcome

Once it was clear that the censure vote went in her favor, McIver gloated on X that it was nothing more than a “baseless, partisan effort to shut [her] up.”

Far-left liberal Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) declared the push “a ridiculous waste of time that Congress should be using to work for the American people,” with Rep. Lucy McBath (D-GA) blasting what she characterized as “political targeting” to which McIver would not “back down.”

Given the popularity of President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement agenda, however, combined with the disdain millions of Americans have for the recent uptick in attacks on ICE agents, a formal censure of McIver’s conduct – which was caught on video for all to see – would surely have been received as a straightforward, well-deserved rebuke of a public figure who should know better.