Josh Hawley Biography

Josh Hawley (Joshua David Hawley) is an American lawyer and Republican politician, serving as the junior United States Senator from Missouri. He previously served as the 42nd Attorney General of Missouri from 2017 to 2019, before defeating two-term Democratic incumbent Claire McCaskill in the 2018 Senate election. He is the youngest member of the Senate at age 39.

Josh Hawley Age

Joshua David was born on 31 December 1979 in Springdale, Arkansas, United States. He is 39 years old as of 2018.

Josh Hawley Net worth

Josh Hawley earns his income from his businesses and other related organizations. He also earns his income from his work as a lawyer and Republican politician. He has an estimated net worth $ 2million dollars.

Josh Hawley Education

Josh Hawley graduated from Rockhurst High School in Kansas City, Missouri. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in History from Stanford University in 2002, graduating with highest honors. He moved to London and taught at St Paul’s School for a year. He then attended Yale Law School, where he led the school’s chapter of the Federalist Society and received a Juris Doctor degree in 2006.

Following law school, Hawley clerked for Judge Michael W. McConnell of the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit and later served as a law clerk to Chief Justice John Roberts. During this year, Hawley met his future wife, fellow Supreme Court clerk Erin Morrow.

Josh Hawley Wife

Josh Hawley married Erin Morrow Hawley. The couples reside in Springdale, Arkansas, United States.

Josh Hawley Image

Josh Hawley Attorney General of Missouri

In 2016, Josh Hawley ran for Attorney General of Missouri. On August 2, he defeated Kurt Schaefer in the Republican primary with 64% of the vote. He faced Teresa Hensley in the general election on November 8. Hawley won 58.5% of the vote to Hensley’s 41.5%.

Affordable Care Act

In February 2018, Hawley joined 20 other Republican-led states in a lawsuit challenging the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare). The lawsuit could eliminate insurance protections for people with pre-existing conditions.

On September 2018, amid criticism from Hawley’s U.S. Senate opponent, Claire McCaskill, about the lawsuit’s impact on pre-existing conditions, Hawley’s office did not clarify his role in the case. In December 2018, a federal district court judge in Texas ruled that the entirety of the Affordable Care Act was unconstitutional.

Catholic clergy investigation

In August 2018, after reports of over 1,000 cases of sexual abuse by Catholic clerics were detailed in a report released by a grand jury in Pennsylvania, as well as protests by survivors of clergy sexual abuse in Saint Louis, Hawley announced that he would begin an investigation into potential cases of abuse in Missouri.

Missouri was one of several states to launch such investigations in the wake of the Pennsylvania report; the attorneys general in Illinois, Nebraska, and New Mexico began similar inquiries.

Hawley promised that he would investigate any crimes, publish a report for the public, and refer potential cases to local law enforcement officials. Robert James Carlson, the archbishop of Saint Louis, pledged cooperation with the inquiry.

Greitens scandals

On December 2017, Missouri’s Republican Governor Eric Greitens and senior members of his staff were accused by Democrats and government transparency advocates of subverting Missouri’s open records laws after the Kansas City Star reported that they used Confide, a messaging app that erases texts after they have been read, on their personal phones.

Hawley initially declined to prosecute, citing a Missouri Supreme Court ruling that the attorney general can’t simultaneously represent a state officer and take legal action against that officer. However, on December 20, 2017, he announced his office would investigate, saying that his clients are “first and foremost the citizens of the state”.

Hawley said text messages between government employees, whether made on private or government-issued phones, should be treated the same as emails there must be a determination made as to whether the text is a record, and if so if it is subject to disclosure. Hawley’s investigation found that no laws had been broken.

In March 2018, six attorneys formerly employed by the State of Missouri under Democrats released a letter describing the investigation as “half-hearted”; Hawley’s spokesperson called the letter a partisan attack.

When allegations emerged in January 2018 that Greitens had blackmailed a woman with whom he was having an affair, Hawley’s office said it did not have jurisdiction to look into the matter, and Kimberly Gardner, the circuit attorney for the City of St. Louis opened an investigation into the allegations. In April, after a special investigative committee of the Missouri House of Representatives released a report on the allegations, Hawley called for Greitens to resign immediately.

The next week, Gardner filed a second felony charge against Greitens, alleging that his campaign had taken donor and email lists from a veterans’ charity Greitens founded in 2007 and had used the information to raise funds for his 2016 campaign for governor.

Afterward, Hawley announced an investigation based on the new felony charges. On April 30, Hawley announced that his office had launched an investigation into possible violations of the state’s Sunshine laws following allegations that a state employee had managed a social media account on Greitens’ behalf.

That same month, Greitens asked a judge to issue a restraining order blocking Hawley from investigating him. On May 29, 2018, Greitens announced that he would resign effective June 1, 2018; Hawley issued a statement approving of the decision.

Investigations into tech companies

In November 2017, Hawley opened an investigation into whether Google’s business practices violated state consumer protection and anti-trust laws. The investigation was focused on what data Google collects from users of its services, how it uses content providers’ content, and whether its search engine results are biased.

In April 2018, following the Cambridge Analytica Data Scandal, Hawley announced that his office had issued a subpoena to Facebook related to how the company shares its users’ data. The investigation sought to find whether Facebook properly handles its users’ sensitive data, as well as if Facebook collects more data on its users than it publicly admits.

Opioid manufacturer lawsuit and investigation

On June 2017, Hawley announced that the State of Missouri had filed a lawsuit in state court against three major drug companies, Purdue Pharma, Endo Health Solutions, and Janssen Pharmaceuticals, for hiding the danger of prescription painkillers and contributing to the opioid epidemic. The state alleges that the companies violated Missouri consumer protection and Medicaid laws. The damages sought were among the largest in state history, on the order of hundreds of millions of dollars.

In August 2017, Hawley announced that he had opened an investigation into seven opioid distributors (Allergan, Depomed, Insys, Mallinckrodt, Mylan, Pfizer, and Teva Pharmaceuticals). On October 2017, she expanded his investigation into three additional pharmaceutical companies (AmerisourceBergen Corporation, Cardinal Health Inc., and McKesson Corporation), the three largest U.S. opioid distributors.

Rape kit audit

On October 29, 2017, the Columbia Missourian published an exposé describing a huge backlog of untested rape kits in the state of Missouri, and the long-ignored efforts of rape survivors and law enforcement agencies to have the state address the backlog.

On November 29, 2017, Hawley announced a statewide audit of the number of untested rape kits. The results were made public in May 2018; there were 5,000 such kits. In August 2018, One Nation, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit connected to Karl Rove, ran commercials giving Hawley, instead of the Columbia Missourian, credit for identifying the problem.

Successor

Eric Schmitt was appointed by Governor Mike Parson to succeed Hawley as Attorney General after he left the office to become a member of the U.S. Senate.

Josh Hawley U.S. Senate

In August 2017, Hawley filed notification papers that he had formed an exploratory campaign committee for the U.S. Senate. In October 2017, Hawley officially declared his candidacy for the Republican nomination in Missouri’s 2018 U.S. Senate election for the seat held by Democrat Claire McCaskill.

The tightly contested Republican primary had 11 runners hoping to unseat Claire McCaskill. Hawley received substantial support from prominent Republicans, such as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, President Donald Trump, and the Senate Conservatives Fund. Hawley won a large majority of the votes in the primary election.

Hawley was endorsed by President Donald Trump in November 2017. During the general election campaign, the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) and the subject of protections for preexisting conditions was a key issue, with both candidates pledging to ensure protections for preexisting conditions. Hawley’s participation in a lawsuit which could end insurance protections for people with pre-existing conditions by overturning the Affordable Care Act was criticized by McCaskill.

Hawley met criticism from both Republicans and Democrats for initiating his Senate campaign less than a year after being sworn in as Attorney General. A New York Times story noted that his Attorney General campaign had featured messages of disdain for “ladder climbing politicians.” Hawley dismissed this criticism, stating that a Senate run was not on his mind during the Attorney General campaign.

In the November 2018 general election, Hawley defeated incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill by a margin of 52% to 46%.

On December 6, 2018, Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft launched an inquiry into whether Hawley misappropriated public funds to support his candidacy for U.S. Senate. Hawley’s office denied any wrongdoing.

On February 28, 2019, Ashcroft closed the investigation because there was insufficient information that “an offense has been committed”. He was sworn in as a U.S. Senator on January 3, 2019. As of January 7, 2019, he is the youngest member of the U.S. Senate at age 39.

Josh Hawley Political views

Foreign policy

In January 2019, Hawley was one of eleven Republican senators to vote to advance legislation aimed at blocking President Trump’s intended lifting of sanctions against three Russian companies.

Gun policy

He received a 93% from the National Rifle Association (NRA) for 2018 and an 86% rating for 2016. He does not support an assault weapons ban but does support some gun-control measures including strengthening background checks, banning bump stocks, and banning mentally-ill people from having any type of guns. Hawley, like Matt Rosendale (in Montana’s 2018 race) and Richard Burr, used National Media as a media consultant – the same firm as used by the NRA.

Health care

He has criticized the Affordable Care Act. As Attorney General, he joined a lawsuit with 20 other states in seeking to have the Affordable Care Act declared unconstitutional. Hawley said the Affordable Care Act “was never constitutional”, and spoke proudly of his involvement in the lawsuit.

While running for the Senate in 2018, the Hawley campaign said that he supported protections for individuals with preexisting conditions, but did not elaborate on how such protections would be kept in place were the lawsuit to succeed.

Human trafficking

Hawley stated that human trafficking is the result of women’s sexual revolution in the 1960s, due to the social encouragement of premarital sex and the use of contraception. After receiving criticism for these statements, Hawley reiterated that Hollywood culture was a major cause of human trafficking.

Immigration

Hawley supported Trump’s separation of children from their parents who cross the border illegally, saying it was a matter of upholding law and order.

Social issues

Hawley opposes abortion and has called for the appointment of “constitutionalist, pro-life judges” to the U.S. Supreme Court and other federal courts. Hawley has referred to Roe v. Wade as “one of the most unjust decisions” in American judicial history. He was endorsed by Missouri’s Right to Life PAC in his 2018 U.S. Senate race.

Hawley believes that the appropriate place for sex is “within marriage”. In December 2015, he supported exemptions for Missouri ‘businesses and religious groups from participating in same-sex … marriage ceremonies’.

Tariffs

Hawley supported Trump’s imposition of trade tariffs. Hawley hopes that the tariffs will be temporary, eventually resulting in lower tariffs on US agriculture than before the trade battles. In September 2018, Hawley fully supported Trump’s trade actions, saying “It’s a trade war that China started. If we’re in a war, I want to be winning it.”

Tax returns

During his 2018 campaign, Hawley released his and his wife’s tax returns and called on his opponent, Claire McCaskill, to release her and her husband’s tax returns. McCaskill released her tax returns, which she files separately from her husband’s. When asked if Hawley thought that President Trump should release his tax returns, Hawley did not say.

U.S. Supreme Court nominations

Hawley’s first commercial in the 2018 Senate campaign focused on Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination for the U.S. Supreme Court, which he supported. After Kavanaugh was accused of sexual assault, Hawley staunchly defended Kavanaugh and said that Democrats had staged an “ambush” on him.

Josh Hawley Committee assignments

• Committee on Armed Services
  • Emerging Threats and Capabilities
  • Seapower
  • Strategic Forces
• Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
  • Federal Spending Oversight and Emergency Management
  • Investigations (Permanent)
• Committee on the Judiciary
  • Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights
  • Border Security and Immigration
  • Crime and Terrorism (Chair)
• Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship
• Special Committee on Aging

Josh Hawley Fox news

Online advertising has become more invasive than ever, and Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO)announced today that he plans to introduce a bill that would create a Do Not Call list but for data tracking. Hawley’s Do Not Track Act would, if approved, allow people using an online service to opt out of any data tracking that isn’t necessary for that particular service to properly work.

It would create a national list that would provide people with an option to block any secondary data tracking and penalize companies that continued to collect unnecessary data. “Big tech companies collect incredible amounts of deeply personal, private data from people without giving them the option to meaningfully consent,” Hawley said.

“They have gotten incredibly rich by employing creepy surveillance tactics on their users, but too often the extent of this data extraction is only known after a tech company irresponsibly handles the data and leaks it all over the internet.” Hawley’s bill is similar to a draft do-not-track bill published by DuckDuckGo CEO Gabriel Weinberg earlier this month, who presented it as a way to rein in the power of targeted advertising.

“People are fed up with Big Tech’s privacy abuses and are actively seeking out ways to protect themselves,” Weinberg said in a statement. “This bill finally closes this Do Not Track loophole while still taking advantage of the signal’s preexisting technical implementation and mainstream consumer adoption.”

The Do Not Track standard was first introduced in 2009, but it fizzled out as browsers and ad networks were unable to come to a consensus about how to treat the opt-out. But millions of users still have their browsers set to Do Not Track, and the new bill would add severe penalties for ignoring the signal.

If a company like Google were to knowingly collect secondary datasets from users who opt out, the company would be penalized up to $1,000 a day per person so long as the total is over $100,000. If a company collected the data unknowingly, it would still be required to pay out $50 a day per person.

Josh Hawley Internship

Senator Hawley offers internship opportunities in both his D.C. and state offices. The internship program is designed to create a unique opportunity to participate in the legislative process and public service.

Internships are available for fall, spring, and summer in the Washington D.C. and Missouri offices. Interested applicants should email the completed application to internships@hawley.senate.gov. Should you have further questions, you may reach the office at (202) 224-6154. Thank you for your interest in interning with Senator Hawley’s office.

Josh Hawley Endorsement

Keep in mind that ratings done by special interest groups often do not represent a non-partisan stance. In addition, some groups select votes that tend to favor members of one political party over another, rather than choosing votes based solely on issues concerns. Nevertheless, they can be invaluable in showing where an incumbent has stood on a series of votes in the past one or two years, especially when ratings by groups on all sides of an issue are compared. Website links, if available, and descriptions of the organizations offering performance evaluations are accessible by clicking on the name of the group.

Most performance evaluations are displayed in a percentage format. However, some organizations present their ratings in the form of a letter grade or endorsement based on voting records, interviews, survey results and/or sources of campaign funding. For consistency and ease in understanding, Vote Smart converts all scores into a percentage when possible.

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