Sen. Joshua “Josh” Hawley
Senator for Missouri
pronounced josh // HAW-lee
Hawley is the senior senator from Missouri and is a Republican. He has served since Jan 3, 2019. Hawley is next up for reelection in 2024 and serves until Jan 3, 2025. He is 43 years old.
![Photo of Sen. Joshua “Josh” Hawley [R-MO]](/static/legislator-photos/412840-200px.jpeg)
Our work to hold Congress accountable only matters if elections are decided by counting votes. President Trump, his senior government advisors, and Republican legislators collaborated to have the 2020 presidential election decided by themselves rather than by voters. Their attempts to suppress entire state-certified vote counts without adjudication in the courts and using a disinformation campaign of lies and conspiracy theories was a months-long, multifarious attempted coup.
Hawley was among the Republican legislators who participated in the attempted coup. In the days leading up to January 6, 2021’s congressional certification of the election by counting electors, Hawley announced his intent to object to the inclusion of some states’ electors in the count, disenfranchising millions of voters without due process and amplifying lies, conspiracy theories, and preposterous legal theories about purported outcome-determining fraud which did not occur. On January 6, 2021 in the hours after the violent insurrection at the Capitol, Hawley voted to skip Arizona and/or Pennsylvania in the counting of presidential electors, states which returned certified results for Trump’s opponent. These legislators have generally changed their story after their vote, claiming it was merely a protest and not intended to change the outcome of the election as they clearly sought prior to the vote. The January 6, 2021 violent insurrection at the Capitol, led on the front lines by militant white supremacy groups, attempted to prevent President-elect Joe Biden from taking office by disrupting Congress’s count of electors. President Trump was indicted in 2023 for soliciting the Vice President to subvert Congress’s certification of the election and his role in the fraudulent slates of electors and the insurrection at the Capitol.
Analysis
Legislative Metrics
Read our 2022 Report Card for Hawley.
Ideology–Leadership Chart
Hawley is shown as a purple triangle ▲ in our ideology-leadership chart below. Each dot is a member of the Senate positioned according to our ideology score (left to right) and our leadership score (leaders are toward the top).
The chart is based on the bills Hawley has sponsored and cosponsored from Jan 3, 2019 to Sep 30, 2023. See full analysis methodology.
Committee Membership
Joshua “Josh” Hawley sits on the following committees:
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Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources
- Energy subcommittee Ranking Member
Public Lands, Forests, and Mining subcommittees -
Senate Committee on the Judiciary
- Privacy, Technology, and the Law subcommittee Ranking Member
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Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations subcommittees
- Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship
Enacted Legislation
Hawley was the primary sponsor of 6 bills that were enacted:
- S. 619: COVID-19 Origin Act of 2023
- S. 1143 (117th): No TikTok on Government Devices Act
- S. 3326 (117th): Strengthening Protections Against Chinese Printed Circuit Boards Act
- S. 4999 (116th): Emergency Direct Payments for Families and Workers Act of 2020
- S. 998 (116th): Supporting and Treating Officers In Crisis Act of 2019
- S. 1521 (116th): A bill to amend section 327 of the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act to clarify that National Urban Search and Rescue Response System …
Does 6 not sound like a lot? Very few bills are ever enacted — most legislators sponsor only a handful that are signed into law. But there are other legislative activities that we don’t track that are also important, including offering amendments, committee work and oversight of the other branches, and constituent services.
We consider a bill enacted if one of the following is true: a) it is enacted itself, b) it has a companion bill in the other chamber (as identified by Congress) which was enacted, or c) if at least about half of its provisions were incorporated into bills that were enacted (as determined by an automated text analysis, applicable beginning with bills in the 110th Congress).
Bills Sponsored
Issue Areas
Hawley sponsors bills primarily in these issue areas:
Crime and Law Enforcement (22%) International Affairs (18%) Armed Forces and National Security (16%) Health (10%) Science, Technology, Communications (10%) Government Operations and Politics (9%) Taxation (8%) Commerce (8%)
Recently Introduced Bills
Hawley recently introduced the following legislation:
- S. 2875: Rural Post Office Reconstruction Act of 2023
- S. 2818: Strengthening Antitrust Enforcement for Meatpacking Act of 2023
- S. 2760: Capping Credit Card Interest Rates Act
- S. 2750: DITCH Act
- S. 1993: A bill to waive immunity under section 230 of the Communications Act of …
- S. 1560: Rural Hospital Cybersecurity Enhancement Act
- S. 1537: Raising Tariffs on Imports from China Act of 2023
View All » | View Cosponsors »
Most legislation has no activity after being introduced.
Voting Record
Key Votes
Missed Votes
From Jan 2019 to Sep 2023, Hawley missed 24 of 1,910 roll call votes, which is 1.3%. This is better than the median of 2.4% among the lifetime records of senators currently serving. The chart below reports missed votes over time.
We don’t track why legislators miss votes, but it’s often due to medical absenses, major life events, and running for higher office.
Primary Sources
The information on this page is originally sourced from a variety of materials, including:
- unitedstates/congress-legislators, a community project gathering congressional information
- The House and Senate websites, for committee membership and voting records
- Office of Joshua Hawley for the photo
- GovInfo.gov, for sponsored bills
