The Times story doesn’t say that Collins asked Kavanaugh directly if he’d overturn Roe — presumably for good reason. The senator would have known such a question would have been highly improper. In fact, she praised Neil Gorsuch during his 2017 confirmation for saying he would have left the room if someone asked him for a commitment to overturn Roe.

It is doubtful that Kavanaugh told Collins anything in private that he didn’t say in his sworn public testimony as well. If he was playing some sort of double game, Collins should have felt an obligation to call Kavanaugh out on it. She didn’t. In fact, she gladly voted for him.

It is true that in his hearings Kavanaugh leaned heavily on the notion that Roe was precedent and that it had been reaffirmed in Casey, so it was “precedent upon precedent.” Yet other Roe supporters didn’t mistake his meaning. As Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) told Kavanaugh during the hearings, “Your own words make clear you do not really believe Roe v. Wade is settled law since the court, as you said, ‘can always overrule its precedent.’”