‘We believe women’

Protesters were out in full force opposing Donald Trump’s nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the supreme court, with dozens arrested on Thursday as they targeted the offices of Republican senators viewed as swing votes on his confirmation.

Capitol Hill police arrested 56 people, CNN reported, including two dozen outside the office of Bob Corker, a Tennessee Republican.

Allegations that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted a woman decades ago have thrown his confirmation into turmoil but even before that he was the target of protests by liberals afraid he will push the court to the right on abortion, gay rights, the environment and more.

On Thursday, protesters blocked the hallway in front of Corker’s office and chanted “We believe women” and “Corker vote no”, before moving on to the offices of Susan Collins of Maine and Jeff Flake of Arizona, according to CNN.

GOP careful on ACA

Republicans locked in tight fights for re-election are suddenly not so bullish on killing the Affordable Care Act.

More than 20 House members have made changes to their campaign websites from either 2014 or 2016 to scrub or weaken references to killing Obamacare, the Daily Beast reported.

In 2014, Washington representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers wrote on her website that she “voted to repeal President Obama’s radical healthcare bill because it increases premiums for working families”. Now the reference is gone and Rodgers instead touts her work to get an extension for children’s healthcare funding.

Several efforts to repeal the healthcare law have collapsed in Congress, though lawmakers were able to repeal the requirement that individual Americans have health insurance as part of their tax overhaul bill.

Public opinion on the once-unpopular law has grown more favorable under the Trump administration, with favorability hitting an all-time high in March.

Dunnigan’s wake

With the press under continuing attack by Donald Trump – who again ripped “fake news” at a Las Vegas rally this week – and his supporters, here’s a quick reminder of the importance of journalism: the Newseum in Washington DC this week unveiled a statue of Alice Dunnigan, who grew up the daughter of a Kentucky sharecropper and went on to become the first black woman to get press credentials to cover the White House and Congress.

She frequently questioned President Harry Truman on civil rights during a 1948 whistle-stop campaign tour, when she was the only African American woman covering him, and her reporting was distributed in more than 100 black newspapers around the country.

Speaking of the Newseum, lest we forget, the Guardian’s own Ben Jacobs donated his smashed glasses to the institution after he was attacked by a Republican politician in Montana last year.

Don’t forget to sign up for the Guardian’s new-look newsletter The Politics Minute, by Ben himself.