Holder: Obama ‘ready to roll’ and help Dems

Former President Barack Obama is getting ready for a public return to politics, says his onetime attorney general, Eric Holder.
“It’s coming. He’s coming,” Holder told told reporters Tuesday, according to Politico, while discussing the new National Democratic Redistricting Committee (NDRC), which Obama asked him to chair last year.
“And he’s ready to roll. [Obama] will be a more visible part of the effort,” Holder added.
{mosads}Holder said he had discussed Obama fundraising for the NDRC and interacting with state lawmakers on the group’s behalf.
The former attorney general also predicted Republicans would lose state legislative seats in 2018’s midterm elections since they control the White House.
“I expect we’ll see that on steroids with President Trump,” he said before criticizing Jeff Sessions, Trump’s attorney general.
Holder also said the Department of Justice’s decision Monday not to challenge a controversial voting ID law in Texas is “disheartening.”
“It would be good to have the Justice Department on our side,” Holder said of the DOJ’s tenure under Sessions so far. “It doesn’t mean the argument can’t be made, and can’t be made well.”
“This is really a battle for our democracy,” he added. “The notion that people are denied their ability to cast a meaningful vote … is inconsistent with who we say we are, inconsistent with what we say our democracy is about.”
Trump’s DOJ will reportedly no longer argue that Texas intentionally sought to discriminate against minorities when it passed a law requiring voting identification.
Monday’s news ended six years of legal wrangling between the DOJ under Obama and Texas over the rule, which mandates voters must show certain forms of identification before casting a ballot.
Holder launched the NDRC in January with a focus on addressing issues with gerrymandering and creating new electoral maps to boost Democratic representation.
The NDRC plans on examining races in every election cycle through 2020, including gubernatorial, state legislative and ballot initiative campaigns.
The group hopes to produce electoral maps more favorable to Democrats by 2021, with the committee’s ultimate goal being to regain Democratic control of the House and Senate.
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