And, This Is A Department Of Justice Under Attack With Attorney General Eric Holder

You never got a call from the President of the United States saying, Mr.

Attorney General, I want you to do X, Y, and Z.

That never happened.

That never happened.

Every generation of Americans is ultimately called upon to defend democracy.

It really challenges who we say we are as the United States of America.

This is Gavin Newsom.

And this is Eric Holder.

Eric Holder in his bunker somewhere at an undisclosed location.

Undisclosed location, exactly.

But yeah, I joke about that, but I mean, Mr.

Attorney General, sir,

American citizen,

civic leader, how are you feeling about the world we're living in?

I mean, we're on the eve of another government shutdown, which is becoming more and more common.

But this one potentially could be very, very different and consequential compared to the prior ones.

You're seeing all the weaponization of grievance across the spectrum, DOJ and elsewhere.

We'll get to gerrymandering and the incredible work you've been doing since 2017.

But But honestly, give me a temperature check.

How are you feeling about things and where we are at this moment in this country?

I got to tell you,

I'm extremely worried.

And if you had asked me that same question, you know, a year or so ago, even with the possibility of a Trump election, I would not have thought that we'd be in the place that we are now.

I mean, when you look at attacks on the First Amendment, you know, Jimmy Kimmel,

you look at the attacks on science, the attacks on universities,

you know, attacks on healthcare.

I mean, there are a whole range of things that worry me a great deal.

The politicization of the Justice Department, as evidenced by, you know, the Jim Comey, in a whole bunch of ways, but I mean the Jim Comey indictment.

I think our sense of who we are as a nation is being challenged.

And I think people need to understand that.

And I think it's been great that your voice has been a consistent one.

And I'm not just saying this.

You know, you are well before Trump's election.

You've been out there and kind of ringing the bell.

And I think people are finally, finally,

starting to hear it.

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And I appreciate that.

And I also appreciate your sentiment because I think so many people listening, regardless of their political stripes, I think must be feeling a similar sentiment about the world we're living in.

What, I mean,

you, I imagine of all people, because you've seen firsthand, you've been on the inside, you've worked so closely with presidents, and you've maintained a deep engagement in this country.

You must anticipated Trump 2.0 in many respects to

represent something, but did you expect it to represent

what it has?

Meaning, is this fire and fury?

Is this flooding the zone?

Is this rust void?

Is this deeper, broader, more impactful than you had anticipated even eight, nine months ago?

Yeah, I think it is.

You know, I think it's both deeper and broader,

and it has come at a more rapid pace than I think I might have expected.

You know, just the thing that I guess I'm most familiar with, you look at the Justice Department.

I mean, the notion that a president, not an attorney general, or career people at the Justice Department, make a determination as to who should be indicted.

And that's what the Jim Comey indictment is all about.

I mean, you know, you had a Trump appointee as a U.S.

attorney who decided that there was not a case there, so they fired him, bring in an insurance lawyer who has never tried a criminal case, and she does the president's bidding and brings a case that barely got through a grand jury.

You know, that notion that a president's making these kinds of determinations, that an attorney general sees the Justice Department not as the lawyers for the people, but as lawyers for the president.

These are all the kinds of things that I would not have expected

and worry me a great deal.

This really challenges, it really challenges who we say we are as the United States of America.

Eric, I'm curious, you know, a lot of people on the other side would hear that and say, come on.

You know, this is the way it's always been.

Now it's perhaps a little bit more in the open.

Fair is fair.

It's tit for tat.

We saw the weaponization coming from the last administration.

They would go back even to prior administrations.

But maybe you could, without breaking confidence, sort of pull us in.

I mean,

you never got a call from the President of the United States saying, Mr.

Attorney General, I want you to do X, Y, and Z.

That never happened?

That never happened.

We had what's called a contacts policy that describes the people in the White House who can talk to which people in the Justice Department.

And it was really like two on either side.

You know, I had interactions with President Obama.

He never, ever, ever raised with me how he thought the Justice Department should conduct itself in a particular matter.

Now, on national security matters, that's a different deal.

There, I was part of the national security team, and I was just one of many people sitting in the situation room trying to figure out what is it we could do with regard to drone strikes.

But when it came to the criminal law, the enforcement of the antitrust laws, filing civil suits, civil rights

protections, I never, ever heard from the president on that.

Now, let me tell you just a really quick story.

I made the determination not to defend the Defense of Marriage Act, DOMA.

Internal Justice Department determination.

I say we're not going to do it.

I was at a Super Bowl party at the White House.

We were going to announce this to the world, I guess, the following Tuesday, Wednesday, and I told President Obama, look, I've made the determination we're not going to defend DOMA.

And I wanted him to know so that he wouldn't read about it in the newspaper.

And he said to me, this is at the White House, he said, boy, I'm glad you've made that decision because that's where I wanted to go, but I didn't think it was appropriate for me to share with you what you should do.

And that's the truth.

And so that gives you a sense of how Barack Obama and Eric Holder thought the Justice Department should interact with the White House.

Fundamentally different than the way Pam Bondi and Donald Trump think the two institutions should be interacting.

And when it comes to line staff, when it comes to this career staff that you're frustrated with, you're governing, you're managing, they're not the political staff, they're the folks that are sort of the clay layer that have been there, and they'll be there well beyond your tenure in your respective roles.

I mean, how did you manage those disagreements?

I mean, obviously, the president, as you noted, fired someone he disagreed with and then installed his own person, quite literally his personal attorney, to do his bidding.

But

what's the tradition in terms of how you manage those disagreements in terms of moving or operating in a way that at least is directionally along the lines that you wanted to achieve or proceed or believe was the right yeah I mean you know I was the head of the Justice Department and so I had to make ultimate calls.

You know I started my career as a line lawyer in a thing called a public integrity section that looks at official corruption cases that the Trump administration has just decimated.

There used to be about 30 lawyers there.

I think there are about four there now.

They don't care about official corruption.

And we used to say, when I was a line lawyer for 12 years, we used to call the political appointees tourists.

We said, you know, they come and go, but we're the people who stay.

And so when I

came back to the Justice Department as Attorney General, I always wanted to interact with the career folks, but everybody understood that if there was a disagreement, I, as the Attorney General, had the final say.

And within the Justice Department, you know, that's fine.

None of the career people ever ever thought that the president had the final say on what the Justice Department was going to do.

Post-Watergate, the independence of the Justice Department is something that every administration, I think, valued.

And that, you know, to the consternation sometimes of the people in the White House.

When I decided that we were going to look back at how the Bush administration had conducted itself with regard to these enhanced interrogation techniques, a lot of people I knew in the White House didn't want me to do that, and yet I had the independence, the ability to do it.

When you reflect on what happened to Comey,

reflect perhaps under different circumstances what happened to Bolton

in relationship to

the quote-unquote raid on his home.

I mean,

what's most alarming about those instances?

I mean, what was your sort of internal conversation, not only with yourself, but with others around you as it relates to those actions by this administration?

Well, I I mean, the Comey case is one that we can pretty much understand based on the reporting that the media has done, and there's no case there.

I mean, here's the deal: put a pin in this.

Jim Comey is not going to be convicted.

I mean, the case may not get to trial.

The case may get dismissed by the judge after the government presents his case.

If it gets to a jury, there's no way he's going to get convicted.

So, you know, put a pin in that.

Replay this, you know, at some point.

And so there's that component.

And then you have the president in that

truth social post where he says kind of dear Pam

and basically is telling her to go after

Jim Comey, Adam Schiff, Letitia James, and all of these things.

I mean, no case, direction by the president to bring the case nevertheless, and then the obese of the people in the Justice Department to do that, which the President wanted to do.

Again, Republican as well as Democratic administrations, this just doesn't happen.

I mean, this is just not normal, folks.

We've got to understand that.

This goes, this is inconsistent with the way in which DOJs, justice departments, and attorneys general have conducted themselves.

With regard to line employees, I mean, there's two trains of thought.

People saying people should stand up on principle, resign.

People should sort of stick it out because if their voice and their eyes are not there, my gosh, the folks that come behind them could really lock in and institutionalize this aberrant behavior, this normalization of deviancy.

Where are you on that in terms of the conversations I'm sure you've had with some of those career staff, people that you've developed relationships with over time?

Yeah, it's a really good question.

And one of the things, my position, you know, everybody's got to make their own determination.

When I've been asked that by people, I say, stay around, stick around.

Because the reality is the people who they'll pick to succeed you will not be nearly as idealistic, will not adhere to the traditions of the Justice Department.

And so I'd say, look, you stick around.

And if they fire you, you know, there's not much I suppose that you can do.

You'll have

employment appellate rights and you go to court to try to get your job back.

And that effort is even enhanced by having them fire you as opposed to resigning.

And so I think

make them push you out as opposed to you deciding that you want to resign.

I appreciate that perspective.

Could not agree more.

I think, I mean, I appreciate the principle stand of saying I can't be part of an administration that's party to this kind of injustice, but at the same time, the consequences of walking away.

Let me ask you, as it relates to walking away, it seems that we have a completely supine Congress,

that there's no system of checks and balances,

that the majority, Speaker Johnson, has completely abdicated any oversight.

As it relates to that, and it relates to this moment as we're talking, we're just quite literally hours away from a midnight deadline on that government shutdown.

I mean, vis-a-vis that, having experienced a little of that, understanding what it means, what it doesn't mean, a government shutdown, where are you in terms of where the Democratic Party should be, where the leadership of the Democratic Party should position themselves at this moment?

Is Jeffries and Schumer right

to now sort of stand firm on protecting Obamacare and its subsidies, or else, or should we right now be

outside knocking on the Oval Office saying, Mr.

President, we still want to negotiate?

No, I mean, I think, yeah, we still want to negotiate, but these are, this is a principled stand that we're taking.

We want to make sure that Medicaid cuts that were in that big, stupid bill are not put into effect, that the Obamacare subsidies, you know, will continue, and so health care premiums will not rise.

No, you've got to stand firm and say, this is who we are.

This is who we are as Democrats.

We stand with the people, with the interests of the people, not with the special interests.

And we're not going to allow you to ram through things that are going to harm the American people.

You know, make health care,

put healthcare out of reach of substantial numbers of people to folks who qualify for Medicaid to make it more difficult for them to get health care.

And this is a basic kind of

governmental thing.

And I think the position that they have taken is both principled, it's consistent, again, with who we say we are as Democrats, and they got to hold firm.

They just got to hold firm.

Where do you play it out?

Where do you, I mean, you know, this thing, the last government shut down under Trump was among the longest that we've experienced.

The consequences, they felt more intense.

We colored them in in the short run.

Then they sort of unpacked from a GDP perspective and getting people back their paychecks, et cetera.

What's your gut in terms of how this plays out?

I think my gut is that if this goes longer than a week, it's going to be long.

I get the feeling that

this could end up being

a really substantial shutdown.

And my hope is that Russ vote and his people don't use this as an excuse to fire even more federal employees.

That adds another dimension to this,

to use what is a policy difference to deny people their right to work and

further harm the government.

But my sense is that

in Trump 2, where he's kind of Donald Trump unbound and surrounded by the zealots who make up certainly the White House staff and people in the cabinet, that this is something that could go, I think, for an extended period of time.

But

I understand that.

I still think that Democrats have got to hold firm to the positions that we have taken.

This is, you know, we're standing up and we're pushing back.

And I think that's what the American people, you know, want to see.

I appreciate that.

What, I mean, what's your over-under?

I mean, people, if you game this thing out and we've seen it, it's a appreciate the reference, the OMB director, Russ Vogt, in terms of what he's done.

And for those that are not familiar, that's the architect of Project 2025.

He was the OMB director.

People forget in the first Trump administration, but he learned his lessons and now is more unbound and obviously more

surgical in terms of what he's trying to achieve.

And there's a lot of speculation about serious and significant cuts that he's prepared to make in pretty short order, particularly to the workforce.

But also in that respect, is a tendency now, it seems to me, in the Senate, particularly with Leader Thune,

we talk about nuclear options, we talk about the filibuster.

Is there a scenario where he moves forward?

if there's stubbornness and we no longer have that 60 vote threshold on appropriations.

You know, it's entirely possible.

I mean, if they get that directive from the White House, given the track record of Congress in this administration, it wouldn't surprise me if they made the determination that, all right, we'll just blow up the filibuster altogether and then pass this on,

you know, pass,

put into place, you know, what the president wants to do on purely party lines.

It would be, in some ways, shocking, but not surprising.

You know, I mean, in some ways, you always think those two words go together, but

it would shock me.

But again, based on the way in which this Congress has done everything, and I mean everything that the president wants them to do, it wouldn't surprise me.

Yeah, and I submit, I mean, I asked the question, I'm curious your opinion, of course, but also it's a question I think we need to ask ourselves because I think that outcome, I would argue, is more likely than unlikely, considering, I mean, those two words you just said, shocking but not surprising.

I mean, if there's no phrase probably been more uttered in the last eight months than that phrase.

Look, one of the things that was uttered was one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you, and I'm grateful for this opportunity.

And that was the words that came out of Donald Trump's mouth when he reached out to Governor Abbott in Texas and he asked for five seats.

It's important for folks listening as it relates to midterm redistricting and moving forward that Greg Abbott initially was reticent.

Greg Abbott expressed, not just privately, but publicly, that he wasn't necessarily convinced it was, quote, unquote, the right thing to do or the timely thing to do.

He was quickly disabused of that when Trump circled back, saying he's quote unquote entitled to those five votes.

The rest in Texas is history.

But you have a history in this space going back to 2017 as a champion.

champion for independent redistricting.

And I want to walk back to that and walk back to the reasons why this was so important to you, reasons why it was so important then to President Obama, who was a big part of why you were tasked to do this.

At least that's what he asserted to me, that he was the one who directed you to do this.

Maybe you could clarify that.

He's directed me to do a whole bunch of things over the course of the last 10 years or so, you know, or the whole thing.

Amen.

Amen.

We're not going to argue.

This is true.

He said, Eric, you need to head up the NDRC.

And so, what was the idea?

Give us the origin story of the NDRC.

Yeah, I mean, as I was leaving office, he and I sat down and talked about, all right, let's kind of look back and see what is it that we didn't accomplish and what were the reasons why we were not as successful as we might have been.

And we looked at a variety of things, and you know, it really kind of, we kind of tried to figure out, well, why, why, why?

And we really came to the conclusion that gerrymandering was a problem that prevented him from getting in full his agenda, although he had significant accomplishments.

And as we looked more, we said, you know, and a lot of the stuff that's coming out of the states is unpopular and nevertheless gets passed.

And that was also as a result of gerrymandering in state legislatures.

And so we said, all right, let's go after that problem.

And so we formed up the National Democratic Redistricting Committee in January of 2017 to really promote fairness in the redistricting process.

Republicans had put together through a thing called Project Red Map in

2011 gerrymanders in a whole variety of states that have endured, endured through the course of that whole decade, and put in place measures at the state level that

people didn't like, but nevertheless, Republicans did it and didn't suffer any political consequence because of the gerrymanders.

And then we had a gerrymandered House of Representatives.

And if you look, when we started out, Democrats had to overperform by about 22% in order to get to 50-50 in the House of Representatives.

As a result of what we've done, that number is now just about one and a half percent, something like that.

We can actually, you know, actually handle that.

And so we've promoted fairness, and that is, fairness has almost been like a weapon for us.

We use that word, people like the idea that citizens ought to choose who their representatives are as opposed to politicians picking their voters.

And so that's why we have been engaged in

this fight.

Mr.

Attorney General, so much of what you tried to achieve and pursue in 2017 had a little bit of its origin story in what happened with the Shelby County decision of the Supreme Court, a 5-4 decision in 2013.

Remind everybody what happened at the Supreme Court in 2013.

2013, the Supreme Court, as you said, in a 5-4 decision, Chief Justice Roberts writing for the majority, and he stated very famously in his majority opinion that America has changed.

And as a result, they used that as the basis to take from the Justice Department the ability that it had to pre-clear changes that states wanted to make when it came to all kinds of electoral things, whether it was how lines were drawn with regard to certain districts, where polling places should be opened or closed, where voter purges should be allowed, took away from the Justice Department the ability to challenge states when they tried to

do these things.

And that has had a really negative impact.

We have seen poll closures all around the country.

It's one of the reasons why you see long lines in certain states.

We've seen voter purges that disproportionately occur in communities of color and places where Democrats are perceived to live.

A whole range of things has happened since the Shelby County case.

It's taken the Justice Department, not off the field, but certainly taken away from the Justice Department a lot of the tools that it once had.

And so,

in an effort to sort of push back, you've been a big part of your organization is also highlighting some of those purges as it relates to the voting rolls, highlighting some of what is just overt voter suppression activities as it relates to reducing the number of polling options and places.

What, you know, and it led to a lot of victories.

And I think what I'd love to highlight is not just the problem, but some of your success in terms of what your organization has been able to achieve.

And I want to get back to Prop 50.

I want to get back to what's happening, not just in Texas, but across this country at this moment.

But talk to me a little bit about what you were able to achieve with the organization in 2018, 19, 20 over the course of the last decade or so.

Yeah, I mean, you know, if you look at the work that we have done since 2017 by, you know, focusing, using a state-based strategy, different strategy, you know, depending on the state, by supporting candidates who would stand for fairness, by challenging laws that were put in place or procedures that were being used in a variety of states, by raising the consciousness of people about the importance of fair redistricting, by standing for independent commissions and trying to get those in states wherever we could.

And it's interesting, wherever we tried to get an independent commission, whether it was a red state or a blue state, people overwhelmingly supported them.

We got them in Missouri, we got them in Utah, and then Republican legislatures did things to

the efforts that we had, but the people always supported them.

And so that's what we have done, use those different tools.

And as a result, we ended up with maps in 2024 that a lot of analysts, as well as the New York Times, said produced the fairest maps

in generations.

Now, fairest, but not totally fair.

There's still states that are still gerrymandered.

If you look at Texas, if you look at Wisconsin, Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, there are still places that are still gerrymandered and are still a focus of our work.

And a big part of just the gerrymandering, and just to sort of unpack this a little bit more, the racial dimensions cannot be understated, or at least even overstated.

I mean, so the impacts, the black community, Hispanic community, talk a little bit more about how that manifests in many of these different states.

That's a really important point.

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This gerrymandering is done on the backs of people of color.

And one only has to look at what's going on in Texas now.

They get their, they think, five seats.

I think they're being a little optimistic, but they get whatever it is they get out of this gerrymandering that they're doing at the expense of people of color in largely urban areas, largely Hispanic, but African Americans

as well.

We see them breaking up districts in Austin, Texas, and San Antonio and drawing these really weird lines so that you really decrease, dilute the power, the electoral power that communities of color have in

Texas.

Now they'll try to say, this is only partisan, these are only partisan things that we have done, as if that somehow makes it better.

We're not racist, we're just doing things, you know, that are inconsistent with our sense of who we are, inconsistent with our Constitution, but it's only on a partisan basis.

But if you look, it always, almost always comes down to making it more difficult for people of color to vote and then taking away from people of color, communities of color, the political power that they've long sought and tried to hold on to.

So California is one of those states with an independent redistricting commission.

It was a commission that, when I was mayor, there was an effort to repeal it that I publicly opposed because I've long supported the idea of independent redistricting, and it's a point of pride that this state has been one of the leaders.

What happened, however, in Texas changed the equation.

And I'm curious, just from your prism and your perspective as a champion of independent redistricting as well,

what does Texas represent to you?

And

first, if I could just unpack a deeper question.

Why do you think President Trump made the phone call to Greg Abbott?

Why do you think he even pursued this mid-decade redistricting strategy in the first place?

Well, before he picked up the phone, he looked at his desk, picked up some papers that said, these are your polling numbers, Mr.

President.

And he made the determination that unless we cheat, unless we come up with more

safe Republican seats, we're in real danger of losing our majority in the House of Representatives.

And that would really establish a really huge obstacle to doing the kinds of radical things that they have done in the first eight months and want to continue to do over the course of the next

three years or so.

And I think that's the thing that generated the call from the president to

the governor in Texas.

And it's an interesting thing.

When he called, when the

president called those folks in georgia and said i need 11 780 votes when it came to the 2020 election republicans in georgia you know secretary of state raffensburg a person who i don't agree with on a whole bunch of stuff you know they at least had the guts to say no we're not going to do that called greg abbott and he expressed some you know

little concern about it at the beginning, but at the end of the day, did exactly what it is that

the president asked him to do.

We've always thought of the California Independent Commission as the gold standard.

It's something that as I've campaigned around the country for fairness, I've always pointed to California.

And I think the system in California is a great one.

But I think the determination that you made and other Democrats in California was exactly the right one.

Given what they did in Texas and what they're doing in other states as well,

we couldn't simply disarm.

We had to respond to that.

And what I've said, you know, I thought about this long and hard before I said, you know, this is something I think we ought to do because I've been fighting.

I've been fighting against gerrymandering, either by Democrats or Republicans.

But I think that

what's happening in California makes a great deal of sense.

It is something that kind of meets this three-part test of mine.

It's got to be responsive.

And so it's certainly responsive to that which happened in Texas.

It's got to be responsible.

It didn't go crazy.

It just came up with a way in which you try to come up with additional seats.

And it's got to be temporary.

You know, I want to get back to this whole fight for fairness and the way in which it's crafted in California, In addition to having the people ultimately vote on it, which is not what happened in Texas, it only will exist until after the next census.

No, and I appreciate this.

And, you know, so your evolution was mine as well, as someone that believes in the principle of independent redistricting as well.

So it wasn't an immediate response, frankly, was in response to outreach by legislative leaders in Texas that said, well, hey, California, you know, have our back.

And we thought it would maybe a rhetorical play just to support them and say we're watching, we're paying attention.

But realizing the consequences of these five seats and how that can tip the balance and rig the next election in the 2026, we were able to fashion a process that, as you say, is temporary, transparent, and democratic.

It's the only maps that are now being presented to the voters themselves.

They will decide for themselves in the most transparent way and in a temporary way that ends, as you suggest, after the 28 28

and 30 and into the 32 census will revert back to its original form again, only in response to Texas.

But I want to ask you to respond.

It's not just Texas, is it, Mr.

Attorney General?

We're seeing this in Missouri just this week.

You're seeing activity in Indiana, conversations that are happening in Florida.

There's different conditions and criteria in Ohio and Utah.

Maybe you can give us a lay of the land more broadly.

Yeah, I mean, mean, you hit just about all the states where this is still being considered.

You know, Texas has already done it.

Missouri has already done it, but those other states are certainly considering it.

And, you know, Ohio has got to redraw their maps because of a constitutional provision there.

But the question is, what are Ohio Republicans going to do?

There is within the Ohio

Constitution a prohibition against partisan gerrymandering.

So we'll see what they do in Ohio.

What are they going to do in Kansas?

What are they going to do in Florida?

There is a whole range of other states where they've made the determination that they're going to really kind of cheat.

And that's what it is.

You can talk about a whole bunch of different things.

It's cheating.

They're going to cheat to try to hold on to the majority that they have in the House of Representatives.

And it really comes from on the basis of fear.

They're afraid of the people who they say they want to represent.

They're afraid of the legislative agenda that they have tried to put in place.

They're afraid of the administrative things that they have done.

They're afraid to be held accountable for, you know, taking a whole bunch of good people in a whole variety of government agencies around the country and simply told them, you know, get out of here.

You're fired.

They're afraid of trying to defend that which Elon Musk and his Doge bros did.

It's all a political fear that is driving what it is that

they're doing.

And it's fundamentally un-American and it's unpatriotic.

You know, it's cheating, but it also goes against that which we do, which makes, I think, this nation exceptional.

We trust the people to make determinations about policy and the direction of the nation and they want to cut the people out of the process.

Yeah, I mean they've de facto eliminated oversight with Congress, a co-equal branch of government, increasingly, particularly with this utilization of the shadow docket at the Supreme Court.

That's another podcast, just the shadow docket and the abuse and use of the shadow docket by the Supreme Court itself.

By the way, for those that are wondering what I'm talking about, that shadow docket has allowed for racial profiling, not just in relationship to the conversation we're having around voting, but racial profiling of people on the basis of their skin color, on the basis of where they congregate, on the basis of their language, that has given ICE free reign to terrorize our diverse communities under no other pretext than just the basis of those simple profiles.

And I just never thought I'd hear that in my life.

And

that was afforded under the shadow docket by the United States Supreme Court.

I'm curious, Eric, just the broader issues around voting.

I mean, how concerned are you, not just around the issues of fairness with this redistricting fight, issues of the vandalization of fair and free elections as it relates to what happened with Shelby,

but what's happening as well with the National Guard being deployed in American cities?

Are you concerned that's also part of a larger agenda that may actually impact potentially or create a chill around Election Day as well?

See, I think you pointed out something that's really important here because I think there's a long-term play here.

This is, you know,

it's cast as something that is anti-crime, you know, it's pro-public safety.

It does not obviously work.

I mean, you know, these people who serve in the National Guard, you know, I admire them, great respect to them, but they're not crime fighters.

That's not what they do.

But I think this, the long play play here is to desensitize people to the sight of troops on our streets.

And I see them, I can see them trying to deploy troops around the 26th election.

And again, you don't have to do much.

Just deploy them in certain cities and in certain neighborhoods.

And it'll have a chilling effect in certain communities.

And they hope suppress voter participation in those communities.

So I think it's actually a long play.

I mean, there's an authoritarian component to this that I think is who Donald, that's who Donald Trump is.

But I think it's also,

as I think you're correctly pointing out,

a long-term play to help them, yet again, another way in which they can cheat when it comes to the 26 election.

Yeah, I thought it was interesting, and people may not be familiar with this, we still have federalized National Guard in the state of California.

It's not just a conversation that's being held in Portland or places like Chicago or Memphis, for that that matter, Washington, D.C., it's still the case that we have federalized troops.

And they were intentionally, from my perspective, not, well, could have been coincidental, but they were announced as extended through Election Day.

And to reinforce that, Eric, this is...

important as well for folks when we announced our efforts on this redistricting proposition 50 this special election

to push back and fight back against Trump's efforts When we announced it, it was in Little Tokyo in Los Angeles at the Democracy Center.

And at the same time we announced it, the Trump administration sent out masked men that surrounded us, surrounded and created that chill,

literally intimidating people that were walking into the rally, walking event.

By the way, that included a dozen representatives from Congress,

two U.S.

senators, hundreds and hundreds of community leaders.

And also for me was a preview of things to come.

You have now the largest domestic police force in the world, arguably, particularly with the Big Beautiful Bill, as they describe it, an additional 10,000 potential staff that increasingly appear, and this may not be fair, but I don't think it's deeply unfair or hyperbolic, that increasingly appear to have taken an oath of office to Donald Trump and not the Constitution in terms of how they are conducting many of their activities.

And that, to me, me, would be exhibit A

and the conduct that was deeply unbecoming of the men and women of ICE and Border Patrol at that Democracy Center rally.

Yeah, and I think this is the kind of thing that you'd expect to see in a third world country.

You'd expect to see in Russia, you know, so-called banana republics.

I mean, the opposition is holding a meeting to announce a position that it's taking inconsistent with what the power, those who are in power and government are taking.

And what do they do?

They surround, They surround that place.

We need to think about that.

What does that mean?

And then you end up with an interior police department that is

greatly expanded.

Again, that's another authoritarian move.

I mean, people need to understand, ICE is going to be substantially larger than the FBI.

I mean, substantially larger than the FBI, than the DEA.

I mean, this is...

And this is unheard of.

ICE has an important job, but they have never been the size that they're going to be at the conclusion of all the hiring that Trump and Tom Holman want to do.

Eric, I'm just curious, and I'm sensitive again to your relationship to the confidentiality and just the dignity of

your prior roles and the dignity of the office of citizen that you hold today.

But you must have had some pretty chilling conversations with some of your colleagues,

maybe former attorney generals, leaders

in these quote-unquote power ministries of the FBI and DOJ and other, even the IRS.

I mean,

can you sort of, is there a composite picture you can paint

in bipartisan terms, in sort of universal terms, in American terms, of those kind of conversations that you uniquely are positioned to have had conducted?

Yeah, and I think they operate on a couple of levels.

One, I talk to a lot of folks who've been in the Justice Department for, or law enforcement, federal law enforcement, for FBI, for extended periods of time.

And they talk about the shock that they have felt as a result of the things that have been done.

Morale is just really, it's in the toilet when it comes to federal law enforcement.

A lot of people are afraid.

I mean, these are people thinking that they want to spend their careers

working to support the mission of the Justice Department, the mission of the FBI, regardless of of who was the president, who was the Attorney General.

And so there is that.

I also talked to people here in Washington, D.C.

on the political side.

And, you know, what really strikes me is that, you know, you talk to Republicans and they're not in front of the camera.

They're just talking to me.

We have a relationship.

And I'm not going to say this is a huge number of people.

But they understand that what's going on is wrong, but they are politically afraid to come out and say something against that which this administration wants to do.

I thought it was really interesting that Mitt Romney in his book, when he was talking about

people making up their minds how they were going to vote when it came to both impeachment and whether or not President Trump would be convicted after January the 6th.

And he talked about people being politically afraid on the Republican side, but also being physically afraid for themselves and for their families.

also have heard that as well.

And so, you know, both in terms of the political class as well as, you know, the career folks at the Justice Department,

you know, they're dealing with things they didn't have to, they didn't expect to.

And the folks on the legislative side have not necessarily shown the degree of courage and independence that you would hope.

So just on that, as we close, Eric, what, you know, in terms of the frame around courage, the frame around conviction, standing

into the void in the absence of leadership and oversight, the kind of accountability you'd expect with people in positions of power and influence in the House or Senate and elsewhere.

I mean,

what can shape some optimism as we close in terms of what we can do, what we can achieve?

Obviously, Prop 50, I believe, is foundational on that and will sort of jumpstart the 2026 election and taking back the House of Representatives.

But in that spirit, in that space,

what can we be doing more of?

And what gives you some confidence and hope about the future and how we can shape-shift things?

Well, first, I'd say that Prop 50 has got to pass.

I mean, that is kind of a foundation upon which I think this country will regain its sense of itself.

This is an important, important vote.

It's crafted in a way that I think is absolutely responsible.

And again, it's temporary.

So I think that has to pass.

What gives me optimism, though, is also a knowledge of our history.

You know, if you look at the great social movements in this country, they were launched against overwhelming odds.

I mean, you can just go to the civil rights struggle.

I mean, John Lewis, Martin Luther King, Diane Nash, they had to think, can we rip down young people, young black people, and young white people?

Could we rip down a system of American apartheid?

And I'm sure they must have had doubts at times, but they fought through those doubts.

They showed an unbelievable amount of courage and ultimately were successful.

Same thing with women trying to get the right to vote.

You know, suffragettes at the beginning of the 20th century, they showed remarkable courage,

pushed through those doubts.

And that knowledge of history makes me think that in this awful moment that we will demonstrate

that same courage.

Every generation of Americans is ultimately called upon to defend democracy, whether it's on the beaches at Normandy, the fields of Gettysburg.

You know,

now is our time.

And we can't be the first generation of Americans that is unsuccessful in the defense of our democracy.

And I'll say this, I say it a lot.

You know, Dr.

King said that the ark of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.

But the deal is it doesn't bend on its own.

It only bends when people like us, like you, governor, like me, and like regular American citizens, put their hands on that arc and pull it towards justice.

And I think that's what each of us has to ask.

You know, what is it that I can do?

What is it that I can do to

pull that arc towards justice to save our democracy and to keep this nation, you know, keep this nation exceptional?

I'm optimistic because of that history

that I shared.

And I think that optimism breeds engagement.

Pessimism breeds resignation.

And so I think we can't afford to be pessimistic.

We have to be optimistic and we have to be active, active and engaged.

I love it.

It's a wonderful way to close.

This notion of active, not inert citizenship.

This notion that we have agency, we can shape the future.

It's decisions, not conditions, that will determine our fate and future.

Eric Holder, it has been an honor to have you on the podcast.

Thanks so much for joining.

Thanks for having me.

This is an iHeart podcast.