Judicial Nominee Josh Divine is Part of the Anti-Abortion Machine’s Effort to Ban Mifepristone
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Trump’s very first slate of judicial nominees to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee for a confirmation hearing is setting the tone for what the anti-abortion machine’s priorities are in Trump’s second term—ending access to the abortion medication mifepristone.
Look no further than this week’s hearing for Josh Divine, a Missouri District Court nominee who is much more than just another young Trump loyalist. His anti-abortion zealotry makes him a dangerous pick, warranting deep scrutiny, particularly as Trump’s Department of Justice has already attacked reproductive freedom by confirming anti abortion extremists to key roles (such as Attorney General Pam Bondi and Solicitor General John Sauer) and dropping federal litigation against people who commit violence and harassment against abortion providers.
What’s the background?
During his last administration, Trump nominated three justices to the U.S. Supreme Court who were the decisive votes to overturn Roe v. Wade. Overturning Roe was the 50-year goal of the dark money machine that put Justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Coney-Barett on the Supreme Court. Since then, Trump appointees in the lower courts have used the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe to further restrict reproductive healthcare access across the country through rulings that not only put Americans’ lives and health at risk, but also healthcare providers’ careers—defying common sense and decency.
The anti-abortion machine has been relentless in its efforts to curb access to mifepristone, one of two pills used in the majority of abortion care in the United States. Mifepristone has been proven safe and effective by decades of research. Divine has been a major force behind the effort to ban mifepristone since his days working for Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO), the most vehement critic of mifepristone in Congress who regularly spews junk science and false information and introduced legislation to ban mifepristone nationwide. Using some of the same tactics as his former boss, Divine is representing the state of Missouri in the latest legal challenge against access to medication abortion care. If that case forces the FDA to remove its 25-year approval of mifepristone—or, alternatively, impose medically unnecessary restrictions—it could result in millions losing abortion access. This would amount to the anti-abortion network’s biggest win since Dobbs.
The group Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC), which has ties to anti-abortion powerbroker Leonard Leo, released its junk study on mifepristone just days after Food and Drug Administration head, Marty Makary, suggested he would be open to restricting access to it if new data was presented. Since this debunked pseudo-study was released, Hawley has been leading the charge in Congress and has successfully pressured HHS Secretary RFK Jr. to commit to reviewing mifepristone, despite over 100 studies already confirming the pill’s safety. The day after EPPC released its pseudo study, an anti-abortion coalition relying heavily on its discredited “findings” sent a letter to Trump calling on him to investigate mifepristone again—with the ultimate goal of “reconsidering its approval altogether.”
Despite Trump declaring on the campaign trail that he would leave abortion access to the states, his FDA’s attack on mifepristone and his nomination of Divine—among countless other executive nominees with extreme anti-abortion views, like RFK Jr. and Makary—suggests otherwise.
More on Divine’s Ties to the Anti-Abortion Machine
Josh Divine has ties to major players in the anti-abortion network that helped overturn Roe and continues to push to eliminate what is left of Americans’ reproductive rights.
Divine also has multiple ties to Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the SPLC-designated “hate group” that has been at the forefront of the legal assault on abortion access, from helping design the legal roadmap to overturn Roe to the case challenging the FDA’s authority to regulate access to mifepristone. Divine’s recent financial disclosures show that while he was representing the state of Missouri in 2023 and 2024, he received lodging and travel from ADF for three conferences. Divine has also been involved in cases with ADF.
Divine worked for Senator Hawley, who is married to Erin Hawley—an attorney and Vice President at ADF who litigated and coordinated amicus briefs in support of Dobbs, and helped develop the legal strategy to challenge and successfully overturn Roe. Erin Hawley has litigated against mifepristone at the Supreme Court, while Josh Hawley has been leading the charge in Congress to restrict the abortion pill, including by introducing legislation to ban it nationwide and getting HHS Secretary RFK Jr. to commit to reviewing it despite its proven safety record.
According to Divine’s most recent financial disclosure, he also received lodging and travel from the Heritage Foundation to speak on a panel in June 2024. Heritage is the group that helmed Trump’s Project 2025 playbook, which includes banning and criminalizing medication abortion, denying access to emergency abortion care, and expanding the federal surveillance of pregnant Americans. There does not appear to be any public record on Heritage’s website or social media of a June 2024 event featuring Divine.
He is a contributor to the Federalist Society—a network of lawyers that serves as a right-wing pipeline to power, helping secure judgeships and other powerful positions for its acolytes. Leonard Leo, the anti-abortion juggernaut who engineered the right-wing faction of the Supreme Court responsible for overturning Roe, helps lead the Federalist Society as co-chair of its board. Divine reported compensation from the Federalist Society for speaking at 11 different panels and conferences between 2023 and 2024 alone.
Divine’s Own Efforts to Restrict Abortion Access
Since the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine (AHM) for lack of standing (and not based on the proven safety and efficacy of mifepristone), an anti-abortion group of state attorneys general has tried to revive the case. Missouri, Kansas, and Idaho requested to intervene in the case after certiorari was already to the Supreme Court. The states then filed an amended complaint in October 2024 with the same Trump-appointed district court judge, Matthew Kacsmaryk, who had previously ordered that access to mifepristone should be barred nationwide while litigation continued in the case. The states requested to continue the case even after AHM dropped its initial claim–despite not having any connection to Kacsmaryk’s district or a bona fide reason to litigate the issue in his court.
Josh Divine co-authored the almost 200-page complaint, which is rife with anti-abortion disinformation. With his help, the filers seek to roll back access to mifepristone by requiring onerous and unnecessary in-person dispensing, further limiting access from being able to use it at 10 weeks gestation to 7 (before many even know they are pregnant), and banning access entirely for young people. In addition, as Solicitor General, Divine challenged Missouri’s "The Right to Reproductive Freedom Initiative” ballot, even after a majority of Missourians voted to enshrine reproductive freedom into the state’s constitution in 2024.
Divine Should Not be a Judge
Even as a student journalist, Divine attacked the longstanding precedent of Roe v. Wade and echoed anti-abortion groups’ talking points. Based on his ties to the anti-abortion machine that already overturned Roe and his personal animus to abortion rights, Divine cannot be trusted to be a fair and neutral arbiter of the law on abortion.
Since the demise of Roe, the courts have become a primary line of defense in protecting what remains of abortion rights in the United States. Knowing this, the anti-abortion court capture machine is gearing up to stack them with their friends like Josh Divine. He should be swiftly and soundly voted down by the Senate.
Why do the men with the least clues and the least involvement always go full batshit crazy? Not rhetorical. We know why.