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The confrontation between Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh and his accuser devolved into a polarizing stalemate on Wednesday as Democrats and Republicans advanced competing narratives to convince voters that the other side has been unfair in the Supreme Court confirmation battle. Christine Blasey Ford, the professor who alleged that Judge Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when they were teenagers, said a Senate hearing set for Monday to hear her allegation would not be fair and Democrats insisted that an F.B.I. investigation take place first. Backed by President Trump, Senate Republicans rejected any F.B.I. inquiry, and said that Monday was her chance to be heard. (Baker and Fandos, 9/19)

GOP senators who fretted earlier this week about the prospects for President Trump’s pick are now largely pushing for a vote on Kavanaugh, who is accused of sexually assaulting now-professor Christine Blasey Ford when they were teenagers, amid signs that she may decline to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee. And Trump is more convinced he should stand by Kavanaugh than he was two days ago, people close to the White House say. (Kim, Dawsey and Wagner, 9/19)

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said the hearing would start at 10 a.m. Monday, and he pressed Dr. Ford to testify. In a letter to her lawyers, he gave her a deadline of 10 a.m. Friday to submit her biography and prepared remarks if she planned to testify. Dr. Ford’s attorneys issued a statement late Wednesday calling for more witnesses to be involved in the hearing—not just Judge Kavanaugh and Dr. Ford. It didn’t say whether Dr. Ford would attend the hearing. “The rush to a hearing is unnecessary, and contrary to the Committee discovering the truth,” the attorneys wrote. (Andrews, Peterson and Hughes, 9/19)

Already burdened by an unpopular president and an energized Democratic electorate, the male-dominated GOP is now facing a torrent of scrutiny about how it is handling Kavanaugh’s accuser and whether the party’s push to install him on the high court by next week could come at a steep political cost with women and the independent voters who are the keystone for congressional majorities. The uncertainty in Republican ranks evoked uneasy memories of how the hearings for Clarence Thomas’s Supreme Court nomination spurred what became known as the “Year of the Woman” in 1992, when a wave of Democratic women won office, and underscored widespread GOP disquiet over the fast-changing culture and the power of the #MeToo movement. (Costa, 9/19)

“There’s a real risk, it seems to me. It further inflames Democratic and independent women,” said David Brady, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, a think tank. “[Those groups] are the big danger in the midterms anyway. I’d be polling the [heck] out of this.” President Trump raised doubts Wednesday about Ford’s story. Ford, a Palo Alto University psychology professor, says Kavanaugh pinned her down, groped her and covered her mouth to silence her when the two were high school students in the early 1980s. Kavanaugh has denied the allegations. Trump said it's "very hard for me to imagine anything happened," calling the accusation “unfair.” Trump added he hoped to hear from Ford. (Wire and Haberkorn, 9/19)

Sen. Chuck Grassley has cultivated a decadeslong reputation for protecting whistleblowers and fighting for government transparency. Now he’s plunging into the harrowing task of probing a sexual assault allegation while advancing a Supreme Court nominee that could define him and the GOP for years to come. (Everett and Schor, 9/20)