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Advocates Decry Senate Confirmation of 'Anti-Abortion Extremist' to Lifetime Federal Court Seat
"Divine's confirmation makes clear that Trump lied to voters when he said he would 'leave it to the states,' and he is actively working to eliminate abortion access nationwide," said a prominent reproductive rights advocate.
Jul 22, 2025
Several advocacy groups expressed outrage on Tuesday after the United States Senate voted to confirm Missouri Solicitor General Joshua Divine to be a United States District Judge for the Eastern and Western Districts of Missouri.
Divine, who was confirmed by a vote of 51 in favor to 46 against, is one of several judicial nominees of U.S. President Donald Trump who has been singled out by advocates for what they describe as his extreme record on a number of issues ranging from reproductive freedoms to LGBTQ rights to relief for student loan borrowers.
Every member of the Senate Democratic caucus voted against Divine’s confirmation with the exception of Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), who voted in favor. All Republicans voting in the Senate on Tuesday supported Divine’s confirmation, while three GOP senators—John Kennedy of Louisiana, Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky—did not vote.
Mini Timmaraju, president and CEO of abortion rights advocacy organization Reproductive Freedom for All, argued that Divine's nomination and confirmation were a sign that Trump and the GOP would not be content to leave abortion rights up to individual states.
"Divine's confirmation makes clear that Trump lied to voters when he said he would 'leave it to the states,' and he is actively working to eliminate abortion access nationwide," she said. "Federal courts are a critical line of defense to preserve reproductive healthcare, and these appointments are a dangerous sign of what's to come."
Winston Berkman-Breen, legal director of the Student Borrower Protection Center (SBPC), accused Divine of building a political career on the backs of student loan borrowers who were in dire need of relief from the massive debts they incurred while pursuing an education.
"Time and time again in his lawsuits challenging legal student loan payment and relief programs, Divine took extreme positions at odds with traditional judicial interpretations related to injury, standing, and venue," he said. "Because of Divine, millions of student loan borrowers remain buried in crushing debt. Divine's actions exceeded the bounds of zealous advocacy and were a direct affront to judicial procedure. Americans deserve a judge who will review the facts of the case before them and apply the law under the Constitution and as passed by Congress—not an ideologue who will manipulate those laws to obtain the outcome he prefers."
Lena Zwarensteyn, senior director of the fair courts program and an advisor at The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, didn't focus on any specific issue and instead took an all-of-the-above approach to condemning what she described as Divine's unfitness for the federal bench.
"The Senate's confirmation of Joshua Divine to the federal bench in Missouri... installs into a lifetime judgeship an individual who does not possess the requisite experience to be a federal judge and who has time and time again demonstrated significant hostility to our civil and human rights," she argued. "His limited legal career—which includes a record of intense opposition to reproductive rights, LGBTQ equality, student loan borrowers, and more—is disqualifying. Our courts, our communities, and our democracy deserve better. Senators must ensure that judicial nominees are fair-minded, actually qualified for the job, and faithful to the rule of law and Constitution rather than to an anti-civil rights agenda."
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Trump Continues Far-Right 'Crusade Against Our Courts' With Judicial Slate
"If confirmed," said one watchdog leader, "these nominees would be expected to not only look the other way as the building blocks of America's democracy are gutted, but to pave the way for Trump's radical agenda."
Jun 04, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump worked to force the federal judiciary to the far right with 234 confirmed nominees during his previous term, and he continued that mission on Wednesday, when the first slate of his second-term selections attended a Senate hearing.
Trump has announced 11 nominees, but only Whitney Hermandorfer, his pick to serve on the Cincinnati, Ohio-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, and four candidates to be district court judges in Missouri—Zachary Bluestone, Joshua Divine, Maria Lanahan, and Cristian Stevens—came before the Senate Judiciary Committee, which considers them before a full floor vote.
Just hours before the hearing began, Maggie Jo Buchanan, interim executive director of the advocacy group Demand Justice, wrote for Salon that "Trump's judicial nominees are key to the far right's crusade against our courts."
"If confirmed, these nominees would be expected to not only look the other way as the building blocks of America's democracy are gutted, but to pave the way for Trump's radical agenda—gutting reproductive freedoms and allowing the administration to take healthcare away from millions," she warned. "Many of them have histories of defending anti-choice legislation and other radical policies championed by Trump and his MAGA allies in Congress."
"Trump is picking up where he left off in his first term by using judicial nominees to advance an extreme agenda that undermines Americans' fundamental freedoms."
Buchanan wasn't alone in sounding the alarm about threats to healthcare. In anticipation of the hearing, the watchdog Accountable.US published a report detailing how "Trump's first judicial picks have a dangerous record of undermining fundamental freedoms, with a number of them who have a record of directly targeting reproductive rights."
Accountable.US cited Hermandorfer defending Tennessee's near-total ban on abortion as director of strategic litigation for the state attorney general's office, as well as Divine, Missouri's solicitor general, and his deputy, Lanahan, supporting extreme anti-choice efforts in their state.
"Trump is picking up where he left off in his first term by using judicial nominees to advance an extreme agenda that undermines Americans' fundamental freedoms," said Accountable.US president Caroline Ciccone. "But this time, Trump is selecting nominees with personal allegiances to the president, who will go even further in using the bench to cut off Americans' rights. Senators should know a vote to confirm Trump's judicial nominees is a vote to radically undermine reproductive freedom."
Reproductive rights aren't the only topical concern. Buchanan noted that "some of the nominees in this first slate have also supported Trump's attack on birthright citizenship, which has been widely viewed as unconstitutional. And in true loyalist fashion, one worked to defend Trump by seeking to interfere in New York's attempt to hold Trump accountable for state crimes."
The nominee who got involved in the New York case is Divine, who is also under fire for targeting the Biden administration's attempt to provide student debt relief. Student Borrower Protection Center legal director Winston Berkman-Breen said Wednesday that the nominee "built his political brand off the suffering of tens of millions of student loan borrowers across this country, and now the Trump administration is rewarding him with a position that will let him enshrine his personal ideologies into law."
"Time and time again in his lawsuits challenging legal student loan payment and relief programs, Divine took extreme positions at odds with traditional judicial interpretations related to injury, standing, and venue," Berkman-Breen pointed out. "Because of Divine, millions of student loan borrowers remain buried in crushing debt."
"Divine's actions exceeded the bounds of zealous advocacy and were a direct affront to judicial procedure," he added. "Americans deserve a judge who will review the facts of the case before them and apply the law under the Constitution and as passed by Congress—not an ideologue who will manipulate those laws to obtain the outcome he prefers."
The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a coalition of more than 240 national organizations, similarly asserted in a Tuesday letter that "at a time when so many of our fundamental civil rights are under attack, we need to trust that our judges will impartially and fairly rule on cases without bias or animus."
The coalition specifically took aim at Trump's 6th Circuit nominee, writing that "unfortunately, a careful review of Ms. Hermandorfer’s record shows a demonstrated hostility towards our civil and human rights that is disqualifying for a judicial nominee. We strongly urge the Senate to oppose her nomination."
Earthjustice Action legislative director of the Access to Justice Program Coby Dolan stressed in a Wednesday statement that "we need principled judges who will uphold the law and serve as a bulwark against this administration's brazen attacks on the rule of law and our environment."
"It is the Senate's constitutional obligation to rigorously scrutinize these nominees, asking tough questions to determine whether they are impartial, believe in the government's ability to tackle our most pressing issues, and understand the difference between facts and politics," Dolan added. "We need oversight, not rubber stamps."
The Senate is controlled by the GOP, but only narrowly. Buchanan argued that "given what we are seeing out of the administration, there is no acceptable reason for Senate Democrats to assist their Republican colleagues in pushing through Trump's judicial nominees."
'Some Senate Dems voiced regret for supporting Trump’s cabinet nominees who were seen as mainstream but went full MAGA once confirmed Senators should not set themselves up for the same feelings of shame in voting for Trump's nominees for lifetime appointments' mmmhmm www.salon.com/2025/06/04/t...
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— Barred and Boujee and NEWLYWED aka Madiba Dennie (@audrelawdamercy.bsky.social) June 4, 2025 at 1:19 PM
The committee's ranking member, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) on Wednesday pointed to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi's recent decision to limit the American Bar Association's (ABA) access to information about judicial nominees as proof that "the Trump administration is clearly just trying to cover for unqualified and extreme nominees."
Time reported last week that Bondi's "move against the ABA came a day after Trump announced six new judicial nominees, which included top Justice Department official Emil Bove being put forward to serve as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit."
The other five newly announced nominees—Ed Artau, Kyle Dudek, Anne-Leigh Gaylord Moe, John Guard, and Jordan E. Pratt—are on track to serve as district judges in Florida.
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'Unconscionable': Trump Ready to Garnish Wages for Indebted Student Loan Borrowers
"They're just cruel and want to take as much as possible from the folks who have very little," said one student borrower advocacy group.
May 05, 2025
With the Trump administration restarting collection efforts on defaulted student loans after a five-year reprieve on Monday, Mike Pierce of the Student Borrower Protection Center said the move "will further fan the flames of economic chaos for working families across this country"—particularly as the White House threatens to garnish the wages of people who struggle to make higher monthly payments.
The SBPC joined nearly 200 other organizations in sending a letter to the acting undersecretary of education, James Bergeron, condemning the administration's efforts to gut income-driven repayment options and eliminate the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program, which has delivered student debt relief to 1 million public service workers since it was implemented in 2007.
"The administration should move to enact policies that better protect student borrowers, rather than pursue misguided policies that will drive up costs and weaken protections," wrote the groups.
More than 42 million Americans have student debt, with more than $1.6 trillion owed in total. More than 5 million borrowers are currently in default, and that number could grow to about 10 million as the Trump administration ends programs that have been aimed at helping people pay off their loans in manageable amounts each month.
Collections are beginning months after Republican-led lawsuits succeeded in blocking former President Joe Biden's Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) plan, and days after the GOP members of the House Education and Workforce Committee advanced more than $350 billion in proposed funding cuts for education programs—cuts that government watchdog Accountable.US said are "paving the way for tax cuts for themselves, billionaire donors, and corporations."
The Republicans approved:
- Slashing federal student aid by capping unsubsidized and Parent PLUS loans and eliminating subsidized loans for undergraduates and Grad PLUS loans entirely, which would disproportionately impact low-income families, especially those with students at HBCUs;
- Repealing a set of Biden-era protections—including rules establishing forgiveness for students of schools that closed or failed to lead to gainful employment—that have canceled at least $17.2 billion in federal student loans for nearly 1 million borrowers misled by predatory institutions;
- Repealing the Biden administration's SAVE plan and replacing it with just two fixed or income-based repayment plans, a change that could raise costs for millions of borrowers, including those making modest incomes; and
- Changing Pell Grant eligibility by altering the definition of full-time college attendance to 30 credit hours per year and requiring at least half-time attendance to qualify for any grant at all.
"To pay for tax cuts for the richest in this country, congressional Republicans are willing to gut the programs tens of millions of Americans rely on," said Tony Carrk, executive director of Accountable.US. "Their education markup makes it abundantly clear that they're not just going to gut Medicaid, they're proposing hundreds of billions of dollars of cuts to programs that provide more opportunities for everyday Americans to access higher education. These cuts are a betrayal of congressional Republicans' promise to make government work for Americans and to lower their costs; in fact, it will do quite the opposite."
The Debt Collective, a union of student loan borrowers, pointed out that the Trump administration isn't required by law to begin collecting student debt on Monday.
"They're just cruel and want to take as much as possible from the folks who have very little," said the group.
Aside from garnishing borrowers' wages, the administration could further devastate millions of people as credit scores could tank when the Education Department begins collection activity.
The Federal Reserve projected in March that people with delinquencies could see their credit scores plummet by as many as 171 points, leading to higher costs for borrowers who later take out mortgages, car loans, and sign up for credit cards.
U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) called President Donald Trump's threat to garnish wages in order to collect student debt "unconscionable."
The president and Education Secretary Linda McMahon, said Pressley, "should NOT be seizing people's hard-earned wages, tax refunds, and Social Security checks."
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