# Josh Hawley Joshua David Hawley (b. December 31, 1979) is the **junior U.S. Senator from Missouri** (elected 2018, re-elected 2024), previously Missouri's 43rd Attorney General (2017-2019). A Stanford undergraduate and Yale Law School graduate who clerked for Chief Justice [[John Roberts]] and practiced at Hogan Lovells before entering Missouri politics, Hawley is one of the most credentialed members of the post-2016 Republican Senate caucus and one of the intellectual leaders of what is variously called **"national conservatism,"** the **"post-liberal right,"** or the **[[New Right]]** — the intellectual tendency that has sought to construct a Republican policy agenda around economic populism, anti-tech-monopoly politics, pronatalist social policy, and a critique of classical liberalism itself. Hawley is best known publicly for two images: the **January 6, 2021 fist raise** to the pro-Trump crowd outside the Capitol shortly before the attack, and his status as one of two senators (along with [[Ted Cruz]]) who **objected to the [[Electoral College]] certification** in the hours after the attack concluded. Hawley matters for the KB for three reasons. First, the **January 6 fist raise** and the subsequent Electoral College objection are among the clearest documentary moments of Senate Republican alignment with the Trump post-election effort. Hawley was the first senator to publicly announce he would object to certification — a commitment that procedurally required debate and a vote on objections, and that arguably made the January 6 events more politically consequential than they would otherwise have been. Second, he is **the most intellectually sophisticated Senate-level exponent** of the [[The New Right Ecosystem]] intellectual cluster — his 2021 book *The Tyranny of Big Tech*, his 2022 book *Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs*, and his policy positions on antitrust, tech regulation, and family policy make him the principal translator of post-liberal right intellectual work into Senate-level legislation and rhetoric. Third, his **substantive bipartisan cooperation** on specific issues (antitrust reform, railroad safety regulation post-Ohio derailment, hawkish China policy) makes him a case study in how the New Right cluster combines cultural-conservative positioning with economic-populist legislative tactics — a combination that produces occasional Democrat-Republican alliances that confuse the conventional left-right axis. ## Background - Born December 31, 1979, in Springdale, Arkansas; raised in Lexington, Missouri - BA from Stanford University (2002, history, with honors) - JD from Yale Law School (2006) - Law clerk to Judge Michael W. McConnell, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit (2006-2007) - Law clerk to Chief Justice John Roberts, U.S. Supreme Court (2007-2008) - Associate at Hogan Lovells (2008-2011) - Assistant Professor, University of Missouri School of Law (2011-2016) - Senior Counsel and then Senior Counsel of Counsel at the [[Becket Fund]] for [[Religious Liberty]] (parallel during academic period) - 43rd Missouri Attorney General (2017-2019) - U.S. Senator from Missouri (January 3, 2019 – present) - Married Erin Morrow Hawley (a law professor and ADF attorney) since 2010; three children ## Missouri Attorney General Tenure (2017-2019) Hawley's two-year AG tenure was marked by: - **Joining the 20-state lawsuit challenging the Affordable Care Act** (*Texas v. United States*), arguing the ACA was unconstitutional after Congress eliminated the individual mandate penalty - **Investigating Google and Facebook** on antitrust and data-privacy grounds — positioning Hawley early as a Republican tech-antitrust hawk - **Anti-sex-trafficking work** that Hawley cited heavily in his subsequent Senate campaign - **Investigating former Missouri Governor [[Eric Greitens]]** on ethics matters, contributing to Greitens's June 2018 resignation The AG tenure was structurally an 18-month launching pad for the 2018 Senate race against two-term Democratic incumbent Claire McCaskill, which Hawley won 51.4%-45.6% in a state trending sharply Republican. ## January 6, 2021 The events of January 6 are the single most-covered episode of Hawley's career: ### The Fist Raise (morning) A widely-distributed Associated Press photograph captured Hawley raising a fist in salute to the gathered pro-Trump crowd outside the Capitol shortly before the attack began. The photograph became one of the iconic visual artifacts of the day, and the Hawley fist has been used in subsequent campaign materials — by Hawley himself (including merchandise featuring the fist image) and by his critics (as documentary evidence of his relationship to the crowd that breached the Capitol hours later). ### The Electoral College Objection (evening) Hawley had announced before January 6 that he would object to the certification of Pennsylvania's (and, after the attack, Arizona's) electoral votes. The objection procedurally required debate and a vote, forcing senators back into chamber after the attack had been cleared. Hawley's objection was overruled along with Cruz's. Hawley and Cruz were the only two senators who voted to sustain the objections. ### Subsequent Behavior Security-camera footage released by the [[House January 6 Committee]] in July 2022 showed Hawley running through the Capitol during the attack — an image widely circulated in political commentary and used in Democratic campaign materials in subsequent elections. ### Book Deal Controversy Hawley had a book deal with Simon & Schuster cancelled in the immediate aftermath of January 6. The book (*The Tyranny of Big Tech*) was subsequently published by Regnery Publishing in May 2021. ## The New Right Intellectual Position Hawley is the most credentialed Senate-level exponent of the [[The New Right Ecosystem]] intellectual cluster. His written and spoken work engages with the cluster's core authors — including [[Patrick Deneen]] (*[[Why Liberalism Failed]]*, 2018), [[Adrian Vermeule]], Sohrab Ahmari, and the Edmund Burke Foundation's [[National Conservatism]] conferences. Hawley's distinctive positions include: - **Antitrust hawkism**: *The Tyranny of Big Tech* (2021) argues for a substantial break with the 1970s-onward [[Chicago School]] consumer-welfare antitrust framework, endorsing a return to the 1890s-1930s structural antitrust tradition - **Economic populism**: Consistent positioning as a critic of corporate concentration, PE / venture-capital practices, and the "concentrated wealth" side of the Republican donor coalition - **Pronatalism**: Policy support for the child tax credit expansion, paid family leave proposals, and cultural support for larger-family formation - **Critique of liberalism**: Explicit engagement with the Deneen-type argument that classical liberalism's individualistic premises produce the cultural conditions the New Right critiques - **Masculinity politics**: *Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs* (2022) is a New Right text arguing for a restoration of what Hawley describes as traditionally masculine virtues and critiquing what he characterizes as their cultural denigration The positioning is distinctive among Senate Republicans. Most Republican Senate hawks on antitrust (Lee, Cotton on selected issues) are not intellectually engaged with the post-liberal right literature; most intellectually engaged post-liberal right figures (Vance, Rubio) have moved through different career paths. ## Legislative Pattern Hawley's legislative record pattern is distinctive for the Senate Republican caucus: - **Bipartisan antitrust**: Co-sponsored legislation with Senate Democrats on tech antitrust, app-store regulation, and acquisition review - **Railroad safety**: Post-East Palestine (Ohio) derailment (February 2023), co-sponsored legislation with Democrats on railroad safety regulation - **China policy**: Consistent hawkish position, including legislation on outbound investment screening and semiconductor export controls - **Social conservatism**: Full voting record on abortion, judicial confirmations, and LGBTQ-related legislation - **Foreign policy**: Critic of Ukraine aid packages (dissenting from most Republican hawks); broadly restrictionist on foreign intervention outside East Asia ## Connection to the KB Ecosystem - **[[Donald Trump]]**: Endorsed Trump in 2024 after extended post-January 6 distancing; currently aligned with [[Trump II]] policy priorities. - **[[The New Right Ecosystem]]**: Principal Senate-level exponent of the New Right intellectual cluster; engaged with [[Patrick Deneen]], Sohrab Ahmari, and National Conservatism conference participants. - **[[Federalist Society]]**: Clerkship-era alumnus; intellectually aligned but distinct on some antitrust / tech positions from the mainstream FedSoc consensus. - **January 6 events**: The fist raise and Electoral College objection are among the best-documented moments of Senate Republican alignment with Trump's post-election effort. - **[[Ted Cruz]]**: Paired documentary figure in the Electoral College objection; the only two senators who voted to sustain. - **Antitrust hawkism**: The Senate-level voice for a post-Chicago-School antitrust framework on a Republican side historically skeptical of such frameworks. - **[[Edmund Burke Foundation]] / National Conservatism**: Intellectual ecosystem; frequent conference speaker. - **Post-liberal right / Deneen-adjacent**: Hawley is the Senate-level political vehicle for the intellectual program Deneen articulates. ## Notable Quotes - [[Josh Hawley - cosmopolitan elite]] — National Conservatism Conference, July 18, 2019. The keynote framing of a "cosmopolitan elite" whose "primary loyalty is to the global community" — a founding NatCon text, and a flashpoint over coded language. - [[Josh Hawley - epidemic of men]] — National Conservatism Conference, October 31, 2021. The "attack on men" keynote blaming the left for driving men into idleness, pornography, and video games — the elite-electoral face of the masculinity-versus-feminism frame. - [[Josh Hawley - it was about cultural revolution]] — Heritage Foundation Leadership Summit, April 20, 2023. The "Great Awokening" keynote using "cultural revolution" in the Gramscian, cultural-Marxism sense (revolution relocated from economics to culture) — not the Maoist-China analogy. ## See Also - [[Donald Trump]] - [[Ted Cruz]] - [[Leonard Leo]] - [[JD Vance]] - [[Patrick Deneen]] - [[Federalist Society]] - [[The New Right Ecosystem]] - [[Edmund Burke Foundation]] - [[Heritage Foundation]]