With the nation on edge ahead of today’s critical elections, I sat down with former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder for an important conversatoin about the state of American democracy and the urgent need for institutional reform, starting with the Supreme Court itself.
Holder, who led the Justice Department from 2009 to 2015, didn’t mince words. “The reality is, it pains me to say this,” he told me. “I think the Supreme Court is a broken institution.” His warning is rooted in a concrete diagnosis of how the Court’s recent behavior has eroded both its legitimacy and the rule of law.
“The use, and really, the overuse, of the shadow docket,” Holder said, referring to the Court’s increasingly common practice of issuing consequential rulings without oral argument or full briefing, “challenges the legitimacy of the Court and does an untold amount of damage to the legal fabric of this nation.”
He argued that the Supreme Court’s conduct must become part of the national conversation in the coming election cycles. “It has to be a part of the 2026 and 2028 debates,” he said. “If there is a Democratic trifecta in 2028, Supreme Court reform is something that has to be considered. Term limits, at a minimum, and potentially expanding the Court, should be on the table.”
Holder framed this not as a partisan power grab, but as a restoration of good faith to a system that has been fundamentally compromised. “The Constitution,” he said, “kind of like a contract, had embedded within it an implied good-faith dealing clause. What we’re seeing now is that good faith has been broken.”
Our conversation came against the backdrop of California’s Proposition 50, an initiative designed to counter Republican mid-decade vote-rigging efforts in red states. Holder praised Governor Gavin Newsom’s leadership and the initiative’s grassroots momentum as a model for how democracy can still fight back. “This is all about power,” he told me. “The acquisition and use of power, not in the authoritarian way that Republicans have done, but in a way that protects democracy. Roosevelt wasn’t afraid of acquiring and using power. Johnson wasn’t afraid. That’s what we have to be about.”
Holder also warned about the Trump administration’s weaponization of the Department of Justice, calling it “a direct attack on the rule of law.” He said the administration’s use of loyalists to target perceived political enemies “has to be opposed in every conceivable way.” Beyond the headline-grabbing prosecutions, he noted, Trump’s influence has “weakened the ability of the Justice Department and FBI to do the very important things that matter to the American people—counterintelligence, national security, the fight against public corruption.”
By the end of our discussion, Holder turned from institutions back to individuals, the people watching, voting, and fighting for democracy. “Our institutions have failed us,” he said. “The executive branch has failed us. Congress has failed us. The Supreme Court has failed us. But the power that the American people have is substantially greater than we think.”
He invoked Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous line about the arc of the moral universe bending toward justice, but added his own urgent corollary: “It doesn’t bend on its own. It only bends when people like us put our hands on that arc and pull it toward justice.”
Holder’s message was clear: the fight to save democracy begins not in marble halls, but in the collective hands of citizens willing to act.
Watch my interview with Eric Holder above. And be sure to catch up on today’s MeidasTouch Podcast with me and my brothers. It’s on all the various podcast platforms out there, like Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
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