Kavanaugh and accuser Christine Blasey Ford will testify in public hearing Monday

Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and the Palo Alto professor accusing him of sexual assault will testify before the Senate in a public hearing Monday, setting up perhaps the highest-stakes confrontation of the #MeToo era.

The decision by Christine Blasey Ford to tell her story in public capped a momentous day in Washington, as President Trump endorsed hearing her out and Republicans struggled over how to respond before finally postponing a scheduled Thursday vote of the Judiciary Committee in favor of the Monday session.

Blasey Ford, a professor at Palo Alto University, will share her side of the story, describing her claim that Kavanaugh groped her, pressed her down and put his hand over her mouth at a high school party more than 30 years ago. Kavanaugh is expected to repeat his fervent denials.

“This is going to test the strength of the #MeToo movement,” said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a politics professor at the University of Southern California.

And coming just six weeks before crucial midterm elections, the hearing could have electoral aftershocks as well. “If the Republicans try to push this through, it will clearly continue to rile up Democrats and Democratic women,” Bebitch Jeffe said. “Republicans could pay a significant price.”

The harrowing allegation — Blasey Ford’s lawyer described Kavanaugh’s actions as “attempted rape” — dominated political discussion on Monday, with everyone including President Trump weighing in. Speaking to reporters Monday, Trump said he was open to postponing the confirmation vote to hear Blasey Ford’s story, which the Judiciary Committee then did later Monday afternoon.

“I wish the Democrats could have done this a lot sooner,” he told reporters, “but with all of that being said, we want to go through the process … and hear everybody out.”

“If it takes a little delay, it’ll take a little delay,” he added. He said he hadn’t spoken with Kavanaugh since Blasey Ford went public. But when asked if Kavanaugh should withdraw from consideration for the Court, he replied, “What a ridiculous question.”

By stepping forward in an interview with the Washington Post this weekend, Blasey Ford injected new uncertainty into a nomination that had seemed last week like an almost foregone conclusion, even as rumors of her allegations — initially made to Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Palo Alto, in a secret July letter — began to spread. Now, Republicans don’t appear to have the votes to move Kavanaugh’s nomination out of the Senate Judiciary Committee until Blasey Ford testifies. Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona, a GOP member of the committee, said he wanted to hear from her before he voted.

The Democratic senators on the committee, including California Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris, wrote in a letter Monday that the nomination should be put on hold until the FBI conducts an investigation into Blasey Ford’s story.

“All Senators, regardless of party, should insist the FBI perform its due diligence and fully investigate the allegations as part of its review of Judge Kavanaugh’s background,” they wrote. “Once the FBI has completed its independent work, we hope that we can work together in a bipartisan manner to decide on next steps.”

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, told reporters he spoke with Kavanaugh over the phone and the judge denied ever being at the party Blasey Ford described. “There’s some question whether she’s mixed up,” Hatch said.

Meanwhile, more than 200 alumnae of Blasey Ford’s Bethesda, Maryland, all-girls high school signed an open letter declaring their support for her on Monday. The letter follows another signed by 65 women who knew Kavanaugh in high school saying that they never saw him mistreat women.

Stanford Law Professor Michele Dauber, who led the recall campaign against Santa Clara County Judge Aaron Persky over his controversially short sentence for a Stanford swimmer charged with sexual assault, said that if Blasey Ford’s allegations were substantiated, Kavanaugh should lose not only his ticket to the Supreme Court but his current seat on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. And she worried that going before the Senate could be “traumatizing” for Blasey Ford.

“Getting questioned publicly on TV by 21 senators sounds like about the least victim-friendly process one could even imagine,” Dauber said.

The hearing Monday is sure to spur partisan tensions, with Democrats already voicing support for Blasey Ford and Republicans saying they believe Kavanaugh. Advocacy groups on both sides rushed into the fray, with conservative group Judicial Crisis Network saying it would spend $1.5 million on pro-Kavanaugh advertisements and liberal group Demand Justice putting up $700,000 for its own ads targeting GOP senators in swing states.

Still, she predicted, GOP senators “won’t let this go Anita Hill.” Instead of focusing on destroying Blasey Ford’s character, they’re more likely to try to get the facts and move on quickly to vote for confirmation, Caro said.

After all, a feminist backlash from the all-male Senate Judiciary Committee’s treatment of Hill in 1991 helped fuel Democratic gains in elections the following year and elected more women to Congress than ever before. “Republicans,” Caro said, “learned a lot from that.”