For the New York Times, a story about how female Senate staffers are processing the hearings for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh:

Despite what the country thinks of Congress, Senate staff members are also real people. (I know, I’m married to someone who used to be one; none of his direct co-workers are quoted in this story.) They walk marble halls conferring with senators, their bosses. They try to make sure that if someone does have to ask a woman under oath about the defining trauma of her life, it is at least done with some sensitivity. That hearing everyone spent the week fighting over? They’ll have to fill the water glasses and print out the name cards.

And female Senate aides must also process a nation’s sexual trauma after a year spent making sense of their own.

Photo credit: Architect of the Capitol