#same as the last one this has not been vetted but reverse image search is clean and donation protected please help if you can!

[tape-deck]

I hope my message finds you well. I would be really grateful if you could help me by donating. I need a donation of twenty to twenty five euros to save me and my family from the war in Gaza and escape to a safe place. Please donate, share and repost 🍉🍉🇵🇸🍉

https://gofund.me/70501154

🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸

[call-me-casual]

Hi, you reblogged a scam from friedgardenlady, who is promoting a donation scam. They have had this scam running for a very long time, as they have used many default tumblr usernames while using the same stolen photo and name "Edina/Edinah." Their first name spelling hasn't even been consistent, as the header says "Edinah" meanwhile they were previously linking to a PayPal belonging to "Edina Sirikale." (Here's the post link https://www.tumblr.com/gaygirldoodles/758467054598832128/hi-im-still-having-high-blood-pressure-and?source=share) This PayPal has been associated with the trail of donation scams the person has been pulling, so they changed the PayPal to "Annah Musa." (List of "Edina's" various scam accounts: https://www.tumblr.com/jadelemonadee/755663533049561088/gloriousdestinycollectoredina-sirikale-is-running?source=share) Note: both surnames Sirikale and Musa are from east and west Africa respectively, not associated with the "mixed indigenous latine" heritage they claim to have.

It has been going on for months, meaning that their story of constantly needing "just $450" for insulin and always being "last to my pen" is dishonest. Since they apparently live in the U.S., they should know by now that the price of insulin was capped at $35/pen, meaning that even if they were unable to buy a single unit, a full box of pens (3) would cost $105 plus tax.

Please, before interacting with a donation request, check their blog. Do searches of the text username through the tumblr search engine or reverse image search their photos, as some users have compiled scam lists. (e.g. kyra45, anonthescambuster, azalea-alter) Many donation requests are honest, but there are plenty of repeat scammers who are taking advantage of people's sympathy and generosity.

If you are interested in supporting a family whose fundraiser has been through a vetting process and is in danger of being killed in Gaza, please replace your post from friedgardenlady with a post supporting @/nesmamomen. If you have any questions about how to determine the legitimacy of a donation ask, feel free to contact me through DMs or askbox.

Oh shit, I never even clocked it!

I’ve been trying to check if those who come into my ask box are legitimate by seeing if others who reblogged them say they’re legit, but this one must have slipped me by

It’s fucking disgraceful that people would take this as an opportunity to scam when there are real people out there who need help escaping

But thanks for letting me know!!

[inapixelbloom]

I've had several people messaging me asking

How do I tell it's a scam?

1. You've received more than one ask with similar content about donations or signal boosting for the same event in two days.

Scammers use current events to prey on good people.

They want to make you feel bad. If you don't pay, they want you to forward their message on to someone who will.

2. The GoFundMe page details are inconsistent with what the individual is saying.

The information is often duplicated, with minor edits, from other asks and GoFundMe pages you've been sent.

The location of the person organising the GoFundMe is not in the location the GoFundMe description claims them to be.

The images can be reverse searched and found on other websites. This one is more difficult now, as scammers have begun using AI to falsify the existence of real people.

3. Compare to other social networks.

Regarding this particular scam: Tumblr is not even in the top ten of social networks of Palestine, yet Facebook, Discord and Instagram users (social networks that are) have not noted an influx of people asking for donations from Palestine -- this is because those systems have automatically marked them as spam. As veteran Tumblr users know, Tumblr is not very good at filtering spam (remember the porn bots).

4. They say their donation has been "vetted", and link to another Tumblr blog or Google document.

Often these blogs or documents have been created by the same network of people. Read through the blog: they may have suspicious AI images, strange wording, or have been created in the last two months. They will have repeated content, reblogged themselves or similar blogs only, and may also ask for voluntary donations to "keep vetting".

There is no official vetting process for Tumblr blogs asking for donations.

5. The blog sending the ask has only been created recently and has only posted a handful of times, or has reblogged Tumblr accounts with similar names and content.

Tumblr accounts made solely with the purpose of asking for good will donations have been made to circumvent people turning off anonymous asks, so you are forced to see their request for money.

The best way to help is to look locally.

Your local community (be it your town, state, or territory) will have organisations or links to organisations that genuinely assist people displaced or impacted by tragic and ongoing events.

By donating to them, you keep up the effort, support local volunteers, and promote your stance to your governing body. In addition, if you do decide to donate to an organisation you may also get a tax benefit for your donation, forcing even more government funds into the places that need it.

Don't send money overseas through an individual's fundraiser. You don't know where it's going or who it's actually supporting.

Look familiar?

Bots and scammers comb through popular tags on Tumblr and mass-send asks with gofundmes or PayPal links.

These blogs often only have three posts to them, or have only ever reblogged content from blogs that have very similar names.

Praying on your empathy, they give a massive schpiel about who they are, how they're impacted, and how they desperately need your money or for you to reblog so others send them money to "help" them.

The money goes to scam artists anywhere but Gaza.

There is very few people actually "vetting" these blogs. There is no official vetting process. Do not trust Tumblr blogs or Google documents claiming to vet these posts.

If you want to help people in Gaza, please head to places like World Central Kitchen. This is an organisation that's actually helping people in Gaza by providing food and water with their Chefs for Gaza initiative.

[tundrakatiebean]

I’m getting a huge uptick in scam donation blogs messaging me asking to signal boost their post for their cat. So here’s a reminder that if a blog made in the last few days or few hours ago doesn’t follow you and you don’t follow them sends you an ask about reblogging their pinned post about donations it’s suspicious and probably the same scammer that’s been ripping off tumblr donos for the past few years. I’ve now gotten the exact same copy and pasted message from three different blogs about reblogging their pinned post for a different cat with different problems but all leading to the same PayPal account.

Things that make stuff suspicious to keep an eye out for:

Ask from a blog you have never interacted with and has never interacted with you before

Scrolling through the blog it has no posts from before a week ago (every single one I’ve seen takes about ten minutes max to scroll through)

Mentions that they can only take money through PayPal or cash app in the pinned post and aren’t going to set up a gofundme because they need the money immediately

Has pictures of a cat that have no people in them at all and a photo of a vet bill to make it look legit, but personal information on the bill (if visible) doesn’t match the PayPal information

The ask specifically says to not post it publicly or message them and their blog only has messages open - this is to minimize people publicly calling them out and letting people know about the scam

If you aren’t sure or feel up to it you can try Google reverse image searching the pictures they’re using to see if they’ve been used to ask for funds before. Often these photos have been skimmed and reused from other legitimate asks for help.

[rtilrtil]

A-kon Artist Alley: Art Theft & Staff Indifference

Last weekend i was at A-Kon, an anime convention in Ft. Worth, Texas. this was my 3rd year tabling at their artist alley and almost certainly my last. while i’m disappointed to say that, what took place over the weekend was unacceptable and disrespectful to every creator that bothered to show up there.

if you are a creator who has ever been to or have considered tabling at an artist alley, please consider reading. thank you.

before i continue, i’d like to say that i don’t blame any one single person for this, and i do believe that there were lots of people trying to do the right thing, but ultimately those who have the responsibility and the power to protect the artists failed to do so. i am making this post because i think it is important for as many artists as possible to know what happened at A-kon 2018 in the hopes that the staff is more aggressive about their own policies in the future - and if not, at least let people know to avoid a convention where important rules that keep thieves OUT of artist alley are ignored.

moving on to the events of the con:

on Thursday evening i set up my table next to an empty corner table. the tables are set up in an island format, so every island has 4 corners which get 2 tables instead of one to form a square shape. when i came in Friday morning - the first day of the con - the corner was still empty. 

about halfway through the day, a few people arrived to start setting up there. at first i thought they were late, but i later found out that they were waitlisted and were offered the table to replace whoever was originally supposed to be there. this will be important later.

a few hours later they ended up setting up this: 

now a setup like this is typically something you see in the vendor’s hall, where actual companies sell licensed products and other merchandise not made by the vendors.

this setup is highly uncommon for artist alley and most certainly violates both clauses of this A-kon artist alley display rule:

not to mention another rule stating you can only take up 4 feet of space behind you, where they had an entire table set up for their merchandise.

you can trust me when i say that at most artist alleys there is not only not enough space for this monstrosity to be set up to begin with, but would be asked by staff to be torn down almost immediately.

but that is really only the tip of the iceberg, because the red flags started going up way before they finished setting up.

although the pictures are a bit blurry, you may notice something strange about the products on display - they all look like they’re from different artists.

and indeed, many of them are - in fact, it seemed apparent as the weekend went on that none of the work for sale at this booth was made by the people running it.

now proxy selling at A-kon and many other cons is allowed, but this is what the rule says:

This is where my earlier point about this table being waitlisted comes in to play. I have to assume the people running it were local, because a staff member implied that they were basically notified during the weekend that a table had opened up and they could come in to take the their place.

When you sign up to most conventions, you are asked to post a portfolio link, and part of doing that is to vet the people coming in to make sure they have.. well, a portfolio. You want to make sure the artists coming in to artist alley will be selling their own work.

and while I have no idea what link they gave the staff, the only website they had on display was an Etsy page where you can order a custom made phone case.

No tumblr, no deviantart, no pixiv, no instagram, no website..nothing. So there’s only two possibilities here:

The vendors set up a fake portfolio site full of some or all of the art on display here claiming it to be their own, and A-kon staff believed it

A-kon didn’t look at their portfolio at all, and just took the $275 from them without bothering to vet them at all

Now some of you may be asking why I would assume they would lie about claiming some of the art to be their own. Here’s where things get a little weird.

On Saturday, I was able to find one of the artists who made the art on one of the pillows they were selling. They were an artist in a foreign country thousands of miles away not attending the convention. The artist told me that the vendors had permission to use their art, but the story the vendors told was a little..different.

When the staff confronted the vendors about concerns of stolen art, the vendors claimed that the artist was their sister, but that she was currently on vacation and couldn’t attend. In fact, they claimed that all the art they had for sale was made by their family.

now why would you tell a bizarre lie like this if you had permission from every single one of your proxy artists? the only answer is that they clearly didn’t, and needed a blanket excuse to cover all their bases.

to make matters worse, they also refused to give any contact information to the staff for all the artists in their “family” that were not attending the convention.

the staff didn’t really seem to care about this at all? i found that a little bizarre. this kind of behavior is beyond suspicious and i can’t imagine how naive you’d have to be to think nothing fishy was going on with sketchy “proxy” vendors who have no problem lying straight to your face. if your one job is to enforce the rules of Artist Alley and you can’t do it, why are you even there?

anyway, it gets worse.

take a look at some of these phone cases they had for sale.

what you’re seeing here is not just a mix of fanart from various artists, but also copyrighted photos of the K-pop group BTS and officially licensed art and stitches from anime like Himouto! Umaru-chan, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Free!, Diabolik Lovers, Ouran High School Host Club and probably many others I don’t recognize.

Just to point out a few easy-to-find examples: here’s a stitch from the anime Himouto! Umaru-chan, ripped directly from the anime and printed out in a phone case.

How about that Halloween-themed FMA:Brotherhood phone case in the first image? Well, just type “fullmetal alchemist halloween” into Google Images and it’s the first result!

This is a scan of official promotional art for FMA that there are hundreds of results for.

How about that one of Free! Iwatobi Swim Club? Turns out it’s official art from the Free! Eternal Summer 2015 Calendar - sold, created, owned and licensed by none other than Kyoto Animation, the studio that made it.

I can’t speak for all the fanart on display here as it’s very difficult to find just through google searching, but even if I could, I wouldn’t want to drag them in to this - because at least one of them was aware this was going on, even though the vendors lied about who they were. all I can tell you is that many attendees and artists in my island recognized many art pieces on their products and knew the artists were not present and not aware their art was being sold.

so while these vendors may have had permission to proxy sell some of the stuff they had, it’s fairly obvious that this wasn’t the case for everything, and they lied to the staff to try and cover it up.

as I said earlier, on Saturday I expressed my concerns about the items on sale to the Artist Alley control booth. I even went through the trouble of showing them how to find the art through reverse image search to prove that it was stolen while trying to run my table solo. funnily enough - as i was talking to a staffer at the control booth, an attendee was also complaining about the same booth to another staffer with pictures of art on pillows from artists he recognized who were not present at the convention. I thought that was funny.

at the end of the day, a number of staff appeared on-site to question the vendors about their merchandise. statements were taken from me and a few other artists nearby, and it looked like maybe something would be done about this blatant theft on display.

but as i returned to sell on Sunday, the booth was still up and fully operational. when i asked why, the A-kon AA staff replied via twitter that it was “pending review”. another artist was told that they traced all this art (lol) and that tracing was allowed, however this contradicts another one of their rules:

by this point, the con was almost over - the vendors had gotten away with it, despite numerous voices of concern coming from artists and attendees alike - and indeed, this booth was allowed to sell stolen art all weekend uninhibited to unknowing attendees.

as for what other creative excuses the vendors may have had to tell the staff, if the staff even cared or they were actually duped by their obvious lies i don’t know.

here’s the point: artist alley is supposed to be a space for individual artists to sell their own creations. and while some labor was at least spared on the phone cases, the centerpiece is clearly the art, and the art did not belong to these vendors. none of the art belonged to these vendors.

so let’s break down the facts about what took place here:

a corner table was sold to waitlisted vendors in artist alley at a-kon (this means a-kon made double their money on this corner table..really makes you think 🤔 🤔 🤔 )

the vendors’ products were not vetted as the staff was obviously unaware of what was being sold

the vendors broke multiple display rules and nothing was done

the vendors lied to staffers and were caught lying and nothing was done

the vendors were selling stolen art and nothing was done

the vendors refused to give out contact information they were supposed to have for the artists they were proxying and nothing was done

the a-kon staff either does not take their own rules seriously, enforce them in any way, or are incompetent or otherwise incapable of doing so

at this point, the artist alley at A-Kon may as well be a vendor space where greasy conmen and thieves can just slap art on whatever and make a killing, because that is how i felt after watching what was essentially a dog and pony show of A-Kon staff pussyfooting around an issue that should’ve been dealt with swiftly and sternly.

this shit shouldn’t fly and while the vendors already got off scot-free, i can only hope that shedding light on this will help with stopping this issue from spreading, because you can bet that if other art thieves catch wind of the fact that A-Kon staff don’t give a shit about enforcing their own rules that they’ll tag along for the free ride.

If you’d like to read the A-Kon artist alley rules for yourself, i copied them from the email and put them in this pastebin.

if you’ve read this far, thank you for reading, and if you know anyone who participates in artist alleys in any fashion, please share it with them if you found this concerning.

[photomaniacs]

Fake War Photographer Gets Exposed After Fooling the World http://ift.tt/2iUA5fK

Right now, a conflict photographer named Eduardo Martins is supposedly driving around in a van somewhere in the Australian outback. And you probably won’t see any new work from him anytime soon: he’s in hiding after pulling off one of the craziest cons in the history of photojournalism.

Photos of Martins from his social media accounts.

Martins is a blond and handsome 32-year-old documentary photographer from Brazil who’s also an avid surfer in his free time. He won a battle with childhood leukemia while growing up, and eventually landed a mid-level position working for the United Nations. Traveling to locations filled with death and despair gave him the opportunity to take compelling photos, which he published on his Instagram account. Some of his photos were also delivered to renowned photo agencies, including NurPhoto, for distribution.

A screenshot of Martins’ Instagram page when it still had less than 60,000 followers. Image by SBS.

His presence on Instagram not only gave him a massive fan base of over 120,000 followers, but it led to his work being published around the world. From smaller publications such as SouthFront to to prestigious publications like the The Wall Street Journal, Le Monde, and The Telegraph, articles were illustrated with what everyone thought was Martins’ own work.

It didn’t take long for the media to become interested in Martins himself. In October 2016, Recount Magazine published a interview with him.

The Brazilian edition of VICE soon followed suit with an extensive photo essay titled “On the front with the Peshmerga.”

In early July, BBC Brazil featured Martins’ work as well.

And if it weren’t for some mistakes by Martins and an attentive BBC journalist named Natasha Ribeiro, Martins’ amazing life and photography career would likely still be enjoying its meteoric rise. But Ribeiro became suspicious of Martins after learning about his life and work, and she became even more suspicious when she dug deeper and couldn’t find a single person who had ever met him.

Not a single Brazilian journalist in Iraq, where Martins had supposedly been covering extensively. Not any of the authorities who would have had dealings with Martins. Not any members of the NGOs he said he was a part of.

Martins had given a story and photos to VICE about the battle in Peshmerga, but two other Brazilian correspondents who were there at the same time said they had never met this newly famous photographer — something that is nearly impossible given how tight-knit the community of conflict journalists is.

Martins had told BBC Brazil through a WhatsApp chat that he was working for the United Nations, saying: “I am a humanitarian (volunteer) in the United Nations field and I work in the organization of refugee camps.” But an investigation revealed that there was no record of Martins having ever worked for the UN Refugee Agency, which the organization’s press chief, Adrian Edwards, confirmed to the BBC.

The investigation into Martins soon revealed other oddities, BBC Brazil reports. Martins had developed relationships with at least 6 young, beautiful, and successful women through social networks, and then used each one to relay information to journalists. BBC Brazil found that none of the girlfriends had ever met Martins in real life.

Recently, the well-known DOC Galeria in São Paulo was planning to exhibit Martins’ work in an exhibition about Brazilian photographers in conflict zones. Veteran photographer and DOC Galeria member Fernando Costa Netto got in touch with Martins, who said he was in Iraq.

“I was organizing an exhibition of photos of Brazilians in a conflict area and I was in contact with him. Now he disappeared for more than a week,” Netto tells BBC Brazil. “I thought he had been kidnapped by the Islamic State, so I contacted his Brazilian colleagues in Iraq. When we started this search movement for him, he reappeared saying he had a small problem with his Internet connection.”

After learning of the BBC’s suspicions and the ongoing investigation, Netto made Martins aware that there were questions surrounding the authenticity of his work. Martins immediately deleted his Instagram account and sent one last WhatsApp message from a since deactivated number:

“I’m in Australia, I made the decision to spend a year in a van running the world. I’ll cut everything, including internet, [and also] the IG (Instagram). Thanks, I’ll delete the zap here, stay with God.”

And just like that, the true identity of the young man who claimed to be a worldwide conflict photographer may now never be discovered.

BBC Brazil just published the results of its investigation, resulting in news and photo editors around the world scrambling to pull photos taken by this faux photographer.

“Faced with the suspicions and the risk of copyright infringement, the original content has been taken off the air,” BBC Brazil writes. “We apologize to our readers for their mistake. The case will strengthen our verification procedures.”

Today in photojournalism scandals— a widely published photog who not only stole images, but may not exist at all https://t.co/PFH73K5ZOL

— John Beck (@JM_Beck) September 2, 2017

At least some of Martins work was stolen from American photographer Daniel C. Britt. Martins not only lifted the photos and republished them as his own, but he went to great lengths to alter the images to make them hard to identify through reverse image searches — many of the images were cropped and mirrored.

A comparison of photos supposedly by Martins (left) and by Britt (right). Image by SBS.

A photo by Daniel C. Britt being sold for $575 on Getty Images by Eduardo Martins.

One thing that helped Martins weave his fictitious career was the use of prior publications as references for new publications. He placed not only placed tear sheets from prestigious publications such as the Wall Street Journal on social media, but he mailed them to editors when he pitched stories. This helped reduce suspicions, because surely large and prestigious news outlets would vet journalists prior to publishing stories, right?

Of course they did… so why go through the effort of doing it yourself?

About the author: Jan A. Nicolas is an observer and reporter in the photography industry. You can reach Nicolas here.

Go to Source Author: Jan A. Nicolas If you’d like us to remove any content please send us a message here CHECK OUT THE TOP SELLING CAMERAS!

The post Fake War Photographer Gets Exposed After Fooling the World appeared first on CameraFreaks.

September 04, 2017 at 09:01PM

[theconservativebrief]

As soon as Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement after 31 years on the Supreme Court, picking his replacement immediately became one of Donald Trump’s most important acts as president. Kennedy is a center-right figure who is solidly conservative on most business and First Amendment cases but strongly pro-gay rights and cautiously supportive of reproductive rights. His replacement is sure to be a more doctrinaire conservative along the lines of Neil Gorsuch, Trump’s first pick for the Court.

Unusually, Trump has been releasing shortlists of candidates he’d consider for the Court ever since the presidential campaign. His current list, issued in November 2017 in the aftermath of Gorsuch’s appointment, has 25 names. It’s largely a list of solidly conservative options who’d be on most Republican nominees’ shortlists for the Court.

Not all 25 are likely to make it very far in Trump’s vetting. Prediction markets can help us winnow down the list. The following nine people are listed on PredictIt as having the best odds of being tapped by Trump to replace the departing Kennedy. They are listed according to their ranking as of Wednesday at 9 pm Eastern.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Current position: Federal appellate judge (DC Circuit Court of Appeals)

Why Trump picked him: Brett Kavanaugh has about as long and high-profile a record in Republican legal circles as anyone on this list. A former clerk to Anthony Kennedy, as well as appellate judges Alex Kozinski and Walter Stapleton, he represented Cuban child Elian Gonzalez pro bono during the conservative battle to keep him from returning to Cuba, and was one of the George W. Bush campaign’s lawyers in the Florida recount.

Before that, though, Kavanaugh was a protegé of Kenneth Starr, whom he served both in the solicitor general’s office under George H.W. Bush and as independent counsel during the investigation into the Clinton family’s Whitewater real estate deal. He was a principal author of the Starr Report, which detailed Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky and misrepresentations of that affair in sworn testimony.

“As a prosecutor, Kavanaugh set a bracing literary standard (‘On all nine of those occasions, the President fondled and kissed her bare breasts…’),” the New Yorker’s Jeffrey Toobin recalled in 2012, “but his work as a judge may be even more startling.” Toobin cites Kavanaugh’s opinion on the DC Circuit when considering a constitutional challenge to the Affordable Care Act:

[A]ccording to Kavanaugh, even if the Supreme Court upholds the law this spring, a President Santorum, say, could refuse to enforce ACA because he “deems” the law unconstitutional. That, to put the matter plainly, is not how it works. Courts, not Presidents, “deem” laws unconstitutional, or uphold them. “It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is,” Chief Justice John Marshall wrote in Marbury v. Madison, in 1803, and that observation, and that case, have served as bedrocks of American constitutional law ever since. Kavanaugh, in his decision, wasn’t interpreting the Constitution; he was pandering to the base.

It’s hardly his only stridently conservative opinion on the DC Circuit. In a profile for Ozy, Daniel Malloy notes, “Kavanaugh this year declared that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is unconstitutional, given the agency’s independence and unitary structure, and he has voted repeatedly to slap back aggressive regulations from Barack Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency.”

At the same time, Kavanaugh knows how to do the DC song and dance of pretending not to believe what he clearly believes on key questions of jurisprudence. He told senators during his confirmation hearings that he’d respect precedent on abortion and declined to share his views on Roe v. Wade. But there’s little doubt that he’d be a doctrinaire conservative on the Supreme Court, and one with a strong belief in presidential power, similar to Samuel Alito.

C-SPAN

Current position: Federal appellate judge (Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals)

Why Trump picked her: Amy Coney Barrett, only 46, is relatively new to the bench; her first appointment came from Trump in 2017. She only got her commission last November. But Clarence Thomas was barely on the circuit court for a year when he was elevated to the Supreme Court, and there’s no reason Barrett couldn’t follow in his footsteps.

A clerk to conservative appellate Judge Laurence Silberman as well as Antonin Scalia, and a longtime professor at her alma mater Notre Dame Law School, Barrett’s confirmation hearings earned headlines due to a controversial line of questioning from Democratic Sens. Dick Durbin (IL) and Dianne Feinstein (CA), who asked her repeatedly about her Catholic faith. Durbin asked, “Do you consider yourself an orthodox Catholic?” while Feinstein commented, “When you read your speeches, the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you.”

Liberal groups, while not defending the precise questioning, highlighted some of her writing on questions of Catholic faith and constitutional interpretation as concerning, noting a piece she co-authored that rejected Justice William Brennan’s argument that Catholic judges should always hold the Constitution as more important than their religious faith. In her confirmation hearing for the Seventh Circuit, Barrett asserted that these were her co-author’s views, not her own.

Barrett also argued that the birth control benefit in the Affordable Care Act impinges on religious liberty, argues that cases like Roe v. Wade might not need to stand as precedents if future courts judge them to be wrongly decided, and has explicitly asserted that the “original public meaning” of the Constitution must be upheld, even though that “adherence to originalism arguably requires, for example, the dismantling of the administrative state, the invalidation of paper money, and the reversal of Brown v. Board of Education.”

Barrett was ultimately confirmed with only three Democrats (Joe Manchin, Joe Donnelly, and Tim Kaine) voting in favor. But an elevation to the Supreme Court would force a much larger dispute about what, exactly, she believes the original meaning of the Constitution requires.

Roy Engelbrecht

Current position: Federal appellate judge (Third Circuit Court of Appeals)

Why Trump picked him: Donald Trump’s been known to say that “the police in our country do not get respect.” That is assuredly not Thomas Hardiman’s fault.

On the Third Circuit, Hardiman has consistently sided with law enforcement against defendants and inmates. He ruled that a policy of strip-searching jail inmates didn’t violate the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable search (an opinion the Supreme Court upheld). He’s also written, in dissent, that the First Amendment does not give citizens the right to tape police — something with which every state in the union currently disagrees.

Hardiman’s pre-judicial career is full of the kinds of things liberals and Democrats don’t like: He donated to Republican candidates before being appointed to the bench (something that is neither illegal nor, to most legal experts, a big deal), and he represented plenty of political clients and political cases while he was in private practice. Most of this is insignificant: Just like it’s a defense lawyer’s job to defend murderers, it’s a civil lawyer’s job to defend companies accused of discrimination.

But it’s ironic that one of Hardiman’s most high-profile cases was a housing discrimination suit against a company accused of conspiring to keep out low-income clients — given that the president who might appoint him to the Supreme Court, early in his own career, settled a housing discrimination suit of his own against the federal government.

Perhaps most relevant to Hardiman’s chances, though, is that he was reportedly Trump’s second choice after Neil Gorsuch to replace Antonin Scalia. Despite his conservative record, grassroots right-wing activists freaked out when his name was floated, arguing he could be a stealth liberal (the evidence for this was shockingly weak). Perhaps, then, second time’s the charm?

AP Photo/Ed Reinke

Current position: Federal appellate judge (Sixth Circuit)

Why Trump picked him: Thapar was a US attorney turned district court judge appointed by George W. Bush when Trump first floated him as a Supreme Court candidate in September 2016. But district court judges are almost never elevated directly to the Supreme Court (the last person to make that jump was Edward Terry Sanford in 1923), and so nominating him for a circuit court was a natural stepping stone for an eventual Thapar Supreme Court bid.

Brian Fitzpatrick of Vanderbilt Law, who researches federal courts, told Bloomberg BNA that Thapar was ”very Scalia-like and Thomas-like” in his jurisprudence. The liberal group Demand Justice has, accordingly, already mobilized to stop his prospective nomination. They highlight a 2016 decision in which he ruled that a Kentucky state prohibition on political contributions by judges violated the First Amendment; his judgment was later overturned by the Sixth Circuit, which argued the restriction furthered a “compelling interest in preventing the appearance that judicial candidates are no different from other elected officials when it comes to quid pro quo politics.”

The left-wing Alliance for Justice highlights five other decisions sure to come up should Thapar be nominated, including one where he ruled that a male employee alleging a male coworker sexually harassed him had to provide “credible evidence that the harasser was homosexual,” and another where he imposed harsh sentences on antiwar activists, including a nun, for an anti-nuclear protest that he alleged threatened national security (their convictions were later overturned).

C-SPAN

Current position: Federal appellate judge (Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals)

Why Trump picked him: Raymond Kethledge appears to be the kind of judge who very much enjoys telling people why they’re wrong.

In 2014, he wrote an opinion upholding the use of credit checks to screen potential employees at Kaplan, a for-profit education firm, defending the company from an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) lawsuit. The opinion noted, pointedly, that use of credit checks was permitted by the EEOC’s own hiring guidelines — an act of gotcha jiujitsu that was praised by the Wall Street Journal. More recently, in a case involving the IRS’s alleged persecution of conservative political groups, Kethledge forcefully ordered the agency to turn over information — and rejected the tactic it had tried to use in its defense as an “extraordinary remedy” not appropriate for a suit like this.

But if you’re picturing Kethledge as a mini Scalia, all flashy rhetoric and black-and-white conservative principle, you’re off the mark. He was a Senate Judiciary Committee staffer under Michigan Republican Spencer Abraham in the 1990s, but Abraham, while a founder of the Federalist Society, was also a pro-immigration Arab American who lost (to Debbie Stabenow) after being attacked as a terrorist sympathizer. And during his confirmation hearings before the committee in 2003, he emphasized his pro bono work with criminal defendants and low-income residents trying to keep their homes.

A 2013 Kethledge opinion, which is already being cited outside his home circuit, says “there are good reasons not to call an opponent’s argument ‘ridiculous’” — not the least of which, he elaborates, is that you might be wrong. It’s hard to imagine hearing that sentiment from Scalia — or from the president now offering to appoint Kethledge to the highest court in the land.

Susan Walsh/Pool via Getty

Current position: Federal appellate judge (Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals)

Why Trump picked her: Judicial conservatives have historically believed in a restrained executive. Donald Trump very much does not.

Then again, neither did President George W. Bush. So Trump could do worse than to appoint someone who worked in the Office of Legal Counsel during Bush’s administration — and wrote one of the legal memos on which he based his administration’s activities in the early days of the war on terror.

Joan Larsen was a deputy assistant US attorney general from 2002 to 2003. While that’s the period during which the Office of Legal Counsel (led by John Yoo) churned out memos authorizing waterboarding and other forms of torture, Larsen claims she didn’t have the security clearance to know anything about those. She did, however, write a memo about indefinite detention — one that still hasn’t been released to the American Civil Liberties Union, despite a lawsuit.

Larsen has some experience in the judicial branch: She was a clerk for Antonin Scalia himself before going to the executive branch. (After his death, she wrote a eulogy for the New York Times in which she said her proudest moment was persuading him “that a criminal defendant should win a case that none of the justices originally thought he should win.”) She was appointed by Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) to the state’s Supreme Court in 2015. Between the two, she taught constitutional and criminal law at the University of Michigan and served as counsel to the dean.

Her tenure in the Bush White House didn’t sink Trump’s nomination of her to Sixth Circuit in 2017, to which she was confirmed by a 60 to 38 vote (with both Michigan Democrats voting yes). But it will be newly relevant if she is nominated to replace Kennedy.

Justice Britt Grant

Current position: State Supreme Court justice (Georgia)

Why Trump picked her: Grant, 40, was appointed to the Georgia Supreme Court in 2017 by Republican Governor Nathan Deal. She’s since been offered a promotion of sorts: Trump tapped her as a judge for the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. She faced a relatively uneventful Judiciary Committee hearing in May — though her confirmation is currently caught up in Sen. Jeff Flake’s (R-AZ) fight on tariffs.

Grant is one of the younger of Trump’s potential nominees, but, based on her resume, she’s a reliably conservative, Federalist Society card-carrying justice. She worked in the George W. Bush White House on the Domestic Policy Counsel, did a stint at the white-shoe Kirkland & Ellis LLP as an associate, and clerked for Kavanaugh.

Her judicial resume is a bit thin for Supreme Court territory, though the bulk of her litigation experience comes from her time as Georgia’s solicitor general from 2015 to 2017, and before that, her work as the counsel for legal policy in the Office of the Georgia Attorney General. Liberal groups have objected to Grant for her work on amicus briefs in politically charged Supreme Court cases, including Shelby County v. Holder, regarding the Voting Rights Act, which Grant said she “edited and reviewed.”

Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Current position: United States Senator (Utah)

Why Trump picked him: It might not seem surprising that Donald Trump would put the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution on his Supreme Court long list. But back in 2016, when Donald Trump put out the first edition of the judge list, Lee was very much not on it.

Lee, stung by Trump’s treatment of his close friend Ted Cruz during the Republican primary, went on rants against Trump during the presidential campaign — and even called for Trump to stand aside after the Access Hollywood tape was released.

After all that, it’s somewhat surprising that Trump is willing to give Lee the time of day, much less consider him for a Court spot. But Lee, like most congressional Republicans, has tamped down his criticism substantially since Trump became president. He’s criticized Trump’s comments after Charlottesville and about “shithole countries,” but praised, for the most part, the president’s actions.

Trump isn’t just nominating Lee for partisan reasons, either. After all, the man wrote a book about the Constitution. Lee is more comfortable in conservative legal circles than most senators, and frames his opposition to progressive legislation or regulation in terms of the constitutional commitment to federalism and a limited national government.

Lee’s constitutionalism has given him something of a civil-libertarian streak: he’s cautiously supportive of sentencing reform; he has attacked both Obama and Trump for engaging in military action without authorization; and his book attacks the National Security Agency’s use of widespread surveillance. That isn’t likely to jibe with a president who doesn’t appear to appreciate any limitations to his power.

But he has plenty of admirers among Washington conservatives. As Vox’s Jane Coaston wrote, “Conservatives reacting to Wednesday’s announcement of Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement already have a popular choice for his replacement: Sen. Mike Lee.”

Alabama Attorney General’s Office/Getty Images

Current position: Federal appellate judge (Eleventh Circuit)

Why Trump picked him: Pryor has been on Trump’s shortlist since a GOP primary debate in February 2016, where he came up as an example of the kind of justice Trump would like to appoint. Pryor, 54, has among the highest profiles of the judges on this list — due to his starring role in the 2005 showdown between President Bush and Senate Democrats over judicial appointments.

He was initially nominated in 2003 and faced fierce opposition for his unusually strident and blunt recitation of conservative dogma. Asked about a statement he made calling Roe v. Wade “the worst abomination in the history of constitutional law,” Pryor said, “I stand by that comment. I believe that not only is [Roe] unsupported by the text and structure of the Constitution, but it has led to a morally wrong result. It has led to the slaughter of millions of innocent unborn children.”

He also, as attorney general of Alabama, wrote an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to uphold laws banning sodomy and, in the words of Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI), “equated private, consensual sexual activity between homosexuals to prostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, incest and pedophilia.” He also purposely rescheduled a family trip to Disney World to avoid attending during “Gay Day,” lest his children see gay people enjoying theme park rides.

Pryor eventually got a recess appointment to the 11th Circuit in February 2004, and was finally officially confirmed in 2005 as part of the “Gang of 14” compromise. In his position he’s mostly been a doctrinaire conservative, the most notable exception being a ruling arguing that discrimination against trans people violates the Equal Protection Clause.

Original Source -> A guide to the 9 likeliest picks to replace Anthony Kennedy

via The Conservative Brief