Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination in danger

Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination is in danger now that a woman has publicly accused him of sexually assaulting her when the two were at a high school party decades ago. Last week the allegations were anonymous, taking shape in a mysterious letter that a top Senate Democrat referred to the FBI. Sunday, Christine Ford came forward as the accuser and writer of the letter. He has denied the allegations. As far as tracing decades-old sexual harassment allegations go, she passed a polygraph test, she told people about the alleged attack years before Kavanaugh was a Supreme Court nominee in Washington D.C., and she apparently allowed her records from a therapy session about it to be reviewed. Kavanaugh's SCOTUS confirmation is supposed to come down to a vote this Thursday. Given this new revelation, Democrats have called for a delay in considering his nomination -- and a few Republican senators have voiced support for the delay. There are a few reasons this allegation could be particularly damaging. The biggest is that from the moment he became President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, he sought to present himself as a champion of women. This is happening at a moment when the nation is perhaps the most sensitive it has ever been to such allegations, with the #metoo movement. The longer this nomination is held up, the longer the allegations could simmer, making things more difficult for Kavanaugh.

In Other News Hurricane Florence was downgraded to a tropical depression yesterday, but the monster storm isn't done dumping record-breaking levels of rain in the Carolinas. Officials are warning that flash flooding may get worse before the storm fully subsides, and there are still hundreds of people across the region trapped by the rising water. Hundreds of thousands more are without power. The storm claimed at least 18 lives over the weekend. While the east coast is battling Florence, people in China and the Philippines are battling an even bigger monster. Over the weekend, Typhoon Mangkhut killed at least four people in China and 54 in the Philippines. The storm ravaged Hong Kong, and pictures from downtown areas show tall trees ripped out of the ground by their roots. More than three million people have been moved to safety in southern China as the storm moves northwards and continues to wreak havoc across the region. In the Philippines, Mangkhut triggered a massive landslide as it blew through, and officials say upwards of 50 people could still be buried under the dense muck. Early this morning, Pope Francis expelled the Reverend Cristian Precht Bañados of Chile, according to a statement from the Archdiocese of Santiago. Precht had been suspended in 2012 from practicing within the ministry for five years after the Archbishop of Santiago ordered a criminal investigation into allegations of sexual abuse against him. This is the first formal resignation the Pope has decreed since every bishop in Chile offered to step down in May over the country's sex abuse scandal.