An interview with LaMonica McIver

This is the fifteenth in a series of in-person, in-depth New Jersey Globe interviews with New Jersey’s members of Congress. The interviews will be published as-is, with editing for length and clarity.

This week, the Globe spoke with Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-Newark), a Democrat from Essex County currently in her first full term who serves on the House Homeland Security and Small Business Committees. The Globe sat down with McIver to discuss her first six months in Congress, how Democrats should combat the Trump administration, the unique needs of her Newark-based congressional district, and more.

Previous interviews: then-Rep. Andy Kim, Rep. Chris Smith, the late Rep. Bill Pascrell, Rep. Rob Menendez, Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, Rep. Mikie Sherrill, Rep. Jeff Van Drew, Rep. Josh Gottheimer, NJ-7 candidate Sue Altman, Rep. Donald Norcross, then-Senator George Helmy, Rep. Frank Pallone, Rep. Herb Conaway, Rep. Tom Kean Jr.

New Jersey Globe: You’re now six months into serving in Congress. What has it been like to adjust to this world?

LaMonica McIver: It has been really, really difficult to adjust. Coming from city council, being there for seven years and being the president, you’re just getting things done faster. There’s more urgency; every day you’re delivering for people, every day there’s results. Here, it’s very slow. People are not concerned every day to get things done for the American people. And I’m like, ‘This is a problem. We need to be fixing this immediately.’ The systems of things here in Congress, the way that it moves, the slowness – I can really understand, from the other side, why the American people are pissed off: ‘You need to fix this. I need for you to fix this immediately.’ We don’t have time to go through the shenanigans, and all of the fighting and the bickering. Whether it’s Republicans or Democrats – the problems for the American people look the same. There’s not a Democratic problem, not a Republican problem, other than, ‘I need to get money for child care, I need to make more money, I need to be able to find an affordable place to live.’ It’s complicated here, but for the American people, it’s really simple. They need help, immediately.

Newark is a very Democratic city, and most of its politicians are Democrats. How has it been for you to navigate a space where not only are there Republicans, but Republicans are in power, and the people who hold power here are diametrically opposed to what you’re trying to do?

I try to navigate based off of what’s best for the people we represent. I’m always addressing things that way. I’m never thinking about, ‘This is a Democratic thing, I want you to focus on it as a Republican.’ It’s more like, ‘Look, this is a problem for people in my district, it’s a problem for people in your district. What can we do to work together to do something about this? Your voters are going to be happy with you, my voters are going to be happy with me – because it’s the right thing to do for people.’ There’s a lot of avenues and opportunities across the aisle on different things that we’re working on – not everything, but I think for the most part, when we talk about trying to help the American people, there’s a lot of space and opportunities for that if we can get away from all of the egos and all of the other things. We can really do some good work.

I try to start with at least the Republicans in New Jersey. There are three there, and we’re in a three-vote marginal situation in the House – how can I get these three Republicans in New Jersey to understand this? Their folks are having problems like my folks are having problems in the 10th. How can we work together on this? That has been my approach. Because of the things that are happening every day out of the White House, folks have been less focused on that meaningful work of how we can help the American people versus tackling things coming out of the Trump administration.

Have you had any luck in those discussions with New Jersey Republicans? I’m especially curious about Congressman Kean, because in Union County, your districts are right next to each other.

I wish I could say yes, but no, I haven’t. I do plan to extend some more outreach and be able to meet with Congressman Kean, because we are on the borderline with many of the cities that we represent. But it hasn’t been successful, it just hasn’t.

We need to do more work on trying to collaborate. I think the whole idea around town halls and talking to our voters – that has picked up a lot of animosity in New Jersey. Many people are doing town halls all throughout New Jersey, especially in some districts where they’re not necessarily doing town halls, they’re not out there talking to their constituents, and that’s a problem. But I’m still hopeful and optimistic that there’s an opportunity for us to work together for the betterment of the people of New Jersey.

On a broader scale, do you think that Democrats in the first months of the Trump administration are doing what they need to do?

I think everybody is navigating the space as best as they know how to. Me personally, I believe that we need to take a different approach on how we are fighting these unhinged times. We’re not dealing with the regular government. We’re not dealing with a regular president. We’re not dealing with a regular GOP on the House side or the Senate side. And I think we need to stop trying to fight this new regime of government with old tools. That isn’t working for us. Democrats are used to dealing with a government that can be professional, that can operate with decency. And we’re not seeing that. This is not like the Bush era. Before, we thought Bush was horrible in some of the things he was doing. Now he looks like a prince, or Jesus himself, compared to what we’re dealing with today.

And that’s definitely something we have to adjust to. We’re so used to being good Democrats. We have a large tent of leaders of different personalities, different characters, we represent different universes across the nation. And I think we are trying to navigate what that looks like for us in this new time and era. But I just think we keep talking about rules, and the GOP is not playing by any rules. They’re not doing anything that makes possible sense when we’re used to the normalcy of government. And I just think Democrats have to understand that a little bit more, and get on with a little more rudeness. Sometimes I can be rude, or I can be extremely passionate about how I’m representing my folks, because that’s what they expect for me to do out of my district. And I just think we’ve got to do a little more of that.

What exactly does that look like?

Let me give you an example of that: the situation at the joint address. Rep. Al Green [of Texas] got thrown out of there because they said he was not in decorum. But there were GOP representatives that were not in decorum either. They were shouting, they were wearing campaign paraphernalia, they were wearing hats – no hats are allowed! They were not adhering to the same rules that were put on us. I think Dems should have made a big deal about that. We should have been out there like, ‘Did you see Marjorie Taylor Greene with her hat on? She was up there doing this, she was up there doing that’ – why weren’t we taking the same actions for her that we were for Al Green? And it’s like, ‘Oh, we don’t want to do that, we’re not trying to get into all of that.’ No, we need to get into all of that. We can’t just operate normally, or be like, ‘We’re going to take the higher road.’ The higher road for them, all the time – they don’t care.

We’re going to get to a point, as Democratic representatives, where we’re going to need to be suing this administration as well. Literally hiring lawyers – we can do it from an official side or from a campaign side. Because now we have a president that’s disobeying judges. What are we going to do about that? We’ve never seen that before in our history – how do we approach that? We should be suing the president as well, not just organizations and unions. And I know there’s one suit with some Democratic folks on it, but we need to do more of that, because this president is just going to continue to be more bold, disobeying what judges tell him to do, and we’re going to need some type of force to stop that.

Part of this debate came when the government funding battle happened a couple of weeks ago. Do you think that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer messed that up? Do you think he should remain as the Senate leader?

I can understand it from both sides, from both perspectives. Everyone was talking about, ‘He did it because they would have shut down the government, and Trump would have had more control.’ But I don’t think that the American people understood that. They’re like, ‘Why the heck did you do that?’ They don’t understand that perspective. People here can understand that perspective, but I felt like it was a missed opportunity for them to be able to send this back to Dems and let Dems have some input into the budget in the first place. The [continuing resolution] – they didn’t have anything in there from the Democratic Party. No compromise, no conversation. Literally, they were just like, ‘We’re not coming to y’all, we’re doing what we want to do.’ To me, that’s just not the way government is supposed to work. Regardless of if you’re a Republican, Democrat, or independent, we can at least be mature. People sent us here to be mature leaders, to have decent conversations, and to be able to compromise to make things work for all of us. They’re not doing that. 

I felt like [Schumer] had the opportunity to be able to have Dems have some input on that from the House side, and I think there was not enough conversation, there was not enough communication. I can’t really speak, because I’m not in leadership, to what was happening at the top. But from my perspective, it didn’t seem to happen that way. The only person that can decide what he wants to do or what’s next for himself is the senator. He’s getting a lot of pressure out here; a lot of people are angry. More people are angry than happy, probably. He has to decide what’s going to be the next thing for him. But I think, at any given time, we cannot just let things go. We have to fight for every piece of something that we need for the American people that we represent. That was his opportunity to do that, and folks definitely feel like he failed at that.

When Democrats were resisting Trump in his first term, there was the overarching understanding that he had lost the popular vote, and this idea that he wasn’t the choice of the American people. This time, he did win the popular vote. The mood is different. Do you think the Trump administration is owed any deference in that regard?

I think that Democrats have given that to Trump. I think we have shown that we will work together on anything that we can do – let’s have a good working relationship so that we can deliver for the American people. But the Trump administration has basically said, ‘Eff the Democrats, eff the process, eff what you think I’m going to do – I’m not doing it.’ Anytime you’re going to change the Constitution based on an executive order, and you’re not going through the legislative body or you don’t have any respect for the legislative body and their rules, it’s eff us. You don’t care. Because that’s the attitude we have from the administration, it leaves no room for compromise, or any room to heal the differences that we all have. Their administration is like, screw us.

When we had the migrant situation in Newark, we were calling Homeland, calling all of these entities to try to get simple answers. People were giving us intel, ‘Oh, they said not to answer any questions from you all.’ Or, ‘No one’s picking up our call, we’re not hearing back.’ That’s crazy! Republicans are in charge, but I’m a sitting congresswoman! We’re leaders! You’re telling me you’re not going to give us basic information so that we can deliver for our constituents or answer questions for the local leadership? We weren’t trying to get any confidential information; we’re like, ‘Just give us general information.’ I thought that was absurd, that that can happen – that as a sitting congresswoman, they would not even reach back out to us and give us general information. This is a very hostile environment, the morale is down – it is terrible to be working in this space.

So I just think there’s no room to work together if the president, holding the highest office in the land, doesn’t extend an olive branch. He did all of this talk about how we’re going to bring everybody together, we’re going to be unified, we’re going to bring this country together, America’s going to be great again – America ain’t great again! There is so much division that it’s crazy. I just feel like he doesn’t offer up that opportunity, and his administration doesn’t either.

Amid these broader battles, you are still a congresswoman who’s still trying to do the basic grunt work of Congress. You’re on your first two committees, Homeland Security and Small Business. What are the concrete legislative goals that, even in this adverse environment, you’re hoping to achieve?

The one reason why I came here was to deliver for working families who have affordability issues across the board. Whether we’re talking about child care, affordable housing, student loan debt, infrastructure issues – these were all of the things that I hoped to get here and work on. What I find now is that literally every day, I’m dealing with foolishness coming from the administration that we have to fight against, fight back, mobilize around and deal with. The idea of how to make people’s lives better is not even at the top of folks’ minds anymore, other than that we’re trying to continue to fight for the things that we have that they’re trying to take away each and every day. Whether it’s education, federal funding, you name it – it is, every day, a fight.

And so some of the things I hope for are how we can make American families’ lives better. How can they be more affordable – the kitchen-table issues that I campaigned on, and the folks that I spoke to during that time, that is their number-one thing. Things are expensive. They are not getting a raise, prices are going up for everything, and they’re struggling to live every day. Kids coming out of college, no job, can’t find a job, they’re not even working in the fields that they went to school for and got the student debt that they have, they can’t find an affordable place to stay; they’re going back home with their parents because rent is too high. Those are things that I constantly heard about, and continue to hear about, and we have to do something about that. That’s what I’d hoped to be working on when I got here, especially around affordable housing – to be able to work with the HUD Secretary on how we can do things more creatively, how can we make more folks homeowners, how can we strengthen public housing? We’ve not been able to tackle that. Folks are not even interested in talking about that.

The three bills that we did [introduce] – the Ballistic Body Armor Act to the SNAP Benefits Fairness Act to the ARC Act – all of those things are things that we were able to try to get some Republican support on, so those things are good, but we still have a lot more work to do. Especially around, how do we make Americans’ lives better and put more money back into their pockets?

You represent New Jersey’s poorest district –

I would say “less wealthy.”

Less wealthy, okay. And that actually is a fair point, because in the broader scheme of America, New Jersey is a wealthy enough state that even the bottom of New Jersey is decently in the middle. But how does that figure into the way that you represent your district? You’re not representing a district where the average person is already doing fine.

Exactly. That’s why I have to navigate differently. I have to speak for those that I represent. I’m moving city by city in New Jersey’s 10th congressional district, and they’re talking to me about the problems they’re having around affordability – that is the biggest issue in my district. I can go from Verona to Jersey City to Linden – all of these different cities have some type of affordability issues. If I’m in the suburbs, moms are like, ‘I quit my job because child care was more than what I was making. We couldn’t afford that.’ And if I go to Newark, it’s like, ‘I’m only making $40,000, rent is $2,000, I’m struggling with this, I’m struggling with that, I need more money, I have to be able to afford to take care of my family. Eggs are too expensive, I go to the grocery store and it’s crazy. I literally can’t afford to get anything’ – especially if it’s a family that gets SNAP benefits, which is $6 per day. You’re going inside to buy what? You’re making the choices of, ‘Am I going to get eggs versus milk today, am I going to get chicken versus beef today?’ That’s most of the conversation in New Jersey’s 10th congressional district, and everything I do, that is in the back of my mind. I’m not thinking about wealthier towns in New Jersey and what they need, because I’m focused on New Jersey’s 10th and those 18 cities that I represent. And so I have to operate differently. We have a lot of hardworking families in New Jersey as a whole, but definitely in my district there are families who are struggling way more, making less – the median income is very much lower compared to the rest of New Jersey – and I have to keep that in mind.

I’m curious about two issues in particular: the State and Local Tax (SALT) deduction and congestion pricing. Most New Jersey politicians take a certain angle to those two issues, but most New Jersey politicians are representing wealthier, more suburban areas. As someone who comes from a more urban district and a less wealthy district, do you agree with the broader New Jersey line of ‘SALT very good, congestion pricing very bad?’

When we talk about SALT, it’s a short-term fix. We need to start talking about a longer fix of how we make a tax bracket and a tax market that is equitable. We’re not there. I don’t think we’re there across the nation, and definitely not in New Jersey, where there is a large wealth gap across the state. I think we need to start having those conversations on how we are delivering a tax portfolio that benefits all families in New Jersey, especially in the 10th congressional district. That’s how I feel. I’m not swinging on this side versus this side [on SALT], because in my district, it’s a little different, with the folks that I represent.

I think right now, the consensus is that the cap will be extended. I don’t know, that’s what they say, but then Republicans can do whatever they might, and we might find out an hour beforehand what they’re doing. They’re in charge of the Senate, the House, and the presidency, so we’ll see how that goes.

When you say the cap will be extended, do you mean raised or continued?

Continued. That’s what I’ve been hearing. I know that some of our New Jersey delegation sits on the SALT committee, and they’ve been having a lot of conversations about it with Republicans, but like I said – you just never know with Republicans, which way the wind may blow. They’re unpredictable.

I think when you talk about congestion pricing – I understand New York’s battle about why they’re doing this, but I just don’t think that, for my families in New Jersey’s 10th congressional district, this congestion tax should be on my families. They shouldn’t have to pay more to be able to go to make money. It’s like twenty-something dollars a day. Why should my families have to front that cost? It just doesn’t make any sense, from my community that’s already struggling. Already, there are affordability issues, and we’re adding more for them to be able to get to work. For some of my families, that could mean, ‘Do I still want to keep this job? It’s costing me more to get here, to be able to make money, to go home every day, plus gas and everything else. My God, this isn’t helping me.’

Your district also has a large immigrant population, and Newark was home to the first highly publicized ICE raid of the Trump administration. How do you think that local officials, and Democrats at-large, should be reacting to the way that the Trump administration is handling immigration?

Speaking to a lot of our local leaders there, they’re very outraged about the process of this. Everyone basically agrees that criminals and people who are committing crimes here – they should not be allowed to stay here. I don’t think anyone disagrees with that. It’s the process of how we get to that point – how are we getting the ‘violent illegals’ off the street? Trump and them, they don’t even know how they’re doing it. They’re just going to deport everybody – going in and scaring the crap out of people, approaching people who have a visa, who have a green card, who are citizens, each and every day. It’s awful, the way that we’re doing it.

In the East Ward, which is where it all started at that seafood depot, the business owners there tell me that they’ve seen a 45% drop in foot traffic in the Ironbound. It is a booming place – it’s like a little New York City, a city within a city. People are all over the place, enjoying restaurants, a very large Portuguese community, vibrant, each and every day. Not anymore. People are not out on the street. They’re scared to death. And many of these people may not even be here illegally, but they’re just scared of the idea of being approached or addressed, or they may know someone who is here illegally. So now businesses, obviously, if they see a drop in foot traffic, they see a drop in revenue. Now you see the trickle-down effect of [these policies], and that’s just on the business side. We have a lot of young people who haven’t returned back to school, they’re not going to school anymore because they’re scared to death. You see people not going to the doctor anymore.

Once again, it is about the process of how they’re handling these situations. I agree about government efficiency – we should have government efficiency! But you don’t go in and fire everybody and then say, ‘Let’s work on efficiency now.’ The whole place is crumbling while you’re working on efficiency by firing everyone! It just doesn’t work like that. And I say this all the time. People think I’m against it; I’m like, no, I’m for efficiency. I’ve worked in school districts where that’s been my job, where I’ve had to let teachers go, we’ve had to cut staff because we don’t have enough students anymore or this program got eliminated. But once again: due process. You’re giving advance notice. You’re looking at the budget line-by-line. You’re going through everything – not just going in and firing every teacher in the school district and saying, ‘Okay, we’ll start back from scratch on September 1.’ Who does that? It’s incompetent, it’s ineffective, and it’s really not working. That’s why they’re saying they’re having all of these boo-boos, where they’re like, ‘Whoops, we did this.’ You didn’t know that was going to be a problem when you went in and told everyone to get out? You fired people who were doing real work and doing real jobs! They’re not just soaking up government money. It’s just so disrespectful to employees. These are real lives, real families, and all we’re doing is helping our economy take a plunge because these folks are now unemployed! They’re going to try to collect unemployment now! Some of them may be homeless; they may not be able to afford food; they may need to get SNAP benefits. All of these things are contributing, in one way or another, to not promoting the great economy that the president has been all about.

Israel and Palestine is an issue that has been a wedge in the Democratic Party for a while, and especially since the October 7 attacks. Where do you feel like you fall on the general spectrum of ‘Support Israel no matter the cost’ versus ‘Israel is a rogue state and needs to be reined in,’ or somewhere in the middle?

I support people. I’m always on the side of what is best for people, no matter if they’re Palestinian or they’re from Israel. One or the other, we should be doing what’s best for people. The attack that happened in October [2023], it was horrible, it should never have happened, the hostages should be returned, we should be getting them back home. That was an awful situation. But at the same time, we should not be killing innocent people to continue to prove a point and continue to promote war. I think, at this point, this region is overdue for peace, and peace should not be this expensive or this hard to deliver. Every time I hear about a hiccup in the ceasefire, I’m getting down on my knees praying about it, because both of these sectors of folks – they need some peace. This is horrible. And people on both fronts, they are exhausted, they’re tired. I know there’s decades and decades and decades of history of how we got to this point, but at the end of the day, I’m always going to be on the side of promoting peace.

It’s disgusting to see Trump not creating a better situation out of it. I think that he’s not doing a good job of promoting a peaceful situation. When you put out a video showing how you’re going to make the Gaza Strip a resort – that’s not helpful. Those things are not helpful. You say you want to promote a ceasefire and peace, but then you’re telling me that you’re going to create a strip of luxury hotels? Make it make sense. It’s awful, it goes against everything that I believe in and that many folks from that region believe in.

I started this interview by talking about your first six months. Neither you nor I know how much longer you’re going to be in Congress; it could be a year and a half, it could be forty years. But in the broadest sense, what type of congresswoman do you want to be?

For me, the only goal that I have is to be known as a congressional member that delivers for people. Tangible results. Not, ‘Oh, that was the congresswoman that worked on some bill that we didn’t know anything about, and we didn’t really feel it here. I don’t really know what it did for us.’ I don’t want to be one of those members. I want to really deliver on real, tangible policies that people can say, ‘That policy that she worked on trickled down, and that’s how Ms. Smith from East Orange benefited from it.’ That’s what I want.

I hope that, even in this Trump administration, we can actually deliver some things that people feel like, ‘That really helped me.’ I should be able to reach thousands of people in that way, depending on the policies and bills that I get to work on and can get passed. That’s what I want to leave here having accomplished. Hopefully I’ll get that accomplished in fewer years – maybe I won’t have to dedicate 50 years to doing that. People look at me like, ‘You’re young, you can be here for a long time!’ And I’m like, ‘No, I’d really like to retire and go somewhere and do nothing every day at some point in my life.’ I know I’m far from that, to get to that point. But I hope that in that period of time, I’m able to really deliver for them and have some real results. Not just talking about it, not just bluffing, not just, ‘She’s the ranking member here, or she’s in leadership’ – I want to really deliver for the people in my district.