WASHINGTON, DC – SEPTEMBER 4: Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh is sworn in before the Senate Judiciary Committee during his Supreme Court confirmation hearing in the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill on September 4, 2018 in Washington, DC . Kavanaugh was nominated by President Donald Trump to fill the court vacancy left by retiring Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy.
Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

When Justice Anthony Kennedy retired two years into Donald Trump’s term, the Republican president saw an opportunity. He had promised evangelical voters that he would appoint anti-abortion judges to the Supreme Court, and he had one in mind: Brett Kavanaugh, then a judge on the prestigious D.C. Circuit. But soon Trump and Kavanaugh would have a problem. A psychology professor came forward and accused Kavanaugh of sexually abusing her while she was in school. Christine Blasey Ford said Kavanaugh and a friend pushed her into a bedroom, where Kavanaugh put his hand over her mouth and tried to remove her clothes. During her testimony before the Senate, she was calm, measured and difficult to dismiss. “What is indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter, the uproarious laughter between the two of them and the fun at my expense,” she said at the time.

The alleged attack was indelible. It didn’t seem to be her story. The Republican-led Senate confirmed Kavanaugh and the country moved on; Ford’s story inexorably disappeared from public consciousness. A new report suggests the disappearance was not a completely organic process. The Trump administration has scaled back a promised FBI investigation into Ford’s claim, according to a new report from Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat and member of the Judiciary Committee. The Whitehouse report “finds that the FBI was directed by the White House to speak to 10 potential witnesses and was not given latitude to pursue corroborating evidence,” Washington said post said this week, adding that senators cited the lack of confirmation as a reason for confirming Kavanaugh, handing a major victory to the conservative legal movement.

So there was a conspiracy against Ford, and although it was high level, it would be familiar to any woman who has experienced sexual violence. Call it misogyny. Misogyny runs through Ford’s story, linking her alleged attack to the Trump cover-up efforts and everything that happened next. In 2022, Kavanaugh would join other conservative justices in seeking to oust the office roe v. Wade. As the plot reached its climax, it also showed how deep it runs; It targeted not just Ford, but all American women. No woman is truly safe in a country controlled by right-wing clergy – a country that put Trump in the spotlight before the Senate put Kavanaugh in the spotlight. The Access Hollywood The tape should have disqualified Trump from voters, as did the sexual harassment and misconduct allegations from dozens of women, as did his unrepentant racism, but MAGA loved every transgression.

In the eyes of Trump’s base, Kavanaugh is an innocent man, just like Trump himself. We cannot grasp the extent of the misogynistic conspiracy without reckoning with the former president and the anti-feminist backlash that helped bring him to power. MAGA is about Trump’s appeal as a strongman, an image he is all too eager to promote. Our emerging patriarch has promised women that he will be our “protector” and that under his rule we will “no longer be abandoned, lonely or afraid.” Trump assumes women are weak; that we need a protector and that he is ready to serve if we strengthen him again.

To put it politely, this is nonsense, and the Ford story is proof. Not only did Trump’s White House throttle the investigation into her attack, he also chose Kavanaugh because of his anti-abortion views. The former president had promised to kill roeand Kavanaugh was a means to an end. So the misogyny conspiracy did not end with Ford and will not end with Ford Dobbs; his goals are far too broad. Given the opportunity, we will be forced into eternal subservience. It’s already halfway there. There used to be fears that Me Too would go too far, but for so many women, justice remains a fantasy. We can talk about the abortions we needed and couldn’t get. We can talk about our rapes. We can talk about whatever we want, at least for the moment, but no story, no matter how true, will influence the plot or its architects. They are bent on our destruction.

The reality contradicts the rhetoric of Trump and his circle, which includes Kavanaugh. During Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing, he and his defense attorneys made it clear that he had ties to women — his daughters, the girls’ basketball team he coached and the women he hired as employees. But the closeness of a man to a woman or a girl tells us nothing; Men with daughters abuse women every day. This is how the misogyny conspiracy works. It is so ingrained in American life that it affects every woman in some way. The plot follows us and steals our rights as it gains strength. The country may have moved on from Christine Blasey Ford, but we cannot escape the plan she uncovered.