Important initial vote on Kavanaugh set for Friday

WASHINGTON — The Senate braced for a crucial initial vote Friday on Brett Kavanaugh’s tottering Supreme Court nomination after Majority Leader Mitch McConnell set his polarized chamber on a schedule to decide which party wins an election-season battle royale that has consumed the nation. A roll call over confirmation seemed likely over the weekend.

McConnell, R-Ky., cemented the process late Wednesday and announced that sometime during the evening, the FBI would deliver to an anxious Senate the potentially fateful document on claims that Kavanaugh sexually abused women. With Republicans clinging to a razor-thin 51-49 majority and five senators — including three Republicans — still vacillating, the conservative jurist’s prospects of Senate confirmation remained murky and highly dependent on the file’s contents, which are supposed to be kept secret.

“There will be plenty of time for members to review and be briefed on the supplemental material” before Friday’s vote, McConnell said to the nearly empty chamber.

Lawmakers were planning to begin reading the FBI report early Thursday, with senators and a small number of top aides permitted to view it in a secure room in the Capitol complex. Senators are not supposed to divulge the contents of the agency’s background reports.

The report was arriving at a Capitol palpably tense over the political stakes of the nomination fight and from aggressive anti-Kavanaugh protesters who have rattled and reportedly harassed senators. Feeding the anxiety was an unusually beefy presence of the U.S. Capitol Police, who were keeping demonstrators and frequently reporters at arms length by forming wedges around lawmakers.

Amid complaints that some lawmakers were being confronted outside their homes, McConnell claimed on the Senate floor that the protesters were “part of the organized effort” to derail Kavanaugh’s nomination.

Adding to the uncertainty, the three undecided GOP senators who could decide Kavanaugh’s fate rebuked President Donald Trump for mocking one accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, by mimicking her responses to questions at last week’s dramatic Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.