Two of President Donald Trump’s nominees for lifetime federal judgeships co-authored a major challenge to the abortion pill on behalf of Missouri.
Joshua Divine and Maria Lanahan represented the state in challenging the Food and Drug Administration’s regulations around mifepristone. The nearly 200-page complaint filed in October includes outlandish statements rife with anti-abortion misinformation, including that the abortion pill “starves the baby to death in the womb” and the population loss caused by mifepristone access creates “diminishment of political representation” and “loss of federal funds” for some red states.
Divine is currently the solicitor general of Missouri and director of special litigation in the state attorney general’s office. Lanahan is the state’s principal deputy solicitor general.
Trump nominated Divine and Lanahan earlier this month. Divine is Trump’s pick for the U.S. District Court for the Eastern and Western Districts of Missouri. He nominated Lanahan to a federal judgeship in the Eastern District of Missouri. The White House did not immediately return HuffPost’s request for comment.
“Donald Trump is picking up right where he left off using the courts to impose an agenda that takes away our rights and control of our lives,” Caroline Ciccone, Accountable.US president, told HuffPost. Ciccone said Divine and Lanahan have a “record of eliminating Americans’ freedoms” which “is out of step with the vast majority of the public and calls into question their ability to rule impartially.”
