Eric Holder to strategize with House Democrats on redistricting
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Eric Holder attends the Lambda Legal 2024 Liberty Awards in New York City on May 30, 2024. Photo: Arturo Holmes/Getty Images
Former Attorney General Eric Holder will meet virtually with House Democrats this week to discuss how to fight Republicans' mid-decade redistricting, Axios has learned.
Why it matters: Holder has long championed nonpartisan redistricting reform, but he and other Democrats are putting those efforts aside — at least temporarily — to try to ward off electoral oblivion for their party in 2026.
- Republicans in Texas, at the urging of President Trump, are moving to redraw their state's congressional districts in an effort to create as many as five new Republican seats.
- Democrats have threatened to respond in kind by undertaking similar gerrymandering efforts in California, New York and elsewhere, while Republicans are looking to Ohio, Indiana, Missouri and Florida to make additional gains.
What we're hearing: Holder will join a call on Wednesday hosted by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, a source familiar with the plan confirmed to Axios.
- Holder's attendance was earlier reported by Punchbowl News.
- Most House Democrats have largely supported redistricting reform in the past — but they say the Texas redraw presents an emergency that requires them to do their own gerrymandering in response.
- In California, where Democrats would likely get most of their seats, the state would need to sideline or scrap its independent commission in order to redraw the maps.
Zoom out: Holder served as attorney general under former President Obama from 2009 to 2015. During his tenure, Republicans swept state legislative elections and redrew U.S. House maps across the country in their favor.
- In 2017, Holder launched the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, whose mission includes taking redistricting out of the hands of legislators through the establishment of independent commissions.
- But he has changed his tone on the issue in recent weeks in response to the Texas GOP, saying in a Meet the Press interview: "Authoritarian moves are being made ... and there has to be a response to that."
What they're saying: "I honestly don't see any debate in the party over this," Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, told Axios.
- "If [Republicans] are going to continue with the Texas chainsaw gerrymander, we have no choice but to fight fire with fire and use whatever legislative resources we have ... to fight back," he said.
- "Ultimately we will fight fire with water," he added. "But nobody is on the side of unilateral disarmament ... we are not going to allow them to gerrymander us into oblivion."
