WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans handed President Donald Trump a win on Tuesday by confirming one among his first judicial nominees, Josh Divine, an archconservative from Missouri. However that they had assist from a stunning supply: Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), who caucuses with Democrats.
Divine, 35, will now maintain a lifetime seat on a U.S. district court docket in Missouri. He drew sturdy opposition from Democrats and civil rights teams over his lengthy file of litigation towards girls’s reproductive rights, together with main a significant problem to the FDA’s decades-long approval of mifepristone, aka the abortion tablet.
In 2010, Divine additionally argued in favor of bringing again literacy checks for voting, a follow banned within the Nineteen Sixties for being racially discriminatory.
It’s not clear why King supported him. The unbiased senator helps abortion rights and voting rights, and doesn’t sometimes buck Democratic management on judicial nominations. His workplace declined remark.
However it seems that Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who was Divine’s boss, merely persuaded King to vote for his former chief counsel because the vote was underway on the Senate ground.
CSPAN footage reveals King strolling as much as Hawley and having a pleasant dialog with him throughout Divine’s vote within the Senate. And King informed a Law360 reporter on Wednesday that he did speak to Hawley about Divine, and that the Missouri senator “convinced me that he would be a capable judge.”
King’s vote has infuriated and confused no less than some progressive teams.
“To say Senator King’s vote on the nomination of Joshua Divine is a shock would be a massive understatement,” Maggie Jo Buchanan, interim director of Demand Justice, stated in a press release. “Any person who believes in the critical importance of reproductive rights would not vote to put an anti-abortion extremist in a lifetime position on the federal bench. The Senator owes his constituents an explanation — whatever that may be.”
What’s weirder is that, days in the past, King voted towards a procedural step for advancing Divine’s nomination. What might Hawley have probably stated to get King on board with a judicial nominee who represents a lot of what King has fought towards?
The Maine senator is a proud supporter of abortion rights. He railed towards the Supreme Court docket’s determination to overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022, and particularly tied it to “the clear, decades-long conservative campaign to fill our nation’s court system with ideologically-driven judges who would vote to end abortion access.”
“While there is no clear or easy path to reverse this decision, I will continue doing everything in my power to protect this fundamental right,” King stated on the time.
As solicitor basic of Missouri, Divine defended his state’s transfer to block Deliberate Parenthood from receiving Medicaid reimbursements, and defended the state’s excessive necessities for accessing abortion care, together with making girls endure necessary ready intervals, ultrasounds and pelvic exams.
King helps LGBTQ rights. Earlier this yr, he voted towards banning transgender athletes from faculty sports activities packages, and he was beforehand an authentic sponsor of the Equality Act, a complete invoice to ban discrimination towards LGBTQ folks.
In sharp distinction, Divine defended Missouri’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors, and this yr represented the state in a case attempting to problem conversion remedy bans.
King has additionally been a vocal critic of Trump’s lawlessness, delivering impassioned speeches on the Senate ground in regards to the administration’s “unconstitutional and unprecedented overreach.”
“This is a constitutional crisis, and we’ve got to respond to it,” he pleaded in February. “We do things constitutionally. Yes, it’s more cumbersome, it’s slower, that’s what the framers intended. They didn’t intend to have an efficient dictatorship, and that’s what we’re headed for.”
Divine, in the meantime, has strongly defended Trump’s actions and energy. Final yr, he unsuccessfully led a long-shot bid to place a maintain on Trump’s felony convictions in his hush cash case. Extra lately, in February, Divine was on social media defending the so-called unitary government concept, which might give much more presidential energy to Trump.
Kansas Metropolis Star through Getty Photos
It’s not clear if King knew all or any of this about Divine earlier than he voted for him. His workplace didn’t reply to a follow-up request for remark about King’s dialog with Hawley.
A Hawley spokesperson additionally didn’t reply to a request for remark.
Reproductive Freedom for All, a nationwide abortion rights group, didn’t particularly name out King however condemned Divine’s affirmation.
“Divine’s confirmation makes clear that Trump lied to voters when he said he would ‘leave it to the states,’ and he is actively working to eliminate abortion access nationwide,” Mini Timmaraju, the group’s president and CEO, stated in a press release. “Federal courts are a critical line of defense to preserve reproductive health care, and these appointments are a dangerous sign of what’s to come.”
