vox--2020-09-29--What Trump has done to the courts, explained

Share All sharing options for : What Trump has done to the courts , explained In less than four years as president , President Trump has done nearly as much to shape the courts as President Obama did in eight years .
Trump hasn ’ t simply given lots of lifetime appointments to lots of lawyers .
He ’ s filled the bench with some of the smartest , and most ideologically reliable , men and women to be found in the conservative movement .
Long after Trump leaves office , these judges will shape American law — pushing it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ if the voters soundly reject Trumpism in 2020 .
Let ’ s start with some raw numbers .
Both Obama and Trump appointed two justices to the Supreme Court , but Trump ’ s impact on the highest Court far exceeds Obama ’ s , because Trump replaced the relatively moderate conservative Justice Anthony Kennedy with the hard-line conservative Brett Kavanaugh ( after appointing conservative Neil Gorsuch to fill Antonin Scalia ’ s vacant seat ) .
Obama ’ s appointees — Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan — largely maintained the balance of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Trump has shoved that Court even further to the right .
And that ’ s not counting Trump Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett , who is likely to be confirmed soon .
On the courts of appeal , the final word in the overwhelming majority of federal cases , more than one-quarter of active judges are Trump appointees .
In less than four years , Trump has named a total of 53 judges to these courts , compared to the 55 Obama appointed during his entire presidency .
In their first terms @ @ @ @ @ @ @ President George W. Bush filled only 35 seats on the federal appellate bench ; President Clinton , 30 ; President George H.W .
Bush , 42 ; and President Reagan , 33 .
On the district courts , the lowest level of federal courts , Trump ’ s impact has been less significant , although he ’ s still appointed judges far faster than Obama .
Obama appointed 268 federal trial judges in eight years , while Trump has appointed 210 so far .
But district judges deal far more often with routine @ @ @ @ @ @ @ schedules , and far less often with the kind of blockbuster cases that shape thousands of lives .
As Justice Sonia Sotomayor said in a candid moment while she was still a lower court judge , “ the court of appeals is where policy is made.
” It ’ s tempting to assume that Trump ’ s judicial appointees share the goonish incompetence of the man who placed them on the bench , but this assumption could not be more wrong .
His picks include leading academics , Supreme Court litigators , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more power within the judiciary .
Before he became president , Trump promised to delegate the judicial selection process to the Federalist Society , a powerful group of conservative lawyers that counts at least four Supreme Court justices among its members .
“ We ’ re going to have great judges , conservative , all picked by the Federalist Society , ” Trump told a radio show hosted by the right-wing site Breitbart while he was still a candidate .
The Federalist Society spent decades preparing for this moment , and they ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ most talented conservative stalwarts in the entire legal profession to place on the bench .
There ’ s no completely objective way to measure legal ability , but a common metric used by legal employers to identify the most gifted lawyers is whether those lawyers secured a federal clerkship , including the most prestigious clerkships at the Supreme Court .
Approximately 40 percent of Trump ’ s appellate nominees clerked for a Supreme Court justice , and about 80 percent clerked on a federal court of appeals .
That compares to less than @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who clerked on the Supreme Court , and less than half with a federal appellate clerkship .
In other words , based solely on objective legal credentials , the average Trump appointee has a far more impressive résumé than any past president ’ s nominees .
They ’ re young , too .
“ The average age of circuit judges appointed by President Trump is less than 50 years old , ” the Trump White House bragged in early November , “ a full 10 years younger than the average age of President @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s nominees will serve for years or even decades after being appointed .
Even if Democrats crush the 2020 elections and win majorities in both houses of Congress , these judges will have broad authority to sabotage the new president ’ s agenda .
There is simply no recent precedent for one president having such a transformative impact on the courts .
In an age of legislative dysfunction , whoever controls the courts controls the country .
In the past decade or so — or more precisely , since Republicans took over @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been barely functional .
You can count on one hand , and possibly on just a few fingers , the major legislation it has enacted .
Judges , by contrast , have become the most consequential policymakers in the nation .
They have gutted America ’ s campaign finance law and dismantled much of the Voting Rights Act .
They have allowed states to deny health coverage to millions of Americans .
They ’ ve held that religion can be wielded as a sword to cut away the rights of others .
They @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ban on sexual harassment .
And that barely scratches the surface .
The judiciary is where policy is made in the United States .
And that policy is likely to be made by Republican judges for the foreseeable future .
There are likely now five votes on the Supreme Court , for example , to effectively give the judiciary a veto power over all federal regulations .
Similarly , the Court ’ s decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby ( 2014 ) signals that religious conservatives may now ask the judiciary for an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are likely to become quite generous in passing out such exemptions in the coming years .
Republicans spent most of 2017 trying and failing to repeal Obamacare — but that failure means little to a federal appeals court that is expected to strike down the Affordable Care Act any day now .
And that ’ s not all .
In the coming months , the courts are poised to gut abortion rights , eviscerate gun control , and neuter landmark environmental laws .
Federal judges have already stripped workers of their ability to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ employers , and this process is likely to accelerate in the near future .
Many of our voting rights lie in tatters , due to conservative judicial appointments , and this process is likely to accelerate as well .
When Congress has been unable to function , the executive branch has relied on existing federal laws that delegate some policymaking authority to federal agencies , in order to deal with many of the nation ’ s pressing needs .
But with the Supreme Court poised to give judges a veto power over these @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in effect strike down any regulation they dislike .
In a Republican-controlled judiciary , this likely means that Republican administrations will retain broad discretionary authority , but Democratic administrations will be hobbled .
And here ’ s the thing : We probably will not fully understand just how much power Trump ’ s judges will wield until after Trump leaves office .
Right now , the executive branch is ideologically aligned with Trump ’ s judges , so those judges are less likely to object to the Trump administration ’ s actions than @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s a fairly safe bet that Trump ’ s judges would spend an Elizabeth Warren or Joe Biden administration wreaking havoc on the new president ’ s agenda — and that any future Democratic president will face similar opposition .
Two reasons Trump has been able to stack the courts Broadly speaking , there are two reasons Trump has had such an outsize influence on the federal courts .
The first reason is the effective blockade Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell imposed on appellate court confirmations the moment Republicans took over the Senate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland is well-known .
Less well-known are the many lower court nominees who received similar treatment .
Under Trump , McConnell has turned the Senate into a machine that churns out judicial confirmations and does little else — he ’ s ignored literally hundreds of bills passed by the House .
Under Obama , by contrast , McConnell ’ s Senate was the place where judicial nominations went to die .
The numbers here speak for themselves .
In the final two years of the Obama presidency , when @ @ @ @ @ @ @ appointed only two federal appellate judges — and one of those judges , Kara Farnandez Stoll , was confirmed to a highly specialized court that primarily deals with patent law .
By contrast , 10 such judges were confirmed during the same period in the George W. Bush presidency , a period when Democrats controlled the Senate .
The second reason for Trump ’ s outsize impact on the judiciary is that when Democrats last controlled the Senate , one especially important Democrat — Judiciary Chair Patrick Leahy ( VT ) — took @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the minority party .
An informal tradition known as the “ blue slip ” sometimes gives home-state senators an exaggerated influence over who gets confirmed to federal judgeships within their states ( the tradition gets its name from blue pieces of paper that home-state senators use to indicate whether they approve of a particular nominee ) .
Traditionally , the Senate Judiciary Committee showed some level of deference to senators who disapprove of their home-state nominees , although the level of deference given to these senators varied wildly depending on who chaired @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was politically aligned with the incumbent president .
Leahy , who chaired the Committee for most of the Obama presidency , gave home-state senators a simply extraordinary power to block judicial nominees .
Under Leahy , a single senator of either party could veto any nominee to a federal judgeship in their state ( although federal appeals courts typically oversee multiple states , each individual seat on these courts is traditionally assigned to a particular state ) .
Before Leahy , just one committee chair imposed such a rigid blue slip rule : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an arch-segregationist who took over the committee not long after the Supreme Court ’ s school integration decision in Brown v. Board of Education ( 1954 ) .
A strict blue slip rule allowed Southern senators to block judges who might try to desegregate public schools .
Leahy , to be clear , is not a segregationist .
He ’ s a reliably liberal Democrat .
But he nonetheless reinstated the Eastland Rule during his tenure as chair of the Judiciary Committee .
Leahy says that he did so to protect the “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Republicans he did .
Red-state Republicans used the power Leahy gave them to hold many judicial seats open until Obama left office .
Sen. Ron Johnson ( R-WI ) effectively held a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit open for eight years until Trump could fill it .
It ’ s tough to estimate the full impact of Leahy ’ s adherence to the Eastland Rule .
The rule often stopped the Obama White House from nominating anyone to a vacant judgeship .
According to Daniel Goldberg @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Obama “ did not even make a nomination ” to two seats on the Fifth Circuit because the blue slip would have doomed anyone he named ; those seats were eventually filled by Trump nominees .
In other cases , the blue slip allowed Republicans to drag out negotiations over a particular vacancy until McConnell took over the Senate in 2015 and imposed a blockade on nearly all of Obama ’ s appellate nominees .
The Eastland Rule also weakened Obama ’ s hand in negotiations with Senate Republicans , and sometimes forced @ @ @ @ @ @ @ order to placate senators who could veto judicial nominees .
Sens .
Saxby Chambliss ( R-GA ) and Johnny Isakson ( R-GA ) , for example , effectively held one of Obama ’ s Eleventh Circuit nominees hostage until Obama agreed to also name Judge Julie Carnes — a George H.W .
Bush district court appointee — to a second vacancy on that same court .
Republicans did not reciprocate when they came to power .
Not long after Trump took office , then-Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley ( R-IA ) started confirming @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their home-state Democratic senators .
( Republicans , for what it ’ s worth , have largely honored the blue slip tradition when a home-state senator objects to a district court nominee . )
Leahy continued to defend the Eastland Rule well into the Trump administration .
In a 2018 Senate floor speech , he touted the fact that he was “ criticized by advocacy groups and even the editorial page of the New York Times ” for allowing Republicans to veto Obama ’ s nominees , and he painted himself as a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Leahy also warned in the 2018 speech that Republicans were “ failing to protect the fundamental rights of home-state senators.
” By that point , Leahy ’ s adherence to the Eastland Rule had denied Obama the opportunity to fill many seats forever .
Filibuster reform fundamentally changed who gets to be a judge In 2013 , in a preview of how they would later treat the Garland nomination , Senate Republicans filibustered three Obama nominees to the powerful DC Circuit in an effort to keep Democrats from gaining a majority on that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ altered the filibuster to allow lower court judges to be confirmed by a simple majority .
Under the old rules , the minority party could block a vote on any nominee , and it took 60 votes to end that filibuster .
Now , only 51 votes are required to move forward to a confirmation vote .
One consequence of filibuster reform is that it enabled Democrats to fill seats that Republicans held open with a filibuster .
Democrats controlled the Senate for more than a year between the November 2013 reform vote @ @ @ @ @ @ @ control of the Senate .
So filibuster reform prevented Republicans from holding many judicial vacancies open until Trump could fill them .
It also fundamentally altered who gets to be a federal judge .
Democrats controlled the Senate for less than 14 months after filibuster reform .
Yet nearly half of the former Supreme Court clerks Obama appointed to federal appellate judgeships were confirmed during this brief period — nearly as many as Obama appointed in the almost five years before filibuster reform .
Similarly , nearly three-quarters of Obama ’ s post-reform @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for a court of appeals judge — as compared to less than 38 percent of Obama ’ s pre-reform judges .
One immediate impact of filibuster reform , in other words , is that it made it far easier for nominees with elite credentials to become federal judges .
Here ’ s why : In the pre-reform Senate , a sterling résumé was often a liability for a judicial nominee because it flagged the nominee as a potential candidate for a future Supreme Court appointment .
Both parties can tell stories of fallen @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Miguel Estrada or Obama nominee Goodwin Liu , whose immaculate résumés painted a target on their backs .
Both Estrada and Liu fell to filibusters .
By filibustering plausible Supreme Court nominees before they got on the bench in the first place , the opposition party could diminish the governing party ’ s pool of potential justices and make it harder for the governing party to find an ideologically reliable Supreme Court nominee when the time came .
But filibuster reform did not just improve the quality of nominees ’ résumés .
It @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to join the bench .
And it appears to be altering how many sitting judges behave .
As the 2016 election drew nigh , then-10th Circuit Judge Neil Gorsuch looked like he was openly campaigning for a promotion .
During this period , the Federalist Society grew increasingly obsessed with limiting the power of federal agencies to create binding regulations — an agenda that could hobble government bodies such as the Environmental Protection Agency .
Gorsuch signaled his loyalty to this anti-regulatory agenda by writing gratuitous opinions laying out new limits he hoped @ @ @ @ @ @ @ one case , Gorsuch even attached a separate concurring opinion to his own majority opinion .
As David Kaplan reports in The Most Dangerous Branch : Inside the Supreme Court ’ s Assault on the Constitution , one of these anti-regulatory opinions “ proved decisive in clinching ” the Trump White House ’ s decision to name Gorsuch to the Supreme Court .
Gorsuch ’ s opinions , according to Kaplan , were “ a way for Gorsuch to call attention to himself , and it worked.
” When I speak to judges @ @ @ @ @ @ @ derisive term to describe this kind of behavior : “ auditioning.
” In a world without the filibuster , ambitious judges have less to fear from the opposition party .
So they have every incentive to audition for the job that they want .
After all , the best way to win the prize that Gorsuch captured for himself is to catch the eye of the Federalist Society and its adherents .
The future of the judiciary favors Republicans While Trump has been very successful at filling the bench with brilliant Republican partisans @ @ @ @ @ @ @ enjoy similar success .
A badly malapportioned Senate means that to get even a bare majority in the Senate , Democrats have to win commanding popular vote majorities — and if Democrats don ’ t control the Senate , Democratic nominees could face the Merrick Garland treatment .
Just look at the last two years of the Obama presidency if you want to know how a Republican Senate is likely to treat Democratic judicial nominees .
Even if Democrats do overcome the odds to capture a majority , moreover , the balance of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ red-state Democrats who could be vulnerable to pressure from conservative interest groups hoping to keep Democratic nominees off the bench .
In other words , it ’ ll be a long , long time before Democrats can undo the work Trump and the Republicans have done to turn the judiciary rightward .
In the early months of the Trump presidency , so-called “ Never Trump ” Republicans often directed a derisive phrase against Trump supporters : “ But Gorsuch.
” It was a taunt that mocked the idea that it was worth selling @ @ @ @ @ @ @ celebrity who has been accused of sexual assault and misconduct by more than a dozen women in order to keep control of the courts .
But , as conservative columnist Hugh Hewitt wrote in 2018 , “ this bit of childish taunting always struck me as an unknowing admission of ignorance about the role assumed by the Supreme Court in modern American governance.
” Certainly , McConnell understood this role .
It ’ s why he was willing to use any means necessary to ensure Republican control of the judiciary .
The truth @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Trump , Republicans haven ’ t simply ensured conservative dominance of one branch of government .
They may have entrenched conservative governance for decades .
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Share All sharing options for: What Trump has done to the courts, explained
In less than four years as president, President Trump has done nearly as much to shape the courts as President Obama did in eight years.
Trump hasn’t simply given lots of lifetime appointments to lots of lawyers. He’s filled the bench with some of the smartest, and most ideologically reliable, men and women to be found in the conservative movement. Long after Trump leaves office, these judges will shape American law — pushing it further and further to the right even if the voters soundly reject Trumpism in 2020.
Let’s start with some raw numbers. Both Obama and Trump appointed two justices to the Supreme Court, but Trump’s impact on the highest Court far exceeds Obama’s, because Trump replaced the relatively moderate conservative Justice Anthony Kennedy with the hard-line conservative Brett Kavanaugh (after appointing conservative Neil Gorsuch to fill Antonin Scalia’s vacant seat). Obama’s appointees — Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan — largely maintained the balance of power on a conservative Court, while Trump has shoved that Court even further to the right.
And that’s not counting Trump Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, who is likely to be confirmed soon.
On the courts of appeal, the final word in the overwhelming majority of federal cases, more than one-quarter of active judges are Trump appointees. In less than four years, Trump has named a total of 53 judges to these courts, compared to the 55 Obama appointed during his entire presidency.
In their first terms, Obama appointed 30 appellate judges; President George W. Bush filled only 35 seats on the federal appellate bench; President Clinton, 30; President George H.W. Bush, 42; and President Reagan, 33.
On the district courts, the lowest level of federal courts, Trump’s impact has been less significant, although he’s still appointed judges far faster than Obama. Obama appointed 268 federal trial judges in eight years, while Trump has appointed 210 so far. But district judges deal far more often with routine matters like individual criminal sentences and trial schedules, and far less often with the kind of blockbuster cases that shape thousands of lives. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor said in a candid moment while she was still a lower court judge, “the court of appeals is where policy is made.”
It’s tempting to assume that Trump’s judicial appointees share the goonish incompetence of the man who placed them on the bench, but this assumption could not be more wrong. His picks include leading academics, Supreme Court litigators, and already prominent judges who now enjoy even more power within the judiciary.
Before he became president, Trump promised to delegate the judicial selection process to the Federalist Society, a powerful group of conservative lawyers that counts at least four Supreme Court justices among its members. “We’re going to have great judges, conservative, all picked by the Federalist Society,” Trump told a radio show hosted by the right-wing site Breitbart while he was still a candidate.
The Federalist Society spent decades preparing for this moment, and they’ve helped Trump identify many of the most talented conservative stalwarts in the entire legal profession to place on the bench.
There’s no completely objective way to measure legal ability, but a common metric used by legal employers to identify the most gifted lawyers is whether those lawyers secured a federal clerkship, including the most prestigious clerkships at the Supreme Court. Approximately 40 percent of Trump’s appellate nominees clerked for a Supreme Court justice, and about 80 percent clerked on a federal court of appeals. That compares to less than a quarter of Obama’s nominees who clerked on the Supreme Court, and less than half with a federal appellate clerkship.
In other words, based solely on objective legal credentials, the average Trump appointee has a far more impressive résumé than any past president’s nominees.
They’re young, too. “The average age of circuit judges appointed by President Trump is less than 50 years old,” the Trump White House bragged in early November, “a full 10 years younger than the average age of President Obama’s circuit nominees.”
Trump’s nominees will serve for years or even decades after being appointed. Even if Democrats crush the 2020 elections and win majorities in both houses of Congress, these judges will have broad authority to sabotage the new president’s agenda.
There is simply no recent precedent for one president having such a transformative impact on the courts.
How Trump’s judges will change America
In an age of legislative dysfunction, whoever controls the courts controls the country. In the past decade or so — or more precisely, since Republicans took over the House in 2011 — Congress has been barely functional. You can count on one hand, and possibly on just a few fingers, the major legislation it has enacted.
Judges, by contrast, have become the most consequential policymakers in the nation. They have gutted America’s campaign finance law and dismantled much of the Voting Rights Act. They have allowed states to deny health coverage to millions of Americans. They’ve held that religion can be wielded as a sword to cut away the rights of others. They’ve drastically watered down the federal ban on sexual harassment. And that barely scratches the surface.
The judiciary is where policy is made in the United States. And that policy is likely to be made by Republican judges for the foreseeable future.
There are likely now five votes on the Supreme Court, for example, to effectively give the judiciary a veto power over all federal regulations. Similarly, the Court’s decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby (2014) signals that religious conservatives may now ask the judiciary for an exemption from any law — and courts are likely to become quite generous in passing out such exemptions in the coming years. Republicans spent most of 2017 trying and failing to repeal Obamacare — but that failure means little to a federal appeals court that is expected to strike down the Affordable Care Act any day now.
And that’s not all. In the coming months, the courts are poised to gut abortion rights, eviscerate gun control, and neuter landmark environmental laws. Federal judges have already stripped workers of their ability to assert many of their rights against their employers, and this process is likely to accelerate in the near future. Many of our voting rights lie in tatters, due to conservative judicial appointments, and this process is likely to accelerate as well.
When Congress has been unable to function, the executive branch has relied on existing federal laws that delegate some policymaking authority to federal agencies, in order to deal with many of the nation’s pressing needs. But with the Supreme Court poised to give judges a veto power over these agencies’ actions, the courts could in effect strike down any regulation they dislike. In a Republican-controlled judiciary, this likely means that Republican administrations will retain broad discretionary authority, but Democratic administrations will be hobbled.
And here’s the thing: We probably will not fully understand just how much power Trump’s judges will wield until after Trump leaves office. Right now, the executive branch is ideologically aligned with Trump’s judges, so those judges are less likely to object to the Trump administration’s actions than more liberal jurists. But it’s a fairly safe bet that Trump’s judges would spend an Elizabeth Warren or Joe Biden administration wreaking havoc on the new president’s agenda — and that any future Democratic president will face similar opposition.
Two reasons Trump has been able to stack the courts
Broadly speaking, there are two reasons Trump has had such an outsize influence on the federal courts.
The first reason is the effective blockade Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell imposed on appellate court confirmations the moment Republicans took over the Senate. McConnell’s effort to block Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland is well-known. Less well-known are the many lower court nominees who received similar treatment. Under Trump, McConnell has turned the Senate into a machine that churns out judicial confirmations and does little else — he’s ignored literally hundreds of bills passed by the House. Under Obama, by contrast, McConnell’s Senate was the place where judicial nominations went to die.
The numbers here speak for themselves. In the final two years of the Obama presidency, when Republicans controlled the Senate, Obama successfully appointed only two federal appellate judges — and one of those judges, Kara Farnandez Stoll, was confirmed to a highly specialized court that primarily deals with patent law.
By contrast, 10 such judges were confirmed during the same period in the George W. Bush presidency, a period when Democrats controlled the Senate.
The second reason for Trump’s outsize impact on the judiciary is that when Democrats last controlled the Senate, one especially important Democrat — Judiciary Chair Patrick Leahy (VT) — took an unusually expansive view of the rights of the minority party.
An informal tradition known as the “blue slip” sometimes gives home-state senators an exaggerated influence over who gets confirmed to federal judgeships within their states (the tradition gets its name from blue pieces of paper that home-state senators use to indicate whether they approve of a particular nominee).
Traditionally, the Senate Judiciary Committee showed some level of deference to senators who disapprove of their home-state nominees, although the level of deference given to these senators varied wildly depending on who chaired the committee and whether that committee chair was politically aligned with the incumbent president.
Leahy, who chaired the Committee for most of the Obama presidency, gave home-state senators a simply extraordinary power to block judicial nominees. Under Leahy, a single senator of either party could veto any nominee to a federal judgeship in their state (although federal appeals courts typically oversee multiple states, each individual seat on these courts is traditionally assigned to a particular state).
Before Leahy, just one committee chair imposed such a rigid blue slip rule: Sen. James Eastland (D-MS), an arch-segregationist who took over the committee not long after the Supreme Court’s school integration decision in Brown v. Board of Education (1954). A strict blue slip rule allowed Southern senators to block judges who might try to desegregate public schools.
Leahy, to be clear, is not a segregationist. He’s a reliably liberal Democrat. But he nonetheless reinstated the Eastland Rule during his tenure as chair of the Judiciary Committee.
Leahy says that he did so to protect the “rights of the minority.” And protect Republicans he did. Red-state Republicans used the power Leahy gave them to hold many judicial seats open until Obama left office. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) effectively held a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit open for eight years until Trump could fill it.
It’s tough to estimate the full impact of Leahy’s adherence to the Eastland Rule. The rule often stopped the Obama White House from nominating anyone to a vacant judgeship. According to Daniel Goldberg of the liberal Alliance for Justice, Obama “did not even make a nomination” to two seats on the Fifth Circuit because the blue slip would have doomed anyone he named; those seats were eventually filled by Trump nominees.
In other cases, the blue slip allowed Republicans to drag out negotiations over a particular vacancy until McConnell took over the Senate in 2015 and imposed a blockade on nearly all of Obama’s appellate nominees.
The Eastland Rule also weakened Obama’s hand in negotiations with Senate Republicans, and sometimes forced him to name relatively conservative judges in order to placate senators who could veto judicial nominees. Sens. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) and Johnny Isakson (R-GA), for example, effectively held one of Obama’s Eleventh Circuit nominees hostage until Obama agreed to also name Judge Julie Carnes — a George H.W. Bush district court appointee — to a second vacancy on that same court.
Republicans did not reciprocate when they came to power. Not long after Trump took office, then-Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley (R-IA) started confirming appellate court nominees over the objection of their home-state Democratic senators. (Republicans, for what it’s worth, have largely honored the blue slip tradition when a home-state senator objects to a district court nominee.)
Leahy continued to defend the Eastland Rule well into the Trump administration. In a 2018 Senate floor speech, he touted the fact that he was “criticized by advocacy groups and even the editorial page of the New York Times” for allowing Republicans to veto Obama’s nominees, and he painted himself as a hero who “resisted such pressure.” Leahy also warned in the 2018 speech that Republicans were “failing to protect the fundamental rights of home-state senators.”
By that point, Leahy’s adherence to the Eastland Rule had denied Obama the opportunity to fill many seats forever.
Filibuster reform fundamentally changed who gets to be a judge
In 2013, in a preview of how they would later treat the Garland nomination, Senate Republicans filibustered three Obama nominees to the powerful DC Circuit in an effort to keep Democrats from gaining a majority on that court. In response, Democrats fundamentally altered the filibuster to allow lower court judges to be confirmed by a simple majority.
Under the old rules, the minority party could block a vote on any nominee, and it took 60 votes to end that filibuster. Now, only 51 votes are required to move forward to a confirmation vote.
One consequence of filibuster reform is that it enabled Democrats to fill seats that Republicans held open with a filibuster. Democrats controlled the Senate for more than a year between the November 2013 reform vote and January 2015, when Republicans took control of the Senate.
So filibuster reform prevented Republicans from holding many judicial vacancies open until Trump could fill them. It also fundamentally altered who gets to be a federal judge.
Democrats controlled the Senate for less than 14 months after filibuster reform. Yet nearly half of the former Supreme Court clerks Obama appointed to federal appellate judgeships were confirmed during this brief period — nearly as many as Obama appointed in the almost five years before filibuster reform.
Similarly, nearly three-quarters of Obama’s post-reform appointees to the federal appellate bench clerked for a court of appeals judge — as compared to less than 38 percent of Obama’s pre-reform judges. One immediate impact of filibuster reform, in other words, is that it made it far easier for nominees with elite credentials to become federal judges.
Here’s why: In the pre-reform Senate, a sterling résumé was often a liability for a judicial nominee because it flagged the nominee as a potential candidate for a future Supreme Court appointment. Both parties can tell stories of fallen martyrs, like George W. Bush nominee Miguel Estrada or Obama nominee Goodwin Liu, whose immaculate résumés painted a target on their backs. Both Estrada and Liu fell to filibusters.
By filibustering plausible Supreme Court nominees before they got on the bench in the first place, the opposition party could diminish the governing party’s pool of potential justices and make it harder for the governing party to find an ideologically reliable Supreme Court nominee when the time came.
But filibuster reform did not just improve the quality of nominees’ résumés. It also cleared the path for known ideologues to join the bench. And it appears to be altering how many sitting judges behave.
As the 2016 election drew nigh, then-10th Circuit Judge Neil Gorsuch looked like he was openly campaigning for a promotion. During this period, the Federalist Society grew increasingly obsessed with limiting the power of federal agencies to create binding regulations — an agenda that could hobble government bodies such as the Environmental Protection Agency. Gorsuch signaled his loyalty to this anti-regulatory agenda by writing gratuitous opinions laying out new limits he hoped to impose on federal agencies. In one case, Gorsuch even attached a separate concurring opinion to his own majority opinion.
As David Kaplan reports in The Most Dangerous Branch: Inside the Supreme Court’s Assault on the Constitution, one of these anti-regulatory opinions “proved decisive in clinching” the Trump White House’s decision to name Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. Gorsuch’s opinions, according to Kaplan, were “a way for Gorsuch to call attention to himself, and it worked.”
When I speak to judges, I often hear them use a derisive term to describe this kind of behavior: “auditioning.” In a world without the filibuster, ambitious judges have less to fear from the opposition party. So they have every incentive to audition for the job that they want. After all, the best way to win the prize that Gorsuch captured for himself is to catch the eye of the Federalist Society and its adherents.
The future of the judiciary favors Republicans
While Trump has been very successful at filling the bench with brilliant Republican partisans, a Democratic president is unlikely to enjoy similar success.
A badly malapportioned Senate means that to get even a bare majority in the Senate, Democrats have to win commanding popular vote majorities — and if Democrats don’t control the Senate, Democratic nominees could face the Merrick Garland treatment. Just look at the last two years of the Obama presidency if you want to know how a Republican Senate is likely to treat Democratic judicial nominees.
Even if Democrats do overcome the odds to capture a majority, moreover, the balance of power is likely to be held by red-state Democrats who could be vulnerable to pressure from conservative interest groups hoping to keep Democratic nominees off the bench.
In other words, it’ll be a long, long time before Democrats can undo the work Trump and the Republicans have done to turn the judiciary rightward.
In the early months of the Trump presidency, so-called “Never Trump” Republicans often directed a derisive phrase against Trump supporters: “But Gorsuch.” It was a taunt that mocked the idea that it was worth selling your soul to a manifestly unfit TV celebrity who has been accused of sexual assault and misconduct by more than a dozen women in order to keep control of the courts.
But, as conservative columnist Hugh Hewitt wrote in 2018, “this bit of childish taunting always struck me as an unknowing admission of ignorance about the role assumed by the Supreme Court in modern American governance.” Certainly, McConnell understood this role. It’s why he was willing to use any means necessary to ensure Republican control of the judiciary.
The truth is, by worshipping at the altar of Trump, Republicans haven’t simply ensured conservative dominance of one branch of government. They may have entrenched conservative governance for decades.


vox--2020-09-29--Biden to Trump: “Will you shut up, man?”

There was one moment in Tuesday ’ s chaotic presidential debate that really crystallized the entire awful experience : an exasperated former Vice President Joe Biden saying , “ Will you shut up , man ?
” to President Donald Trump .
The context was , as with most of the debate , strange .
The moderator , Fox News ’ s Chris Wallace , asked Biden whether he would abolish the filibuster and add new justices to the Supreme Court if elected .
Such measures would depend heavily on who wins the Senate , but the president would set @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been cagey on where he stands .
At the debate , he launched into a seemingly canned response designed to dodge commitment one way or another .
During Biden ’ s answer , Trump interrupted and heckled him — as he had throughout the entire debate .
Eventually , when Trump interrupted to accuse Biden of preparing to add “ radical left ” justices to the high court , Biden seemed to have had enough — and told the president of the United States to “ shut up.
” Nobody looks good here @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and boring , politician-like in the worst way .
Wallace proved himself incapable of preventing this from descending into chaos .
But let ’ s not lose track of what really caused Biden ’ s retort .
Trump seems to have used interruption as his central strategy , attempting to fluster Biden and prevent him from making actual substantive arguments .
Instead of engaging on the merits , Trump deliberately turned the first presidential debate into a carnival .
In that sense , it felt good to have Biden tell Trump off .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ another , deeper sense , it felt awful .
Remember , Trump is the incumbent .
The character of the man currently leading our country was on display tonight , and it wasn ’ t pretty .
Help keep Vox free for all Millions turn to Vox each month to understand what ’ s happening in the news , from the coronavirus crisis to a racial reckoning to what is , quite possibly , the most consequential presidential election of our lifetimes .
Our mission has never been more vital than it is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ through understanding .
But our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources .
Even when the economy and the news advertising market recovers , your support will be a critical part of sustaining our resource-intensive work .
If you have already contributed , thank you .
If you haven ’ t , please consider helping everyone make sense of an increasingly chaotic world : Contribute today from as little as $ 3 .

There was one moment in Tuesday’s chaotic presidential debate that really crystallized the entire awful experience: an exasperated former Vice President Joe Biden saying, “Will you shut up, man?” to President Donald Trump.
The context was, as with most of the debate, strange. The moderator, Fox News’s Chris Wallace, asked Biden whether he would abolish the filibuster and add new justices to the Supreme Court if elected. Such measures would depend heavily on who wins the Senate, but the president would set the tone and the Democratic nominee has been cagey on where he stands. At the debate, he launched into a seemingly canned response designed to dodge commitment one way or another.
During Biden’s answer, Trump interrupted and heckled him — as he had throughout the entire debate. Eventually, when Trump interrupted to accuse Biden of preparing to add “radical left” justices to the high court, Biden seemed to have had enough — and told the president of the United States to “shut up.”
"Will you shut up, man?" -- Biden to Trump pic.twitter.com/F1oX6VM7Wz — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 30, 2020
Nobody looks good here. Biden’s answer was evasive and boring, politician-like in the worst way. Wallace proved himself incapable of preventing this from descending into chaos.
But let’s not lose track of what really caused Biden’s retort. Trump seems to have used interruption as his central strategy, attempting to fluster Biden and prevent him from making actual substantive arguments. Instead of engaging on the merits, Trump deliberately turned the first presidential debate into a carnival.
In that sense, it felt good to have Biden tell Trump off. He really deserved it!
But in another, deeper sense, it felt awful. Remember, Trump is the incumbent. The character of the man currently leading our country was on display tonight, and it wasn’t pretty.


vox--2020-09-29--Trump says murders are up in Democrat-run cities. They’re up in Republican-run cities, too.

President Donald Trump at Tuesday ’ s presidential debate claimed that crime is up in Democrat-run cities .
“ I think it ’ s a party issue , ” Trump said , repeating a claim he ’ s made in the past , and citing recent increases in the murder rates in Chicago and New York City .
The argument , in short , is that if you can ’ t trust Democrats to run cities , you shouldn ’ t trust Democratic candidate Joe Biden with the presidency .
But Trump ’ s underlying claim — that Democrat-run cities @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is wrong .
For one , crime isn ’ t actually up this year .
Based on the latest reports , violent crime overall is flat , and property and drug offenses are actually down .
What is up is the homicide rate .
A report by the Council on Criminal Justice found that the homicide rate increased sharply this summer across 27 US cities : “ Homicide rates between June and August of 2020 increased by 53 % over the same period in 2019 , and aggravated assaults went up by 14 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ crime analyst Jeff Asher , found that murder is up 28 percent throughout the year so far , compared to the same period in 2019 , in a sample of 59 US cities .
A preliminary FBI report also found murders up 15 percent nationwide in the first half of 2020 .
But this is true in both Democrat-run and Republican-run cities .
According to Asher , the murder rate in cities with Democratic mayors is up 29 percent so far in 2020 .
In those with Republican mayors , the murder rate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ negligible difference .
Consider Miami , a city overseen by a Republican mayor and Republican governor : The murder rate there is up by more than 28 percent , with 77 murders in 2020 , up from 60 last year .
Asher reported that increases in the murder rate were recorded in several Republican cities across the country , from Jacksonville , Florida , to Tulsa , Oklahoma , to Fort Worth , Texas .
Not to mention all these increases are happening under Trump ’ s watch .
All of that is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to spike this year , political party isn ’ t it .
So what ’ s going on ?
Criminologists and other experts caution that they don ’ t really know yet .
But they ’ ve offered several potential explanations : The Covid-19 pandemic , and all the chaos that it ’ s wrought , could have led to more homicides — by hurting social support programs that can prevent escalating violence , damaging the economy , and overwhelming hospitals that treat violent crime victims , among other possibilities .
The protests @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have led cops to back off proactive policing , or caused the general public to trust the police less and subsequently work with the cops less often , both of which could have led to more unchecked violence .
A surge in gun purchases this year could have fueled more gun violence .
Or maybe none of this is right .
With limited data in very strange times , it ’ s entirely possible we have no idea what ’ s going on .
“ We can bet on it being unpredictable , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Justice Tech Lab , previously told me .
Such uncertainty isn ’ t strange in criminology .
Over the past three decades , America has seen a massive drop in violent crime and murder — a decrease that the current surge hasn ’ t erased .
Though there are many theories about what ’ s caused the decades-long crime drop , there ’ s still no consensus among experts .
But , at least for 2020 , we can say one thing : The year ’ s spike in murders transcends political parties @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Millions turn to Vox each month to understand what ’ s happening in the news , from the coronavirus crisis to a racial reckoning to what is , quite possibly , the most consequential presidential election of our lifetimes .
Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment : to empower you through understanding .
But our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources .
Even when the economy and the news advertising market recovers , your support will be a critical part of sustaining our resource-intensive work @ @ @ @ @ @ @ thank you .
If you haven ’ t , please consider helping everyone make sense of an increasingly chaotic world : Contribute today from as little as $ 3 .

President Donald Trump at Tuesday’s presidential debate claimed that crime is up in Democrat-run cities. “I think it’s a party issue,” Trump said, repeating a claim he’s made in the past.
The argument, in short, is that if you can’t trust Democrats to run cities, you shouldn’t trust Democratic candidate Joe Biden with the presidency.
But Trump’s underlying claim — that Democrat-run cities are unique in their crime spikes — is wrong.
For one, crime isn’t actually up this year. Based on the latest reports, violent crime overall is flat, and property and drug offenses are actually down.
What is up is the homicide rate. A report by the Council on Criminal Justice found that the homicide rate increased sharply this summer across 27 US cities: “Homicide rates between June and August of 2020 increased by 53% over the same period in 2019, and aggravated assaults went up by 14%.” Other data, from crime analyst Jeff Asher, found that murder is up 28 percent throughout the year so far, compared to the same period in 2019, in a sample of 59 US cities. A preliminary FBI report also found murders up 15 percent nationwide in the first half of 2020.
But this is true in both Democrat-run and Republican-run cities. According to Asher, the murder rate in cities with Democratic mayors is up 29 percent so far in 2020. In those with Republican mayors, the murder rate is up 26 percent, a statistically negligible difference.
Consider Miami, a city overseen by a Republican mayor and Republican governor: The murder rate there is up by more than 28 percent, with 77 murders in 2020, up from 60 last year. Asher reported that increases in the murder rate were recorded in several Republican cities across the country, from Jacksonville, Florida, to Tulsa, Oklahoma, to Fort Worth, Texas.
Not to mention all these increases are happening under Trump’s watch.
All of that is to say that whatever is causing murders to spike this year, political party isn’t it.
So what’s going on? Criminologists and other experts caution that they don’t really know yet. But they’ve offered several potential explanations: The Covid-19 pandemic, and all the chaos that it’s wrought, could have led to more homicides — by hurting social support programs that can prevent escalating violence, damaging the economy, and overwhelming hospitals that treat violent crime victims, among other possibilities. The protests around police brutality and systemic racism may have led cops to back off proactive policing, or caused the general public to trust the police less and subsequently work with the cops less often, both of which could have led to more unchecked violence. A surge in gun purchases this year could have fueled more gun violence.
Or maybe none of this is right. With limited data in very strange times, it’s entirely possible we have no idea what’s going on. “We can bet on it being unpredictable,” Jennifer Doleac, director of the Justice Tech Lab, previously told me.
Such uncertainty isn’t strange in criminology. Over the past three decades, America has seen a massive drop in violent crime and murder — a decrease that the current surge hasn’t erased. Though there are many theories about what’s caused the decades-long crime drop, there’s still no consensus among experts.
But, at least for 2020, we can say one thing: The year’s spike in murders transcends political parties.


vox--2020-09-29--The Trump campaign spent months portraying Biden as senile. That might be a mistake.

Donald Trump has made it very clear of what he thinks about Joe Biden .
In his speeches , “ Sleepy Joe ” Biden is barely coherent , a “ dumb guy ” who “ doesn ’ t know where the hell he is.
” In online advertising , the Trump campaign has repeatedly alleged that Biden is “ too old and out of it ” to be president .
And during a Tuesday appearance on Fox & Friends , Trump ally Rudy Giuliani excitedly shared his theory that Biden has dementia and will “ get through ” the debate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ attention deficit disorder .
Meanwhile , some Trump allies are currently busying themselves by pushing a conspiracy theory about Biden using an earpiece during the debate — a conspiracy theory that first originated in 2000 and resurfaced in 2004 during a debate between George W. Bush and John Kerry before being wielded against Hillary Clinton in 2016 .
To be clear , there is absolutely no evidence for any of this .
But the play seems clear : If Biden trips up during the debate , he ’ s a “ dumb guy.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s because he had help .
But by aggressively pushing the image of 77-year-old Joe Biden as a senile old man , the Trump campaign has unintentionally lowered the bar and made it easier for the Democratic candidate to succeed .
And rather than focus on his policy successes — or even on the major challenges facing the country , from the coronavirus pandemic to the economic disaster hurting so many American families — Trump would rather discuss fake earpieces and drug tests .
Trump allies ’ accusations of drug use and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s debate have proven to be part of a series of endless distractions — Biden won ’ t even debate !
Demand drug tests !
Check for hidden earpieces !
Yell about how one candidate may have gotten the questions ahead of time ( which is untrue ) !
— intended to heighten the tension and drama .
This isn ’ t new for Trump .
In 2016 , he demanded Hillary Clinton be drug-tested before the last debate as part of an all-out assault on her health because “ at the beginning @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all pumped up at the beginning , and at the end it was like , huff , take me down .
She could barely reach her car.
” These are tactics straight from pro wrestling , where it ’ s common to summon up distractions to heighten the tension before a match .
They remain markedly effective , seeping from conspiracy theory-focused corners of the internet ( from QAnon adherents to Facebook pages for conservatives ) to mainstream outlets that do their best to debunk them but , by doing so , also @ @ @ @ @ @ @ known as “ trading up the chain ” ) .
The challenge for Trump and his campaign , though , isn ’ t successfully spreading rumors .
It ’ s that based on Trump ’ s rhetoric , Biden will be a success if he simply shows up and seems fully lucid .
This was a problem that Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien and Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh seemed to note a few weeks ago when the two began publicly praising Biden ’ s debate skills .
( Murtaugh previously argued @ @ @ @ @ @ @ As HotAir.com ’ s Allahpundit wrote earlier this month , the GOP had spent months “ inexplicably lowering [ the bar for Biden ] until it rested flat on the ground ” until Stepien stepped in : Former White House press secretary Sean Spicer told Politico , “ This idea of Biden not knowing how to debate is ridiculous .
The more that expectations are lowered for him the worse.
” It ’ s more typical for a candidate or a campaign to play up the debating skills of their opponent , rather @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Trump campaign did , that the opposition has lost their touch .
Trump doesn ’ t seem to be preparing for a debate victory , but instead readying himself and his allies to explain a humiliating loss in the style of a college football coach .
Biden won ’ t have really won , they ’ ll argue — he ’ ll have had help .
But the real problem with this entire discussion is that it ’ s not just a distraction for the candidates ; it ’ s also a distraction @ @ @ @ @ @ @ concerned about — the coronavirus pandemic and the resulting economic tumult .
Earlier Tuesday , Disney announced 28,000 layoffs .
Those are 28,000 workers who have just lost their jobs , while future stimulus payments remain largely hypothetical .
So , sure , Trump ’ s “ Biden is senile and using performance-enhancing substances ” rhetoric is problematic because it ’ s both false and harmful to perceptions of his own debate performance .
But it ’ s also problematic because it focuses on a very online atmosphere and elides the real problems @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you might recall , he declared he alone could fix .
Help keep Vox free for all Millions turn to Vox each month to understand what ’ s happening in the news , from the coronavirus crisis to a racial reckoning to what is , quite possibly , the most consequential presidential election of our lifetimes .
Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment : to empower you through understanding .
But our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources .
Even when the economy and the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ will be a critical part of sustaining our resource-intensive work .
If you have already contributed , thank you .
If you haven ’ t , please consider helping everyone make sense of an increasingly chaotic world : Contribute today from as little as $ 3 .

Donald Trump has made it very clear of what he thinks about Joe Biden. In his speeches, “Sleepy Joe” Biden is barely coherent, a “dumb guy” who “doesn’t know where the hell he is.” In online advertising, the Trump campaign has repeatedly alleged that Biden is “too old and out of it” to be president.
And during a Tuesday appearance on Fox & Friends, Trump ally Rudy Giuliani excitedly shared his theory that Biden has dementia and will “get through” the debate thanks to drugs typically used to treat attention deficit disorder.
Meanwhile, some Trump allies are currently busying themselves by pushing a conspiracy theory about Biden using an earpiece during the debate — a conspiracy theory that first originated in 2000 and resurfaced in 2004 during a debate between George W. Bush and John Kerry before being wielded against Hillary Clinton in 2016.
To be clear, there is absolutely no evidence for any of this.
But the play seems clear: If Biden trips up during the debate, he’s a “dumb guy.” If he seems competent, it’s because he had help. But by aggressively pushing the image of 77-year-old Joe Biden as a senile old man, the Trump campaign has unintentionally lowered the bar and made it easier for the Democratic candidate to succeed.
And rather than focus on his policy successes — or even on the major challenges facing the country, from the coronavirus pandemic to the economic disaster hurting so many American families — Trump would rather discuss fake earpieces and drug tests.
Pro-wrestling-style politics, but with a glaring flaw
Trump allies’ accusations of drug use and earpieces in the runup to Tuesday’s debate have proven to be part of a series of endless distractions — Biden won’t even debate! Demand drug tests! Check for hidden earpieces! Yell about how one candidate may have gotten the questions ahead of time (which is untrue)! — intended to heighten the tension and drama.
This isn’t new for Trump. In 2016, he demanded Hillary Clinton be drug-tested before the last debate as part of an all-out assault on her health because “at the beginning of her last debate, she was all pumped up at the beginning, and at the end it was like, huff, take me down. She could barely reach her car.”
These are tactics straight from pro wrestling, where it’s common to summon up distractions to heighten the tension before a match. They remain markedly effective, seeping from conspiracy theory-focused corners of the internet (from QAnon adherents to Facebook pages for conservatives) to mainstream outlets that do their best to debunk them but, by doing so, also give them more attention (a technique known as “trading up the chain”).
The challenge for Trump and his campaign, though, isn’t successfully spreading rumors. It’s that based on Trump’s rhetoric, Biden will be a success if he simply shows up and seems fully lucid.
This was a problem that Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien and Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh seemed to note a few weeks ago when the two began publicly praising Biden’s debate skills. (Murtaugh previously argued that Biden had declined cognitively.)
As HotAir.com’s Allahpundit wrote earlier this month, the GOP had spent months “inexplicably lowering [the bar for Biden] until it rested flat on the ground” until Stepien stepped in:
Until recently the Trump campaign’s line on Sleepy Joe was that he was in late-stage mental decline and would probably duck the debates altogether to avoid revealing that to the world. We’re now 18 days away and someone, probably Stepien, finally figured out that reducing expectations for Biden to the point that he only need speak in complete sentences to prove he’s fit for office was a bad idea.
Former White House press secretary Sean Spicer told Politico, “This idea of Biden not knowing how to debate is ridiculous. The more that expectations are lowered for him the worse.”
It’s more typical for a candidate or a campaign to play up the debating skills of their opponent, rather than argue in ads, as the Trump campaign did, that the opposition has lost their touch.
Trump doesn’t seem to be preparing for a debate victory, but instead readying himself and his allies to explain a humiliating loss in the style of a college football coach. Biden won’t have really won, they’ll argue — he’ll have had help.
But the real problem with this entire discussion is that it’s not just a distraction for the candidates; it’s also a distraction from the issues that Americans are most concerned about — the coronavirus pandemic and the resulting economic tumult.
Earlier Tuesday, Disney announced 28,000 layoffs. Those are 28,000 workers who have just lost their jobs, while future stimulus payments remain largely hypothetical.
So, sure, Trump’s “Biden is senile and using performance-enhancing substances” rhetoric is problematic because it’s both false and harmful to perceptions of his own debate performance. But it’s also problematic because it focuses on a very online atmosphere and elides the real problems Americans are facing — problems that, you might recall, he declared he alone could fix.


vox--2020-09-29--Fast-food buffets are a thing of the past. Some doubt they ever even existed.

When we think of buffets , we tend to think of their 1980s and early ’ 90s heyday , when commercial jingles for Sizzler might have been confused with our national anthem .
We think of Homer Simpson getting dragged out of the Frying Dutchman , “ a beast more stomach than man.
” I think of my parents going on buffet benders resembling something out of Hunter S. Thompson ’ s life , determined to get their money ’ s worth with two picky kids .
What we don ’ t typically think about , however , is the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on America ’ s food radar that it ’ s hard to prove it even existed .
But it did .
People swear that all-you-can-eat buffets could be found at Taco Bell , KFC , and even under the golden arches of McDonald ’ s .
That it could have existed isn ’ t surprising .
The fast-food buffet was inevitable , the culmination of an arms race in maximizing caloric intake .
It was the physical manifestation of the American id : endless biscuits , popcorn chicken , vats of nacho cheese @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pudding .
Why , then , have so many of us failed to remember it ?
How did it become a footnote , relegated to the backwoods of myths and legends ?
There are whispers of McDonald ’ s locations that have breakfast buffets .
Was there , in fact , a Taco Bell buffet , or is it a figment of our collective imaginations ?
Yes , someone tells me — an all-you-can-eat Taco Bell existed in her dorm cafeteria .
Another person suggests maybe we were just remembering the nachos section @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The fast-food buffet was inevitable , the culmination of an arms race in maximizing caloric intake .
The fast-food buffet lives in a strange sort of ether .
You can ’ t get to it through the traditional path of remembering .
Was there actually a Pizza Hut buffet in your hometown ?
Search your subconscious , sifting past the red cups that make the soda taste better , past the spiffy new CD jukebox , which has Garth Brooks ’ s Ropin ’ the Wind and Paul McCartney ’ s All the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ deeper , and you might find your father going up for a third plate and something remaining of the “ dessert pizzas ” lodged in your subconscious .
This is where the fast-food buffet exists .
The history of the buffet in America is a story of ingenuity and evolution .
Sure , it originated in Europe , where it was a classy affair with artfully arranged salted fish , eggs , breads , and butter .
The Swedish dazzled us with their smorgasbords at the 1939 World Fair .
We can then @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Las Vegas , where the one-dollar Buckaroo Buffet kept gamblers in the casino .
In the 1960s and 1970s , Chinese immigrant families found loopholes in racist immigration laws by establishing restaurants .
They brought Chinese cooking catered to American tastes in endless plates of beef chow fun and egg rolls .
By the 1980s , buffets ruled the landscape like family dynasties , with sister chains the Ponderosa and the Bonanza spreading the gospel of sneeze guards and steaks , sundae stations and salad bars along the interstates .
From Shoney ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ shining sea , the buffet was a feast fit for kings , or a family of four .
And of course , fast-food restaurants wanted in on the action .
As fast-food historian and author of Drive-Thru Dreams Adam Chandler put it , “ every fast food place flirted with buffets at some point or another .
McDonald ’ s absolutely did , as did most of the pizza chains with dine-in service .
KFC still has a few stray buffets , as well as an illicit one called Claudia Sanders Dinner House @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ wife after he was forbidden from opening a competing fried chicken business after selling the company .
Wendy ’ s Super Bar was short-lived , but the salad bar lived on for decades.
” How something can be both gross and glorious is a particular duality of fast food , like the duality of man or something , only with nacho cheese and pasta sauce .
In a 1988 commercial for the Superbar , Dave Thomas says , “ I ’ m an old-fashioned guy .
I like it when families eat @ @ @ @ @ @ @ described the new business model as “ taking us out of the fast-food business.
” Everyone agrees the Wendy ’ s Superbar was glorious .
And gross , everyone also agrees .
How something can be both gross and glorious is a particular duality of fast food , like the duality of man or something , only with nacho cheese and pasta sauce .
“ I kind of want to live in a ’ 90s Wendy ’ s , ” Amy Barnes , a Tennessee-based writer , tells me in between preparing for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Superbar sat in the lobby , with stations lined up like train carts .
First , there was the Garden Spot , which “ no one cared about , ” a traditional salad bar with a tub of chocolate pudding at its helm , “ which always had streams of salad dressing and shredded cheese floating on top.
” Next up was the Pasta Pasta section , with “ noodles , alfredo and tomato sauce… [ as well as ] garlic bread made from the repurposed hamburger buns with butter and garlic smeared @ @ @ @ @ @ @ jewel of the Superbar was the Mexican Fiesta , with its “ vats of ground beef , nacho cheese , sour cream.
” The Fiesta shared custody of additional toppings with the salad bar .
It was $ 2.99 for the dining experience .
The marriage of Wendy ’ s and the Superbar lasted about a decade before it was phased out in all locations by 1998 .
Like a jilted ex-lover , the official Wendy ’ s Story on the website makes zero mention of Superbar , despite the countless blogs , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ remembering it .
At least they kept the salad bar together until the mid-2000s for the sake of the children .
Santa Claus .
The Easter Bunny .
The McDonald ’ s Breakfast Buffet .
Googling the existence of such a thing only returns results of people questioning the existence of this McMuffin Mecca on subforums and Reddit .
Somebody knows somebody who passed one once on the highway .
A stray Yelp review of the Kiss My Grits food truck in Seattle offers a lead : “ I have to say , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ saw grits , they were at a McDonald ’ s breakfast buffet in Alexandria , Virginia , and they looked as unappetizing as could be.
” However , the lead is dead on arrival .
Further googling of the McDonald ’ s buffet with terrible grits in Alexandria turns up nothing .
I ask friends on Facebook .
I ask Twitter .
I get a lone response .
Eden Robins messages me “ It was in Decatur , IL , ” as though she ’ s describing the site where aliens abducted her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ relieved that I didn ’ t imagine the breakfast buffet since no one ever knows what the fuck I ’ m talking about when I bring it up.
” “ We had traveled down there for a high school drama competition , ” she goes on to say .
“ And one morning before the competition , we ate at a McDonald ’ s breakfast buffet .
I had never seen anything like it before or since.
” I ask what was in the buffet , although I know the details alone will @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to pore over so I can pause at specific frames , like a fast-food version of the Patterson–Gimlin Bigfoot footage .
Robins says they served “ scrambled eggs and pancakes and those hash brown tiles .
I was a vegetarian at the time so no sausage or bacon , but those were there , too.
” McDonald ’ s isn ’ t the only chain with a buffet whose existence is hazy .
Yum Brands , the overlord of fast-food holy trinity Taco Bell , Kentucky Fried Chicken , and Pizza Hut , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all three restaurants .
I confirm nothing , however , when I reach out to the corporate authorities .
On the KFC side , a spokesperson offers to look into “ some historical information , ” but doesn ’ t get back to me .
My contact at Taco Bell tells me , “ I ’ ll look into it .
Certainly , nothing in existence today .
I ’ ve never heard of it .
Looks like there are a couple threads on Reddit.
” Reddit , of course , speculates a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a group of unrelated people remembering a different event than what actually occurred — in the existence of Taco Bell buffets .
But I have a firmer lead in Payel Patel , a doctor who studied at Johns Hopkins , who tells me there was a Taco Bell Express in her dorm that was included in an all-you-can-eat meal plan option , though it only lasted one fleeting year .
“ You could order anything , like 15 nachos and 11 bean burritos , ” she says , “ and they would make @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and you walked off without paying a cent.
” A Johns Hopkins student newsletter published in 2001 corroborates the existence of the utopian all-you-can-eat Taco Bell , saying , “ you can also gorge yourself on some good old Taco Bell tacos and burritos .
Don ’ t forget , it ’ s all-you-can-eat .
Just don ’ t eat too much ; you don ’ t want to overload the John.
” There are some concrete examples of fast-food buffets that still exist today .
When a Krystal Buffet opened in Alabama @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ excitement and disbelief , ” according to the press release .
Former New Orleans resident Wilson Koewing told me of a Popeye ’ s buffet that locals “ speak of as if it is a myth.
” When I dig deeper , I come across a local paper , NOLA Weekend , which covers “ New Orleans Food , things to do , culture , and lifestyle.
” It touts the Popeye ’ s buffet like a carnival barker , as though it is simply too incredible to believe : “ The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ World !
It ’ s right next door in Lafayette !
Yes , that ’ s right : a Popeyes buffet .
HERE.
” Somehow , the KFC buffet is the most enduring of the fast-food buffets still in existence .
And yet everyone I speak with feels compelled to walk me through the paths and roads leading to such an oasis , as if , again , it were the stuff of legends .
There are landmarks and there are mirages , and the mirages need maps most of all .
To @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Largo , Tiffany Aleman must first take us through “ a small island town with one traffic light and one major highway that runs through it .
There are the seafood buffets and bait shops , which give way to newfangled Starbucks.
” The buffet adds the feel of a hospital cafeteria , the people dining look close to death or knowingly waiting to die .
New Jerseyan D.F .
Jester leads us past the local seafood place “ that looks like the midnight buffet on a cruise ship has been transported 50 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ area of a 1980s Ramada outside of Newark.
” Descriptions of the food are about what I would expect of a KFC buffet .
Laura Camerer remembers the food in her college town in Morehead , Kentucky , as “ all fried solid as rocks sitting under heat lamps , kind of gray and gristly.
” Jester adds , “ for all intents and purposes , this is a KFC .
It looks like one , but sadder , more clinical .
The buffet adds the feel of a hospital cafeteria , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ knowingly waiting to die.
” Then Jessie Lovett Allen messages me .
“ There is [ a ] KFC in my hometown , and it is magical without a hint of sketch.
” I must know more .
First , she takes me down the winding path : “ the closest larger city is Kearney , which is 100 miles away and only has 35K people , and Kearney is where you ’ ll find the closest Target , Panera , or Taco Bell .
But to the North , South , or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of miles before you find a larger city .
I tell you all of this because the extreme isolation is what gives our restaurants , even fast-food ones , an outsized psychological importance to daily life.
” The KFC Jessie mentions is in North Platte , Nebraska , and has nearly five stars on Yelp , an accomplishment worthy of a monument for any fast-food restaurant .
On the non-corporate Facebook page for KFC North Platte , one of the hundreds of followers of the page comments , “ BEST KFC IN THE @ @ @ @ @ @ @ though she is recounting a corner of heaven .
“ They have fried apple pies that seem to come through a wormhole from a 1987 McDonalds .
Pudding : Hot .
Good .
Layered cold pudding desserts .
This one rotates .
It might be chocolate , banana , cookies and cream .
It has a graham cracker base , pudding , and whipped topping .
Standard Cold Salad bar : Lettuce , salad veggies , macaroni salads , JELL-O salads .
Other meats : chicken fried steak patties .
Fried chicken gizzards @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Green Bean Casserole , Cornbread , Corn on the Cob , Chicken Pot Pie Casserole .
AND most all the standard stuff on the normal KFC menu , which is nice because you can pick out a variety of chicken types or just have a few tablespoons of a side dish.
” In the end , the all-you-can-eat dream didn ’ t last , if it ever even existed .
Then she adds that the buffet “ is also available TO GO , but there are rules .
You get a large @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and a cup .
You have to be able to close the Styrofoam .
You are instructed that only beverages can go in cups , and when I asked about this , an employee tells me that customers have tried to shove chicken into the drink cups in the past.
” In the end , the all-you-can-eat dream didn ’ t last , if it ever even existed .
The chains folded .
The senior citizens keeping Ponderosa in business have died .
My own parents reversed course after their buffet bender @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of SlimFast .
Fast-food buffets retreated into an ethereal space .
McDonald ’ s grew up with adult sandwiches like the Arch Deluxe .
Wendy ’ s went on a wild rebound with the Baconator .
Pizza Hut ripped out its jukeboxes , changed its logo , went off to the fast-food wars , and ain ’ t been the same since .
Taco Bell is undergoing some kind of midlife crisis , hemorrhaging its entire menu of potatoes , among other beloved items .
At least the KFC in North Platte has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ could change things .
In the age of COVID-19 , the fast-food buffet feels like more of a dream than ever .
How positively whimsical it would be to stand shoulder to shoulder , hovering over sneeze guards , sharing soup ladles to scoop an odd assortment of pudding , three grapes , a heap of rotini pasta , and a drumstick onto a plate .
Maybe we can reach this place again .
But to find it , we must follow the landmarks , searching our memory as the map .
MM @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who enjoys staring directly into the sun .
Their work has appeared in Lit Hub , The Rumpus , and PopMatters .
They are the editor of

When we think of buffets, we tend to think of their 1980s and early ’90s heyday, when commercial jingles for Sizzler might have been confused with our national anthem. We think of Homer Simpson getting dragged out of the Frying Dutchman, “a beast more stomach than man.” I think of my parents going on buffet benders resembling something out of Hunter S. Thompson’s life, determined to get their money’s worth with two picky kids.
What we don’t typically think about, however, is the fast-food buffet, a blip so small on America’s food radar that it’s hard to prove it even existed. But it did. People swear that all-you-can-eat buffets could be found at Taco Bell, KFC, and even under the golden arches of McDonald’s.
That it could have existed isn’t surprising. The fast-food buffet was inevitable, the culmination of an arms race in maximizing caloric intake. It was the physical manifestation of the American id: endless biscuits, popcorn chicken, vats of nacho cheese and sketchy pudding — so much sketchy pudding. Why, then, have so many of us failed to remember it? How did it become a footnote, relegated to the backwoods of myths and legends? There are whispers of McDonald’s locations that have breakfast buffets. Was there, in fact, a Taco Bell buffet, or is it a figment of our collective imaginations? Yes, someone tells me — an all-you-can-eat Taco Bell existed in her dorm cafeteria. Another person suggests maybe we were just remembering the nachos section of the Wendy’s Superbar.
The fast-food buffet was inevitable, the culmination of an arms race in maximizing caloric intake.
The fast-food buffet lives in a strange sort of ether. You can’t get to it through the traditional path of remembering. Was there actually a Pizza Hut buffet in your hometown? Search your subconscious, sifting past the red cups that make the soda taste better, past the spiffy new CD jukebox, which has Garth Brooks’s Ropin’ the Wind and Paul McCartney’s All the Best under the neon lamps. Search deeper, and you might find your father going up for a third plate and something remaining of the “dessert pizzas” lodged in your subconscious. This is where the fast-food buffet exists.
The history of the buffet in America is a story of ingenuity and evolution. Sure, it originated in Europe, where it was a classy affair with artfully arranged salted fish, eggs, breads, and butter. The Swedish dazzled us with their smorgasbords at the 1939 World Fair. We can then trace the evolution of the buffet through Las Vegas, where the one-dollar Buckaroo Buffet kept gamblers in the casino. In the 1960s and 1970s, Chinese immigrant families found loopholes in racist immigration laws by establishing restaurants. They brought Chinese cooking catered to American tastes in endless plates of beef chow fun and egg rolls. By the 1980s, buffets ruled the landscape like family dynasties, with sister chains the Ponderosa and the Bonanza spreading the gospel of sneeze guards and steaks, sundae stations and salad bars along the interstates. From Shoney’s to Sizzler, from sea to shining sea, the buffet was a feast fit for kings, or a family of four.
And of course, fast-food restaurants wanted in on the action. As fast-food historian and author of Drive-Thru Dreams Adam Chandler put it, “every fast food place flirted with buffets at some point or another. McDonald’s absolutely did, as did most of the pizza chains with dine-in service. KFC still has a few stray buffets, as well as an illicit one called Claudia Sanders Dinner House, which was opened by Colonel Sanders’ wife after he was forbidden from opening a competing fried chicken business after selling the company. Wendy’s Super Bar was short-lived, but the salad bar lived on for decades.”
How something can be both gross and glorious is a particular duality of fast food, like the duality of man or something, only with nacho cheese and pasta sauce.
In a 1988 commercial for the Superbar, Dave Thomas says, “I’m an old-fashioned guy. I like it when families eat together.” A Wendy’s executive described the new business model as “taking us out of the fast-food business.” Everyone agrees the Wendy’s Superbar was glorious. And gross, everyone also agrees. How something can be both gross and glorious is a particular duality of fast food, like the duality of man or something, only with nacho cheese and pasta sauce.
“I kind of want to live in a ’90s Wendy’s,” Amy Barnes, a Tennessee-based writer, tells me in between preparing for virtual learning with her teenagers. The Superbar sat in the lobby, with stations lined up like train carts. First, there was the Garden Spot, which “no one cared about,” a traditional salad bar with a tub of chocolate pudding at its helm, “which always had streams of salad dressing and shredded cheese floating on top.” Next up was the Pasta Pasta section, with “noodles, alfredo and tomato sauce…[as well as] garlic bread made from the repurposed hamburger buns with butter and garlic smeared on them.” Obviously, the crown jewel of the Superbar was the Mexican Fiesta, with its “vats of ground beef, nacho cheese, sour cream.” The Fiesta shared custody of additional toppings with the salad bar. It was $2.99 for the dining experience.
Santa Claus. The Easter Bunny. The McDonald’s Breakfast Buffet.
The marriage of Wendy’s and the Superbar lasted about a decade before it was phased out in all locations by 1998. Like a jilted ex-lover, the official Wendy’s Story on the website makes zero mention of Superbar, despite the countless blogs, YouTube videos, and podcasts devoted to remembering it. At least they kept the salad bar together until the mid-2000s for the sake of the children.
Santa Claus. The Easter Bunny. The McDonald’s Breakfast Buffet. Googling the existence of such a thing only returns results of people questioning the existence of this McMuffin Mecca on subforums and Reddit. Somebody knows somebody who passed one once on the highway. A stray Yelp review of the Kiss My Grits food truck in Seattle offers a lead: “I have to say, I recall the first time I ever saw grits, they were at a McDonald’s breakfast buffet in Alexandria, Virginia, and they looked as unappetizing as could be.” However, the lead is dead on arrival. Further googling of the McDonald’s buffet with terrible grits in Alexandria turns up nothing.
I ask friends on Facebook. I ask Twitter. I get a lone response. Eden Robins messages me “It was in Decatur, IL,” as though she’s describing the site where aliens abducted her. “I’m a little relieved that I didn’t imagine the breakfast buffet since no one ever knows what the fuck I’m talking about when I bring it up.”
“We had traveled down there for a high school drama competition,” she goes on to say. “And one morning before the competition, we ate at a McDonald’s breakfast buffet. I had never seen anything like it before or since.”
I ask what was in the buffet, although I know the details alone will not sustain me. I want video to pore over so I can pause at specific frames, like a fast-food version of the Patterson–Gimlin Bigfoot footage. Robins says they served “scrambled eggs and pancakes and those hash brown tiles. I was a vegetarian at the time so no sausage or bacon, but those were there, too.”
McDonald’s isn’t the only chain with a buffet whose existence is hazy. Yum Brands, the overlord of fast-food holy trinity Taco Bell, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and Pizza Hut, is said to have had buffets at all three restaurants. I confirm nothing, however, when I reach out to the corporate authorities. On the KFC side, a spokesperson offers to look into “some historical information,” but doesn’t get back to me. My contact at Taco Bell tells me, “I’ll look into it. Certainly, nothing in existence today. I’ve never heard of it. Looks like there are a couple threads on Reddit.”
Reddit, of course, speculates a possible Mandela Effect — the phenomenon of a group of unrelated people remembering a different event than what actually occurred — in the existence of Taco Bell buffets. But I have a firmer lead in Payel Patel, a doctor who studied at Johns Hopkins, who tells me there was a Taco Bell Express in her dorm that was included in an all-you-can-eat meal plan option, though it only lasted one fleeting year. “You could order anything, like 15 nachos and 11 bean burritos,” she says, “and they would make it and give it to you, and you walked off without paying a cent.” A Johns Hopkins student newsletter published in 2001 corroborates the existence of the utopian all-you-can-eat Taco Bell, saying, “you can also gorge yourself on some good old Taco Bell tacos and burritos. Don’t forget, it’s all-you-can-eat. Just don’t eat too much; you don’t want to overload the John.”
There are some concrete examples of fast-food buffets that still exist today. When a Krystal Buffet opened in Alabama in 2019, it was met with “excitement and disbelief,” according to the press release. Former New Orleans resident Wilson Koewing told me of a Popeye’s buffet that locals “speak of as if it is a myth.” When I dig deeper, I come across a local paper, NOLA Weekend, which covers “New Orleans Food, things to do, culture, and lifestyle.” It touts the Popeye’s buffet like a carnival barker, as though it is simply too incredible to believe: “The Only Popeye’s Buffet in the World! It’s right next door in Lafayette! Yes, that’s right: a Popeyes buffet. HERE.”
Somehow, the KFC buffet is the most enduring of the fast-food buffets still in existence. And yet everyone I speak with feels compelled to walk me through the paths and roads leading to such an oasis, as if, again, it were the stuff of legends. There are landmarks and there are mirages, and the mirages need maps most of all.
To get to the KFC buffet in Key Largo, Tiffany Aleman must first take us through “a small island town with one traffic light and one major highway that runs through it. There are the seafood buffets and bait shops, which give way to newfangled Starbucks.”
The buffet adds the feel of a hospital cafeteria, the people dining look close to death or knowingly waiting to die.
New Jerseyan D.F. Jester leads us past the local seafood place “that looks like the midnight buffet on a cruise ship has been transported 50 miles inland and plunked inside the dining area of a 1980s Ramada outside of Newark.”
Descriptions of the food are about what I would expect of a KFC buffet. Laura Camerer remembers the food in her college town in Morehead, Kentucky, as “all fried solid as rocks sitting under heat lamps, kind of gray and gristly.” Jester adds, “for all intents and purposes, this is a KFC. It looks like one, but sadder, more clinical. The buffet adds the feel of a hospital cafeteria, the people dining look close to death or knowingly waiting to die.”
Then Jessie Lovett Allen messages me. “There is [a] KFC in my hometown, and it is magical without a hint of sketch.” I must know more. First, she takes me down the winding path: “the closest larger city is Kearney, which is 100 miles away and only has 35K people, and Kearney is where you’ll find the closest Target, Panera, or Taco Bell. But to the North, South, or West, you have to drive hundreds of miles before you find a larger city. I tell you all of this because the extreme isolation is what gives our restaurants, even fast-food ones, an outsized psychological importance to daily life.”
The KFC Jessie mentions is in North Platte, Nebraska, and has nearly five stars on Yelp, an accomplishment worthy of a monument for any fast-food restaurant. On the non-corporate Facebook page for KFC North Platte, one of the hundreds of followers of the page comments, “BEST KFC IN THE COUNTRY.”
Allen describes the place as though she is recounting a corner of heaven. “They have fried apple pies that seem to come through a wormhole from a 1987 McDonalds. Pudding: Hot. Good. Layered cold pudding desserts. This one rotates. It might be chocolate, banana, cookies and cream. It has a graham cracker base, pudding, and whipped topping. Standard Cold Salad bar: Lettuce, salad veggies, macaroni salads, JELL-O salads. Other meats: chicken fried steak patties. Fried chicken gizzards. White Gravy, Chicken Noodle Casserole, Green Bean Casserole, Cornbread, Corn on the Cob, Chicken Pot Pie Casserole. AND most all the standard stuff on the normal KFC menu, which is nice because you can pick out a variety of chicken types or just have a few tablespoons of a side dish.”
In the end, the all-you-can-eat dream didn’t last, if it ever even existed.
Then she adds that the buffet “is also available TO GO, but there are rules. You get a large Styrofoam clamshell, a small Styrofoam clamshell, and a cup. You have to be able to close the Styrofoam. You are instructed that only beverages can go in cups, and when I asked about this, an employee tells me that customers have tried to shove chicken into the drink cups in the past.”
In the end, the all-you-can-eat dream didn’t last, if it ever even existed. The chains folded. The senior citizens keeping Ponderosa in business have died. My own parents reversed course after their buffet bender, trading in sundae stations for cans of SlimFast. Fast-food buffets retreated into an ethereal space. McDonald’s grew up with adult sandwiches like the Arch Deluxe. Wendy’s went on a wild rebound with the Baconator. Pizza Hut ripped out its jukeboxes, changed its logo, went off to the fast-food wars, and ain’t been the same since. Taco Bell is undergoing some kind of midlife crisis, hemorrhaging its entire menu of potatoes, among other beloved items. At least the KFC in North Platte has done good, though the novel coronavirus could change things.
In the age of COVID-19, the fast-food buffet feels like more of a dream than ever. How positively whimsical it would be to stand shoulder to shoulder, hovering over sneeze guards, sharing soup ladles to scoop an odd assortment of pudding, three grapes, a heap of rotini pasta, and a drumstick onto a plate. Maybe we can reach this place again. But to find it, we must follow the landmarks, searching our memory as the map.
MM Carrigan is a Baltimore-area writer and weirdo who enjoys staring directly into the sun. Their work has appeared in Lit Hub, The Rumpus, and PopMatters. They are the editor of Taco Bell Quarterly . Tweets @thesurfingpizza .