“We combined our notebooks with our common sense and came to believe an utterly human narrative: that Ford and Ramirez were mistreated by Kavanaugh when he was a teenager, and that Kavanaugh over the next 35 years became a better person. We come to this complicated, seemingly contradictory, and perhaps unsatisfying conclusion based on the facts as we found them.” People have been arguing all week about their findings. Let’s take a minute and read what they actually wrote. Kate Kelly and Robin Pogrebin (co-authors of The Education of Brett Kavanaugh: We Spent 10 Months Investigating Kavanaugh. Here’s What We Found. (Watching the outtakes of the Kavanaugh hearings over the past couple days has been a reminder of the nonstop, stressful moments we’ve experienced, obsessed over, and raged about over the past few years. I’m guessing that we’re dramatically underestimating the trauma we’re incurring and the amount of our own real lives we’re missing.)

+ “The White House and Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee so roundly constrained the investigation that the two main witnesses themselves were never questioned.” In some ways, this story is about a lot more than Brett Kavanaugh (and about more institutions than just the Supreme Court). The always compelling Dahlia Lithwick: The New Kavanaugh Reporting Shows How Far Trump’s Control Goes.

+ Meanwhile, the beat goes on (and on, and on). CNN: Former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski testifies.