Jamie Raskin can’t get away from Brett Kavanaugh. By day, the congressman sits on the House Judiciary Committee, which has oversight of the F.B.I., which has been entangled in controversy about how it conducted a background check of the Supreme Court nominee. But when Raskin leaves his Capitol Hill office he goes home to his suburban Maryland district—one that includes Holton-Arms, the all-girls alma mater of Christine Blasey Ford, and Georgetown Prep, Kavanaugh’s all-boys high school. “It’s been pretty dramatic for me on a different level, because all these people are my constituents—Kavanaugh, Ford’s family, Merrick Garland. And I can see how divisive the whole thing is,” Raskin says. “Georgetown Prep and Holton-Arms are at each other’s throats. One community is organized around Kavanaugh, another is organized to support Ford. The Republicans told us 11 months was not time enough to have a process for Garland, and yet they’ve barreled Kavanaugh through in 4 months over the most serious and intense objections. And they’ve succeeded in polarizing the country in a sad and shocking way.”

The fallout will continue to be far-reaching. One immediate wound is to the F.B.I.’s already damaged reputation. During last week’s Ford-Kavanaugh hearing, Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee pleaded for a re-opened review of the judge’s background that focused on whether he had committed sexual assault as a teenager. The Democrats got their wish, but the F.B.I. ended up being used for political cover. The White House stuck the bureau with a tight deadline and then tightly restricted whom agents were permitted to question. “Was the F.B.I. in a no-win situation? Yeah,” says James A. Gagliano, a former agent. “And I get that background investigations are different from criminal investigations. But I bristle at the description of the White House being the bureau’s ‘client.’ The American citizenry is the client. And the purpose is to determine the fitness for office of a nominee. They were charged with getting to the bottom of the allegation.”

“Anyone who gets close to Donald Trump and his presidency comes out worse off,” New York Democratic congressman Hakeem Jeffries says. “The Senate’s credibility has been damaged by this process. The Supreme Court’s credibility has been damaged by this process. And the F.B.I.’s credibility has been damaged by this process.”

Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal cuts the F.B.I. more slack. “Maybe [F.B.I. director] Chris Wray pushed behind the scenes for a more credible investigation. I doubt it,” says the Washington Democrat, who is a member of the House Judiciary Committee. “But it has been fairly clear that the White House set the parameters and the F.B.I. couldn’t do anything outside of that, and I think Democrats have been fairly careful about making that point clear. And it goes back to Trump not really wanting the bureau to have any credibility. The real damage to the F.B.I. is from Republicans showing they will use any institution, regardless of the consequences to our democracy, in furtherance of their partisan politics. We are at the precipice of doing something very, very dangerous for the credibility of the court, and for women who have suffered sexual assault to come forward and know that they’re going to be taken seriously.”

The Kavanaugh episode will continue to reverberate through Congress, especially if this fall’s midterms shift control of the House. Democrats are trying to stay cautious in what they promise during the last weeks before Election Day. “It would be political malpractice to run around saying, ‘The subpoenas will start flying on day one!’” a House Democrat says. “That would hand Trump a talking point.” Yet New York’s Jerry Nadler, currently the senior minority member of the House Judiciary Committee, has all but promised hearings should he become chairman in January, telling ABC’s George Stephanopoulus, “We would have to investigate any credible allegations, certainly of perjury and other things that haven’t been properly looked into before.”