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More than three months of drama and controversy over the future of the Supreme Court is set to end in the next 36 hours. The Senate will decide Friday morning whether to send the president's nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to a final vote, expected early Saturday evening. Republicans control the Senate 51 to 49, so the GOP can only afford to have one of its senators vote "no."

Three Republican senators are considered undecided: Senators Susan Collins, Jeff Flake, and Lisa Murkowski. Sources tell CBS News Vice President Mike Pence will be in Washington this weekend, in case his vote is needed to break a tie.

On Friday, we should know once and for all whether Kavanaugh has the support he needs to get confirmed because the way those few remaining undecided senators vote to end debate today could signal how they plan to vote Saturday on final confirmation. Forces on both sides have been piling on the pressure all the way to the end.

In a final bid before the vote, anti-Kavanaugh protesters spent the night on Capitol grounds, egged on by Democrats. His confirmation now hinges on one Democrat and three Republicans.

According to a summary released overnight by the Senate Judiciary Committee, the FBI interviewed 10 people who might have had firsthand knowledge of the sexual assault allegations by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and Deborah Ramirez.

For Ford, the FBI spoke with three people she claimed were at the party in question: Mark Judge, P.J. Smyth, and Leyland Keyser. They also spoke with Timothy Gaudette and Christopher Garrett, Kavanaugh's classmates who were referenced on his calendars.

The FBI also interviewed Ramirez, along with two eyewitnesses named by Ramirez, as well as her close friend from college. According to the Republican summary, the FBI found no corroboration of the allegations made by Ford or Ramirez.

Still, North Dakota Democrat Heidi Heitkamp announced she was a "no."

"I can't get up in the morning and look at the life experience that I have had and say yes to Judge Kavanaugh," Heitkamp said.

Kavanaugh, who's denied the allegations, wrote an op-ed Thursday night admitting he "might have been too emotional at times, I know that my tone was sharp, and I said a few things I should not have said." He wrote it "reflected my overwhelming frustration at being wrongly accused."

Ford's lawyers called the investigation a "stain on the process" because the FBI "declined to interview" friends and others who could have backed her up.

"The report ignores some of the absolutely crucial witnesses," said Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal.

CBS News has confirmed that the FBI limited its scope at the direction of Republicans and the White House.

When asked why the FBI did not interview people Ford had confided in, Republican Sen. Mike Lee replied, "Our request was to the White House, the White House then made the request of the FBI to conduct a supplemental investigation into current, credible accusations of sexual misconduct. They did that."

Lee's comments are a reflection of just how vague Republicans and the White House have been about the marching orders they gave the FBI. To give you a sense of how intense the last minute lobbying is, the White House, former President George W. Bush, and other heavy hitters have all been working the phones trying to ensure that Kavanaugh gets confirmed.

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Mike Pence expected to be on standby in case tie-breaker ...

Vice President Mike Pence is accusing China of trying to undermine President Donald Trump as the administration deploys tough new rhetoric over Chinese trade, economic and foreign policies. (Oct. 4) AP

Vice President Mike Pence speaks at the 2018 Values Voter Summit in Washington, Saturday, Sept. 22, 2018.(Photo: AP)

WASHINGTON Vice President Mike Pence on Thursday accused the Chinese government of orchestrating an aggressive military, economic and political campaign to expand its influence inside the United States and across other regions of the world.

China has initiated an unprecedented effort to influence American public opinion, the 2018 elections, and the environment leading into the 2020 presidential elections, Pence said in a highly anticipated speech to the Hudson Institute, a conservative Washington think tank.

President Donald Trump first charged the Chinese government with meddling in the U.S. election last week during a United Nations Security Council session. He offered no specific evidence at the time, and the Chinese government has sharply rejected the accusations.

A spokeswoman for China's foreign ministry,Hua Chunying, called Pence's accusations "unwarranted" and a "malicious slander on China."

"China always follows the principle of non-interference in others' internal affairs, and we have no interest in meddling in U.S. internal affairs and elections," Hua said Thursday evening. "The international community has already known fully well who wantonly infringes upon others' sovereignty, interferes in others' internal affairs and undermines others' interests."

Pence offered a few additional details about what he said were the proactive and coercive ways China is trying to manipulate U.S. domestic policies and politics.

Beijing has mobilized covert actors, front groups, and propaganda outlets to shift Americans perception of Chinese policies, Pence said. The vice president said a senior American intelligence official told him what the Russians are doing pales in comparison to what China is doing across this country.

Russia has engagedin a widespread disinformation campaign to sway American elections and divide the U.S. electorate, most notably in the 2016 presidential contest. After that election, the U.S. intelligence community issued a public report concluding that the Russian government had directed an effort to help elect Trump.

Some skeptics have questioned the Trump administration's accusations against China, suggesting it is an effort to divert attention away from Russia's ongoing meddling in the 2018 midterm elections.

"It's a distraction" and an effort to turn the GOP base against China, saidClint Watts, a research fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Instituteand author of "Messing with the Enemy: Surviving in a Social Media World of Hackers, Terrorists, Russians, and Fake News."

Trump last week singled outa four-page advertising supplement that a Chinese-government media company placedin Iowas largest newspaper, the Des Moines Register, as evidence of the Asian countrys propaganda campaign. The president said China was trying to undermine him because of his aggressive stance on trade, including his decision to slap tariffs on $250 billion worthof Chinese goods shipped into the U.S.

Pence also highlighted those advertisements in his speech Thursday. And he said China has tailored its retaliatory tariffs to hit states that will be pivotal to the outcome of the 2018 election.

"By one estimate, more than 80% of U.S. counties targeted by China voted for President Trump and I in 2016," Pence said. "Now China wants to turn these votersagainst our administration."

"... To put it bluntly, President Trumps leadership is working; China wants a different American President," Pence told the audience Thursday.

But Watts said the newspaper ads and tariffs cannot be compared to the secret disinformation campaign launched by the Russians in the 2016 election. The Chinese government, he said, is making an overt,public argument against Trump's trade policies to those most affected: American farmers.

"Its not even the same thing as the election interference," Watts said. "Theyre wielding economic influence, and it just shows how fundamentally weak the Trump administration is at understanding the conflicts theyre in."

As White House officials seek to highlight China's activities, Watts added, they have downplayed or even ignored Russia's ongoing meddling.

In his speech Thursday, Pence also accused China's Communist Party of using rewards and coercion to influence American businesses, universities, and think tanks, and government officials. He said, for example, thatChina threatened to deny a business license for a major American corporation unless it spoke out against the Trump administrations trade policies.

"Beijing compelled Delta Airlines to publicly apologize for not calling Taiwan a 'provinceof China'on its website. It also pressured Marriott to fire a U.S. employee who liked a tweet about Tibet," the vice president said.

He linked those alleged activities to China's broader effort to extend its military and economic power across Asia and Africa.

He accused China of "reckless harassment" of the U.S. Navy during operations in the South China Sea. And noted that China has useddebt diplomacy to expand its influence in Africa and elsewhere, offering billions of dollars in infrastructure loans aimed at benefiting China's access toports and other key transit hubs.

In an interview with NPR before Pence's speech, China's Ambassador to the U.S., Cui Tiankai, downplayed China's global aspirations.

"Our priority, our most important task is still to run our own country well," Cui said. "But we also understand China cannot develop and modernize in isolation. We have to build strong ties with the rest of the world. We have to further integrate into the global economy and the global governance, and we are ready to take up more responsibilities and make greater contribution in this regard."

Even as Pence portrayed China as a pernicious threat, he said Trump had cultivated "astrong personal relationship" with China's president,Xi Jinping, and asserted that rapport could lead to a thaw in U.S.-China relations.

"Today, America is reaching out our hand to China," Pencesaid,"and we hope that Beijing will soon reach back."

Michael Collins contributed.

More: Trump accuses China of meddling in US midterm elections, blasts Iran, at UN Security Council meeting

More: Trump's State Department outgunned in fight to counter Russian disinformation around globe

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Vice President Mike Pence: China wants a different ...

Mike Pence has claimed that Russian interference in US elections pales in comparison with Chinese meddling, which he said was aimed at ousting Donald Trump.

The vice-presidents allegation echoes a similar claim made by the president at the UN last week, but it has been contradicted by cybersecurity experts and the administration has yet to provide any supporting evidence, other than to point to instances of overt lobbying.

The administrations own secretary of homeland security, Kirstjen Nielsen, said: We currently have no indication that a foreign adversary intends to disrupt our election infrastructure.

We know they [the Chinese] have the capability and we know they have the will. So were constantly on alert to watch. But what we see with China right now are the influence campaigns, the more traditional, longstanding, holistic influence campaigns, Nielsen said on Tuesday at a Washington Post cybersecurity conference.

In his remarks on Thursday, Pence alleged a far more focused Chinese assault on US democracy.

China has initiated an unprecedented effort to influence American public opinion, the 2018 elections, and the environment leading into the 2020 presidential election, Pence said at the Hudson Institute, a Washington thinktank. To put it bluntly, President Trumps leadership is working, and China wants a different American president. China is meddling in Americas democracy.

We urge the US to correct its wrongdoing, stop groundlessly accusing and slandering China

To that end, Beijing has mobilized covert actors, front groups and propaganda outlets to shift Americans perception of Chinese policies, the vice-president added. As a senior career member of our intelligence community recently told me, what the Russians are doing pales in comparison to what China is doing across this country.

China described Pences speech as unwarranted accusations and said it slandered China by claiming that China meddles in US internal affairs and elections. Any efforts to rhetorically attack China would be futile.

This is nothing but speaking on hearsay evidence, confusing right and wrong and creating something out of thin air. The Chinese side is firmly opposed to it, Hua Chunying, a foreign ministry spokesperson, said in a statement. We urge the US to correct its wrongdoing, stop groundlessly accusing and slandering China and harming Chinas interests and China-US ties, and take concrete actions to maintain the sound and steady development of China-US relations.

In a thinly veiled critique of US foreign policy, Hua said the international community has already known fully well who wantonly infringes upon others sovereignty, interferes in others internal affairs and undermines others interests.

Following Pences remarks, a senior official from the Department of Homeland Security said there was no contradiction with Nielsens earlier statement, adding that she had been speaking exclusively about threats to election infrastructure such as voting machines and voter registration databases.

The official said the homeland security secretary had not addressed malign foreign influence that seeks to sow discord, undermine or advance targeted politicians.

In July, the FBI director, Christopher Wray, said that China, from a counterintelligence perspective, represents the broadest, most challenging, most significant threat we face as a country.

However, Wray added that China represented a different kind of threat from Russia and was focused primarily on economic espionage.

Pences remarks and Trumps original claim at the UN security council that the Chinese dont want me or us to win because I am the first president to ever challenge China on trade come at a time when the Trump campaign is under investigation for possible collusion with Russia to sway the 2016 presidential election in Trumps favour. US intelligence officials have warned that Russia is also aiming to interfere in the congressional vote in November.

The justice department has so far indicted 25 Russian intelligence officers for election interference. On the same day Pence made his speech, the Dutch authorities revealed evidence that Russian military intelligence had tried to hack into the computer systems of the Organisation for Prevention of Chemical Warfare and the US justice department indicted seven Russian intelligence officers for a lengthy and wide-ranging conspiracy to hack into private computers and networks around the world.

In his speech, Pence did not offer any new evidence for his allegations against Russia. Like Trump, he pointed to an openly Chinese-sponsored newspaper supplement in Iowa, that argued against the administrations policy on trade tariffs.

The vice-president made an additional allegation, saying that China is targeting US state and local governments and officials to exploit any divisions between federal and local levels on policy, but did not give details on how local government was being targeted.

James Mulvenon, an expert on Chinese military and influence operations and the vice-president of the intelligence division at Defense Group Inc, said: There is some discussion about Chinese campaign finance issues at the local and state and senate level, and I think were going to need to dig deeper on that, because I personally have not seen any concrete evidence of the same level of meddling, particularly directed towards the midterms.

Cybersecurity experts said China was more engaged in industrial espionage and intellectual property (IP) theft than in attacks on the electoral system.

We are seeing a massive amount of intrusions by China into organisations all around the US, but mainly aimed at economic targets, said Dmitri Alperovitch, the co-founder of CrowdStrike Inc, a leading US cybersecurity firm. Its quite a lot different from Russia. We personally have not seen hacking of political campaigns and the release of documents. We have not seen a lot of going after political causes.

John McLaughlin, the former acting director of the CIA, said that Pence appeared to be echoing what Wray said in July.

But left open is the question of why the president and vice-president have not called out Russia as explicitly and forcefully. Russias overall effort may be less impressive but it has certainly been consequential, McLaughlin said in an email.

Paul Pillar, a retired senior CIA analyst, said he would be surprised if there was a US intelligence assessment that the Russian threat to elections pales in comparison with the Russian threat.

That is not from inside knowledge, but we know so much about Russian efforts. Nothing anywhere like that has come out about the Chinese, Pillar said. My guess is this is speechwriters hyperbole.

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Mike Pence accuses China of meddling in US elections ...

Last Updated Sep 8, 2018 4:45 PM EDT

Watch our full interview with the vice president here.

In an interview airing Sunday on "Face the Nation," Vice President Mike Pence denied being a part of discussions to invoke the 25th Amendment, removing President Trump from office.

"No, never. And why would we be Margaret?" the vice president told "Face the Nation" moderator Margaret Brennan.

"The truth of the matter is over the last eight years despite what we heard from President Obama on Friday, I mean, this country was struggling. I mean it was the weakest economic recovery since the Great Depression," Pence said.

The two spoke in his residence at the U.S. Naval Observatory.

"I think the author of the anonymous editorial, and frankly The New York Times, should be ashamed," Pence told Brennan, denouncing it as a "disgrace."

The vice president was responding to claims made this week in a rare anonymous op-ed published by The New York Times. The op-ed's author, identified as a "senior administration official," claims to be part of a "quiet resistance" working to thwart President Trump's "occasionally reckless decisions" from within the administration.

In it, the official describes "early whispers within the cabinet" to invoke the 25th Amendment, prompted by the president's apparent "instability."

The 25th Amendment empowers the vice president and a majority of the cabinet to replace the president, in the case he is deemed "unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office."

In the years since the amendment's ratification in 1967, the mechanism has never been used.

The president on Friday publicly implored his attorney general to investigate the identity of the author, later accusing the "senior administration official" of treason.

Pence told Brennan he "wouldn't know" who wrote the op-ed.

"But it seems to me to be just an obvious attempt to distract attention from this booming economy and President Trump's record of success," Pence told Brennan.

More of Margaret Brennan's interview with Vice President Mike Pence will air Sunday on "Face the Nation."

And for more from America's premier public affairs program, follow "Face the Nation" on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

2018 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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Mike Pence on "Face the Nation" denies discussing invoking ...

A new book about Vice President Mike Pence warns of his outsize ambitions for the Oval Office and his sense of righteous mission if he gets there. The book,The Shadow President, by veteran political journalists Michael DAntonio and Peter Eisner, promises to tell its readers, as its subtitle says, the truth about Mike Pence.

While the book gives little new insight about Pence for anyone who has been paying much attention to American politics recently, it has stirred up another round of one of the lamest arguments of the last two years: that America would be worse off with a President Pence in office than with President Donald Trump.

Are you sure you want to get rid of Trump?Frank Bruni provocatively askedin a July 28 New York Times column. There are problems with impeaching Donald Trump, Bruni contended. A big one is the holy terror waiting in the wings.

Thats a completely wrong assessment, but, sadly, not an uncommon one. Since Trumps inauguration, journalists and political commentators have produced a steady stream of warnings about how much more awful things could be under a Pence administration. The Danger of President Pence was Jane Mayers take in The New Yorker nearly a year ago. A few months later, Vanity Fair cautioned with Why President Pence Could Be More Terrifying Than Trump. And Rolling Stone weighed in with The Radical Crusade of Mike Pence.

Its not just liberal media outlets imagining the threat of a Pence presidency. Shortly after her unceremonious exit from the Trump White House, Omarosa Manigault-Newman told her castmates on the reality show Celebrity Big Brother, As bad as yall think Trump is ... we would be begging for days of Trump back if Pence became president.

Many Americans seem to agree. In an online (and admittedly unscientific) poll on The Tylt, 51.9 percent of respondents chose #PenceWouldBeWorse to 48.1 percent who selected #NoOneWorseThanTrump. Search Twitter for Pence worse than Trump and an unending cascade of excited tweets pours forth.

Granted, its always good practice for Americans to think seriously about what it would mean should a vice president have to assume the presidency. Forty-seven men had the role of VP before Pence. Nine of them found themselves unexpectedly promoted to the highest office in the nation after a death or resignation.

Those are nearly 1 in 5 odds. Considering Trumps mounting legal and political problems, the likelihood might be far greater that Pence becomes president without having to run for the office.

And no doubt, theres good reason for liberals and others to be concerned about a Pence presidency. As the governor of Indiana, he advanced an aggressively right-wing course on social issues that, even in that conservative state, many considered extreme. Both his critics and his friends depict him as obsessively focused on overturning abortion rights and banning same-sex marriage, pursuing those with a legendary passion that some say borders on fanaticism. Zealot is a word you come across a lot when you start to read accounts of his political career.

On matters of climate change, deregulation and taxes, Pence would be a vigorous hard-liner, pushing the extreme libertarian politics of Charles and David Koch, who seem to have a hold on the vice president.

But pretending this would amount to a greater danger than Trump poses to American democracy and global stability is foolish alarmism disguised as rational diagnosis. Unfortunately, its perfectly in line with the sort of nihilistic cynicism that has taken over American politics and not dissimilar to the pessimistic fatalism that Trump stokes and enjoys.

An outlook that cant distinguish the political challenge of a possible Pence presidency from the very real existential threat to the republic that Trump poses is useless for guarding against the disaster taking place in Washington right now.

The American presidency has never been inhabited by the likes of Donald Trump. He constantly and increasingly imperils our system of democracy. His flouting of the Constitution sets hazardous precedents that weaken the rule of law. His volatile and irrational temperament, combined with his disregard for international alliances and friendliness with autocrats and dictators, jeopardizes the safety of all of us.

Pences politics, while thoroughly conservative, fall in line with the basic Republican orthodoxy of the last 40 years. Thats an agenda worth resisting, for sure, but its one that Democrats will be well equipped even emboldened to block, especially if they claim a majority in the House this fall, as appears likely.

Regardless, it might be a political program that Pence wouldnt be able to put into effect. Amid all the handwringing and doomsday warnings over Pence, a curious fact stands out. Most of those profiles also make clear what a notoriously bad politician he has been. Writing in Rolling Stone, Stephen Rodrick described Penceas a politician with slow reflexes a blemish for a congressional backbencher, but a horrifying flaw for a potential president. DAntonio and Eisners book details Pences time in Indiana as a failing governor with no real political achievements to his name.

Americans should be heartened to know that even in deeply red Indiana, he faced dim prospects for re-election as governor after he bungled a bunch of issues, including his terrible handling of legislation that allowed businesses in the state to discriminate against gay customers. The national stage would surely be even less hospitable to a Pence agenda.

But far more important, an obsession with him diverts attention from the plain and urgent crisis before us.

Talking about how Pence would be worse than Trumps very grave dangers plays right into Trumps strategy of sowing chaos and confusion to hide his assault on the nation. Pences politics could be stopped or reversed through the normal processes of American politics. Trump is bent on destroying those normal processes.

Dont fall for it, America. The president we have now is the one to worry about.

Neil J. Young is a historian and the author ofWe Gather Together: The Religious Right and the Problem of Interfaith Politics. He hosts the history podcast Past Present.

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No, President Mike Pence Would Not Be Worse Than Trump