widely shared belief among conservatives that discriminating on the basis of race is always wrong and inconsistent with the dignity and worth of every person." In 2016, after the death of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, Leo raised funds to rename George Mason University's Law School the Antonin Scalia Law School. Leo worked with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to block President Barack Obama's replacement appointee, Merrick Garland and first contacted Gorsuch about the possibility of President Donald Trump appointing Gorsuch to the seat vacated by Scalia's death. Leo was heavily involved in the campaign to prevent Merrick Garland from filling the Supreme Court seat previously occupied by Antonin Scalia; the Judicial Crisis Network, linked to Leo, reported that it spent more than $7 million to prevent Garland's confirmation. Leo was connected to two dozen conservative nonprofit entities that raised over $250 million between 2014 and 2017. Donors who contributed to this network included Charles Koch and Rebekah Mercer. In 2017, legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin wrote that Leo was "responsible, to a considerable extent, for one third of the justices on the Supreme Court." In 2017, Kris Mauren of the Acton Institute said that Leo has played "a significant leadership role in the selection and successful confirmation of a third of the currently sitting justices on the Supreme Court." In 2019, The Washington Post wrote of Leo, "few people outside government have more influence over judicial appointments now than Leo." Leo described himself in 2019 as "a leader of the conservative legal movement." Leo has said of Mitch McConnell, who has broken records in seating Republican judicial nominees, that he was "the most consequential majority leader, certainly, in modern history." In January 2020, Leo announced that he would be leaving his position as vice president at the Federalist Society to start a new group, CRC Advisors. CRC Advisors is a conservative public affairs consulting firm modeled off of the liberal advisory group Arabella Advisors. CRC Advisors has lobbied against climate change mitigation policies. Leo remained in his role as co-chairman of the Federalist Society's board of directors. In October 2018, Leo appeared on an episode of Firing Line. When asked about a possible vacancy on the Supreme Court in a future election year, he replied by saying: "If a vacancy occurs in 2020, the vacancy needs to remain open until a president is elected and inaugurated and can pick.