Josh Hawley

On May 5, 2020, Hawley wrote an op-ed in The New York Times calling for the abolition of the World Trade Organization, arguing it did not serve American interests and "enabled the rise of China." Shortly afterward, he introduced a resolution to withdraw the U.S. from the WTO.

Hawley was sworn in as a U.S. Senator on January 3, 2019. He is the youngest U.S. Senator.

On November 18, 2019, Hawley announced the National Security and Personal Data Protection Act, which would make it illegal for American companies to store user data or encryption keys in China. Engadget noted the bill might cause "serious problems" for companies that are legally obligated to store data in China, such as Apple and TikTok, and "might force them to leave China altogether." It was not Hawley's first technology-related bill; he had also introduced proposals to ban loot boxes in gaming and to restrict social network features "deemed addictive", among others. Hawley focused on TikTok, saying the bill would cover Russia as well as China, and "any other country the State Department deems a security risk." He said the bill was "targeted at social media platforms and data-intensive businesses", and "would block such mergers by default without pre-approval from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States." The bill also prevents the collection of "more user data than is necessary to conduct business."

In January 2019, Hawley was one of 11 Republican senators to vote to advance legislation aimed at blocking Trump's intended lifting of sanctions on three Russian companies.

In October 2019, Hawley sponsored the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act. Before the bill went to the House of Representatives, he visited Hong Kong to see the protests. He commented on Twitter that Beijing was trying to turn Hong Kong into a "police state". Chief Executive of Hong Kong Carrie Lam called the comment "irresponsible". On November 19, 2019, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed the act.

In August 2019, Hawley introduced the Social Media Addiction Reduction Technology (SMART) Act, which would ban features, such as infinite scrolling and auto-play, that Hawley says encourage internet addiction.

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

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.

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 on 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 used the information to raise funds for his 2016 campaign for governor.

On May 29, 2018, Greitens announced that he would resign effective June 1, 2018; Hawley issued a statement approving of the decision.

In April 2018, after the Facebook–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 or collects more data than it publicly admits.

In the November 2018 general election, Hawley defeated McCaskill, 52% to 46%.

On December 6, 2018, Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft launched an inquiry into whether Hawley misappropriated public funds for his Senate campaign. Hawley's office denied any wrongdoing. On February 28, 2019, Ashcroft closed the investigation because there was insufficient evidence that "an offense has been committed."

Hawley received a 93% rating 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 guns. Like Matt Rosendale in Montana's 2018 Senate race and Richard Burr, Hawley used National Media as a media consultant, the same firm the NRA uses.

Hawley has criticized the Affordable Care Act. As attorney general, he joined a lawsuit with 20 other states in seeking to have it declared unconstitutional. Hawley said the 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.

Hawley supported Trump's imposition of trade tariffs, saying he hoped 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."

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 returns. McCaskill released her returns, which she files separately from her husband's. When asked if he thought Trump should release his returns, Hawley did not say.

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

In 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 cannot simultaneously represent a state officer and take legal action against that officer. But 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: a determination must be made as to whether the text is a record, and if so, whether 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.

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 June 2017, Hawley announced that the State of Missouri had filed suit 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 alleged 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). In October 2017, Hawley expanded his investigation into three additional pharmaceutical companies (AmerisouthBergen Corporation, Cardinal Health Inc., and McKesson Corporation), the three largest U.S. opioid distributors.

On October 29, 2017, the Columbia Missourian published an exposé describing a huge backlog of untested rape kits in 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.

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

Trump endorsed Hawley in November 2017. During the general election campaign, Obamacare was a key issue, with both candidates pledging to ensure protections for preexisting conditions. McCaskill criticized Hawley's participation in a lawsuit that could end insurance protections for people with preexisting conditions by overturning the Affordable Care Act. Hawley made McCaskill's upcoming vote on the confirmation of CIA Director Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State a campaign issue. His campaign spokesperson asked, "Will Senator McCaskill ignore her liberal donors and support Mike Pompeo for Secretary of State, or will she stick with Chuck Schumer and continue to obstruct the president?", adding, "It is deeply troubling how focused Senator McCaskill is on doing what’s politically convenient instead of doing what’s right."

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

In May 2015, Hawley was admitted to the Supreme Court bar and became eligible to argue cases before the Court.

Hawley believes that the appropriate place for sex is "within marriage". In December 2015, he supported exemptions for Missouri "businesses and religions groups from participating in same-sex ... marriage ceremonies".

In June 2013, Hawley served as a faculty member of the Blackstone Legal Fellowship, which is funded by Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian organization.

For the 116th United States Congress, Hawley was named to five Senate committees. They are:

Hawley is married to Erin Morrow Hawley, an associate professor of law at the University of Missouri. They have two sons. The Hawleys moved to Columbia, Missouri, in 2011. After becoming attorney general of Missouri, Hawley also rented an apartment in Jefferson City following complaints that he was not abiding by a statutory residency requirement. The Hawleys moved to Virginia after Hawley was elected to the U.S. Senate. Hawley was raised Methodist, but he and his family now attend an Evangelical Presbyterian Church, and he identifies as an Evangelical.

After Hawley's clerkships, he worked an appellate litigator at Hogan Lovells in Washington, D.C (then called Hogan & Hartson) from 2008 to 2011. From 2011 to 2015, he worked for The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty at their Washington, D.C. offices before moving to Missouri. At Becket, he wrote briefs and gave legal advice in the Supreme Court cases Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church & School v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, decided in 2012, and Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, decided in 2014. In 2011, Hawley moved to Missouri and became an associate professor at the University of Missouri Law School, where he taught constitutional law, constitutional theory, legislation, and torts.

Hawley was born in Springdale, Arkansas, but soon moved to Lexington, Missouri, where his father worked as a banker and his mother was a teacher. He 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, then attended Yale Law School, where he led the school's chapter of the Federalist Society and received a Juris Doctor degree in 2006.

Joshua David Hawley (born December 31, 1979) is an American attorney and Republican politician serving as the junior United States Senator from Missouri. Hawley served as the 42nd Missouri Attorney General from 2017 to 2019, before defeating two-term Democratic incumbent Senator Claire McCaskill in the 2018 election. At 40, he is the youngest member of the U.S. Senate.

Hawley has said that human trafficking is the result of the American sexual revolution in the 1960s due to the social encouragement of premarital sex and the use of contraception. After being criticized for these statements, he said that Hollywood culture was a major cause of human trafficking.