Kavanaugh faces his #MeToo test to reach Supreme Court

Brett Kavanaugh and the Trump White House had prepared for a moment like this.

In his opening statement before the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Supreme Court nominee praised his mother as a trailblazing prosecutor. He said he's grateful for Title IX, the law intended to give women and girls equal access to sports programs that receive federal funds. And he drew attention to the fact that a majority of his law clerks have been women.

Long before Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) referred a letter detailing an alleged high school sexual assault to the FBI last week — and long before the accuser came forward Sunday just days before a Senate committee vote on the nomination — Kavanaugh and his allies had been working to inoculate him against charges that he might be hostile to women.

Republican veterans of Supreme Court confirmations say Anita Hill’s allegations against Clarence Thomas during his 1991 nomination battle and decades of attacks since then, supercharged by the #MeToo movement over the past year, helped prepare nominees for the charges they might face. Hill, like Kavanaugh’s accuser, had insisted on anonymity when she approached the Judiciary Committee in September 1991, but came forward publicly two days before the Senate was scheduled to vote on his confirmation.

And since Hill’s allegations rocked Thomas’s nomination, Republicans have braced not just for last-minute attacks but, more broadly, for any suggestion they’re anything less than enthusiastic champions of women’s rights.[Sen. Jeff Flake]