The following in an exclusive excerpt from the forthcoming book, Justice on Trial: The Kavanaugh Confirmation and the Future of the Supreme Court by Mollie Hemingway and Carrie Severino, to be published on Tuesday July 9 by Regnery.

It had been a rough couple of years in the Senate for Jeff Flake. A conservative from the small-government and free trade wing of the GOP, he couldn’t get over President Trump’s brash political style, even as the president remained popular with Republican voters. His anti-Trump manifesto, Conscience of a Conservative, sealed his electoral fate. Shortly after it was published in the summer of 2017, he announced that he would not run for reelection. John McCain, the senior senator from Arizona, died Aug. 25, and the country had gone through weeks of remembrances of the former prisoner of war who had played a major role in politics for 35 years. McCain was particularly well regarded in Washington for his opposition to Trump, and Flake thought of him as a father figure and mentor.