Sen. Angus King Admits Vote For Anti-Abortion Judge Was ‘A Mistake’

WASHINGTON — Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) admitted Thursday that he made “a mistake” by voting to confirm Josh Divine, a 35-year-old archconservative with a long record of litigation against abortion rights, to a lifetime federal judgeship.

King told HuffPost that he voted Tuesday to confirm Divine after talking to Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who gave Divine “a strong reference.” Divine, who will now serve on a U.S. district court in Missouri, used to be Hawley’s chief counsel.

“I took Josh Hawley’s advice,” said the Maine senator. “In retrospect, I think it was a mistake, from what I’ve learned about Mr. Divine since. But sometimes, you rely on your colleagues.”

Asked if he was aware of Divine’s record on abortion rights, King said, “Not fully.”

King’s vote didn’t change the outcome of Divine’s confirmation, as he already had enough Republican votes to get through. But it’s an embarrassing misstep by the Maine senator, who otherwise caucuses with Democrats and strongly backs abortion rights.

A Hawley spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

It had been a mystery up until now why, exactly, King voted for Divine. Some progressive groups have fumed about it, demanding an explanation.

Divine’s record of attacking women’s reproductive rights is well-established.

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.

In 2010, he also argued in favor of bringing back literacy tests for voting, a practice banned in the 1960s for being racially discriminatory.

Maggie Jo Buchanan, interim executive director of the progressive judicial advocacy group Demand Justice, said King’s botched vote on Divine illustrates that senators aren’t paying enough attention to Trump’s efforts…