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Hawley’s Comet

Four years after his January 6 fist pump made him a Senate pariah, Josh Hawley has reinvented himself as a populist champion for Medicaid—still a lonely position within the G.O.P., and one that’s fueling chatter about his undulled ambition to succeed Trump in 2028.

Josh Hawley
Hawley seems to be reintroducing himself yet again, becoming the loudest (and still somewhat lonely) Republican voice insisting that Medicaid not be cut to pay for Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill. Photo: Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images
Leigh Ann Caldwell
June 4, 2025

Back in 2018, when Rupert Murdoch asked Mitch McConnell which rising Republican he should be featuring on Fox News, the Senate leader suggested Josh Hawley—the catalog-model handsome, Ivy League-educated attorney general running for the upper chamber in Missouri. Hawley, a preternaturally gifted communicator of the party’s conservative message, turned out to be a natural on TV, too. At just 39 years old, he won his campaign by 6 points in 2018 and became a ubiquitous presence in right-wing media in the process.