Protesters gesture and shout slogans while demonstrating against the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court Sept. 27, 2018 in Washington. | M. Scott Mahaskey/POLITICO Kavanaugh Confirmation 'Men Are Trash' vs. 'I Stand With Brett': Wild scene at the Capitol for Kavanaugh drama Protesters on both sides made their case with provocative slogans and chants as Senators sought to preserve decorum.

Outside the Dirksen Senate Office building on Thursday morning, Cameron Mixon, a 22-year-old Georgetown Law School student was sporting a T-shirt with the slogan: “Men Are Trash.”

“I love your shirt!” one woman told Mixon. “It’s amazing,” another agreed. By 9:30 a.m., Mixon said, about 20 people had asked to take photos next to her.


Even by the super-charged standards of American politics, passions were red lining on Capitol Hill Wednesday for the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on an allegation of a 1980s sexual assault that has placed Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination in grave danger.

“Kava-No!” shouted the protesters who marched Thursday morning from the steps of the Supreme Court to the Dirksen Senate office building, where the target of their ire would soon face a kind of political trial. ““We believe Anita Hill! We believe Christine Ford!”

But just as America is divided on Kavanaugh’s fate, so were the activists, protesters and counter-protesters on Capitol Hill Thursday as some of the most explosive social and political dynamics of the Trump era collided in the form of a nationally-televised spectacle complete with anger, tears and the future of the U.S. Supreme Court.

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They included Josh Ertle, 32-year-old retail worker wearing a shirt and a trucker hat that both sported President Donald Trump’s slogan, “Make America Great Again.”

Ertle said he was showing up to support both Kavanaugh and Trump — despite the fact that he himself had been sexually abused by a great-uncle as a child. Ertle said that he only came forward himself many years later, but still thinks that the context of Ford’s accusation would undermine survivors like himself. “This makes people not believed anymore because they’ve made this completely political,” he said.

Tara McCoy, 39, a homemaker from Martinsburg, West Virginia, stood back on the sidewalk, wearing an “I stand with Brett” shirt and held a “Confirm Kavanaugh” sign.

“He needs to be confirmed,” McCoy said. “The circus needs to stop,” she said.

A moment later, a man with television camera stepped up to her. “I’m with ShowTime’s The Circus,” he said.

Ford’s supporters saw not a circus but a tragic forum for an alleged sexual assault survivor to tell her story.

“I can’t imagine what this has to be for her,” said Tracey Cordor, 35, a protest organizer who serves as director of the Racial Justice Campaign at the Center for Popular Democracy. She wore a shirt that declared “Believe Women.”

Others had come to depict Kavanaugh as the real victim. In a park near the Dirksen building, a crowd of the conservative judge’s supporters gathered for a rally. A group of young people leaving the park said they were students at Grove City College in Western Pennsylvania. The students, who declined to provide their names, said many of them were members of their school’s College Republicans group. They had left campus last night at 10 p.m. and arrived in Washington at 3 a.m. on a bus paid for, they said, by the American Conservative Union.

Inside Dirksen, anti-Kavanaugh protesters clogged elevators as they tried to access the building’s second floor, the site of the hearing, where Capitol Police — who restricted the floor to congressional staff and a few preapproved reporters — continuously turned them back.

Another group of protesters marched silently through the building. Some had had black tape affixed over their mouths and others held up their hands. One middle-aged woman had written, “I did not tell” in red marker on her right palm and, “I was 15” on her left palm. The protesters walked up a flight of stairs leading to the second floor, where they were also turned back by police.

The actress Alyssa Milano, who has become a prominent face of the #MeToo movement, flew in from Los Angeles to attend Ford’s testimony. "I felt like I needed to be here to show my solidarity for Dr. Ford," Milano told ABC News from inside the hearing room. "On this day that will be very difficult for her."

In a hallway during a break in Ford’s testimony, one woman confronted Sen. Lindsey Graham, a member of the judiciary committee, and told him that she “was raped 13 years ago” and asked whether he believed her. “You needed to go to the cops. Go to the cops,” Graham said.

On the fifth floor, dozens of people lined up to wait for a seat in an overflow gallery set up in another hearing room. As the hearing began, those left waiting outside the overflow gallery pulled up livestreams of the proceedings on their phones.

“My girl!” exclaimed one congressional intern who watched on an iPhone as Ranking Member Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., began her opening statement.

Of about 85 spectators watching the proceedings via closed circuit television on two large screens in the overflow gallery, more than 50 of them were woman.

At several points, laughter punctured the tense silence in the gallery as spectators watched the emotionally wrenching testimony taking place three floors below.

In her opening statement, Ford said she would need a caffeinated beverage after delivering her opening remarks. Following her statement, Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, asked if she needed a break, and she responded cheerily, “I’m okay. I’ve got the coffee, thank you very much,” as the camera cut to her holding up a paper cup that Sen. Corey Booker, D-N.J., had just handed to her. The moment prompted uproarious laughter in the gallery.

Illinois Democrat Richard Durbin’s comment that “Mark Judge should be subpoenaed from his Bethany Beach hideaway,” drew scattered laughter. Judge, who allegedly participated in the assault on Ford, was found at a beach house earlier this week by the Washington Post and declined to speak to the paper, just as he has so far declined to voluntarily testify to Congress.

And when Rachel Mitchell, the prosecutor hired by Senate Republicans to question Ford, asked her how she got to Washington, she responded simply, “an airplane,” drawing more laughter.

Some gallery spectators, who seemed to favor Ford, grew increasingly agitated with Grassley. In response to a request from Minnesota Democrat Amy Klobucher to enter documents into the record, Grassley shot back, “You got what you wanted. I think you’d be satisfied.” His response drew disapproving gasps and an “Oh my god,” from the gallery.

During a lunch break, Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican on the committee, called Ford “a good witness.”

“She’s articulate,” he said. “She’s an attractive person.” Pressed on what he meant, he added: “In other words, she’s pleasing.”

A floor vote during the hearing break gave reporters a chance to question senators about the hearing. West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin said he was “not happy” that the panel’s Republicans had outsourced their questioning to Mitchell.

During a second recess in the hearing, Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif. — who had given a rousing speech praising Ford for coming forward — approached Ford and, in an overheard remark, privately told her, “Thank you for telling the truth.”

Graham left the hearing room and vented his frustrations to a gaggle of reporters. “The friends on the other side set it up to be just the way it is,” he said. “I feel ambushed as the majority."

In between hearings, Mitchell, the prosecutor working for the committee’s Republicans, paused in the hallway outside the hearing room to pat a service dog on the head.

Kavanaugh’s opening statement, an angry and defiant rebuttal of Ford’s accusation, drew gasps and exasperated responses from the gallery.

When he named “revenge on behalf of the Clintons” as a motive for the accusations against him, the gallery erupted with outbursts of “What?” and “Oh my god” and “seriously?”

Kavanaugh’s warning to Democrats that “What goes around comes around” drew another “Oh my god.” And when he choked up after invoking his 10-year-old daughter, one spectator cried out: “Come on.”

From there, spectators in the gallery began to greet various Kavanaugh answers with derisive laughter.

By the late afternoon, the appetite for the spectacle had waned, and roughly half the seats in the gallery sat empty. At a quarter to seven, the hearing adjourned, with the future composition of the Supreme Court uncertain.

Afterwards, Grassley, marching up the stairs with a police escort, did not respond to a question about how he thought the hearing had gone.

He was followed up the stairs by Booker, who told POLITICO, “I’m going to have to process it all before I comment.”

On the ground floor, Graham walked quickly down the hallway trailed by survivors of sexual assault who peppered him with questions.

“Senator Graham, I’m a survivor, do you believe me?” asked Mary Jane Maestas, a disabled 52-year-old from Delta, Colo.

After Graham disappeared around a corner, Meastas and a fellow activist — both wearing shirts reading “I’m a survivor and I vote” — recounted the entirety of their exchange with Graham to POLITICO.

“I’m a survivor, will you vote 'no' for me?” Maestas said she asked Graham, following it up with, “Senator Graham do you have a soul?”

“Yes, I do,” she said Graham responded, prompting her to say: “Because we’re all starting to wonder.”

Elana Schor and Burgess Everett contributed to this report.