Angus King Learns Taking Advice From Josh Hawley Maybe Not *Best* Idea
We probably could have told him that.
On Tuesday, Maine Senator Angus King did something fairly out of character — he voted to confirm 35-year-old anti-abortion-rights/anti-LGBTQ-rights nutter Joshua Divine to a lifetime federal judgeship. Why? Well, quite possibly for the worst reason anyone could do anything — he did it on the advice of Missouri Senator Josh Hawley.
Of all people!
“I took Josh Hawley’s advice,” King told Huffpost. “In retrospect, I think it was a mistake, from what I’ve learned about Mr. Divine since. But sometimes, you rely on your colleagues.”
Sure, sometimes you rely on your colleagues! The ones with whom you agree on most things, the ones whose advice you generally respect! But is there ever, ever a good reason to rely on the advice of Josh Hawley? I guess if for some reason you were trying to arrange your face to make it look like you smell something bad literally all of the time?
Or if you were writing a dystopian novel about living in a Christian nationalist hellscape and needed someone on whom to base some sort of mid-tier villain? I could see that. Or advice on how to escape a rabid mob you’ve just fist-pumped before they went on to attack Congress? But a lifetime judgeship? That needs to be a hard pass.
When asked if he was aware of Divine’s less-than-divine record on abortion rights, King said “not fully.”
Divine, who had previously been Hawley’s chief counsel, will now sit, for the rest of his life, on a US district court in Missouri. He has a long history of having worked against reproductive rights and LGBTQ protections while solicitor general of Missouri — two causes that King has, historically, been on the right side of.
Via Huffington Post:
As solicitor general of Missouri, he led a major challenge to the Food and Drug Administration’s decades-long approval of mifepristone, aka the abortion pill. He also defended his state’s efforts to block Planned Parenthood from getting Medicaid reimbursements, and defended his state’s extreme requirements for accessing abortion care, including making women endure mandatory waiting periods, ultrasounds and pelvic exams.
Divine has gone after LGBTQ+ rights, too, when he defended Missouri’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors and represented the state in a case trying to challenge conversion therapy bans.
As if that were not all bad enough (and it definitely is), he previously advocated for, swear to God, bringing back literacy tests.
Literacy tests were, of course, banned in the 1960s because they were very clearly being utilized to keep Black people from voting.
To be fair, Joshua Divine didn’t need King’s vote to get confirmed, as he had enough Republican votes anyway — but it’s still worrying to know that he just took Josh Hawley’s word on the matter without more seriously looking into Divine. Frankly, it would have been far more forgivable if he thought he was voting for the Divine who starred in multiple John Waters movies.
King is an independent who caucuses with Democrats, but can sometimes be a little iffy on the votes (as in this case) and in the Susan Collins endorsements (though she later thanked him, in true Susan Collins form, by recruiting his 2024 challenger). Like, sometimes his votes are great, other times he’s out here joining forces with Republicans and trying to raise the retirement age from 67 to 70, which is just rude.
Part of the reasoning behind voting for independents (at least in New England, where “registering as independent but still voting D all the way down” is a way of life) is the perception that they will more seriously consider each vote rather than just going along with whatever everyone else is doing.
This would be the exact opposite of that.
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
Why did Angus King sleep through his briefing about the political leanings of this candidate?
he didn't want to be woke.
So Senator King and his staff are unaware of how to use a search engine?