ICYMI: Eric Holder Joins Legal AF to Discuss Republican Attacks on Civil Rights

Washington, D.C. — This week, Eric H. Holder, Jr., the 82nd Attorney General of the United States and Chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee (NDRC), joined Michael Popok of the Legal AF podcast to discuss Republican efforts to shrink civil rights protections and weaken democratic guardrails.

During their conversation, Attorney General Holder and Popok discussed several topics, including the speech Attorney General Holder delivered after accepting the Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth Human Rights Award last week, how the people can fight back against Republican attacks on voting rights and civil rights, and the need for Supreme Court reform.

Attorney General Holder said the following about Americans’ increasing frustrations with the Trump administration:

ATTORNEY GENERAL HOLDER: “You know, they put troops on the streets to desensitize us to the sight of troops on our streets. If they deploy those troops in places where you’re trying to diminish the Hispanic vote, for instance, the African American vote, that’s a way in which you might have an impact on the vote and not make it a fair election. The usual tools that they do with regard to voter suppression, they will certainly use all of those. Disinformation, they’ll certainly use all of those. But if we push through all of that—and I think we are capable of doing that—that pent-up demand is going to demand that we actually have change in this country, political change. The people of this country don’t think that beautiful bill was that, it was ugly. And we’re seeing it now in very concrete ways with regard to healthcare costs that are about to go up. American people didn’t sign up for taking people who have been in this country for 15, 20 years—not citizens, but not doing anything other than that which people want to do in this country, trying to make good lives for themselves and for their children—seeing them hauled off by masked men and deported to places that they’ve never, ever known. The American people didn’t sign up for that. There’s a whole range of things that the Trump administration has done; that Republicans have done. And I think we can’t let Republicans skate on this. We can’t personalize this and say, this is only Donald Trump. This is Republicans who have done this. A whole range of things that they’ve done inconsistent with the desires of the American people. Come November, that pent-up demand is going to push them out.”

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