From the New York Times, I'm Michael Barbarale.

This is The Daily.

Today, as the Senate Judiciary Committee opens its hearing into allegations against Judge

Brett Kavanaugh, at stake for both parties is the swing seat on an ideologically divided

Supreme Court in the thick of a midterm election battle over who will control Congress for

the final two years of President Trump's Trump.

So what's the plan on each side?

It's Thursday, September 27th.

Peter Baker, how are Republicans on the Judiciary Committee approaching today's hearing?

Well, the Republicans on the committee are looking at this basically through the eyes

of a criminal type procedure.

They're trying to basically make this an argument about fairness and due process, rather

than an argument about what Judge Kavanaugh might or might not have done.

In other words, they believe that there should be a presumption of innocence, due process,

the way there would be anybody brought to court on a criminal charge that unless you can

prove these allegations against Judge Kavanaugh, he ought to be afforded the presumption

that he's not guilty that he didn't do these things.

But they're thinking of it as a trial.

Yeah.

What they're trying to say is this is a character assassinationist, mere campaign that's

not backed up by enough evidence.

No prosecutor would bring 36 year old allegations like this to trial without witnesses who were

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