Former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder joins California in the fight against Trump

In another step toward resistance of President-elect Donald Trump’s impending anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, anti-woman administration, California Democrats have retained Obama administration alum, former Attorney General Eric Holder to assist them in their work.

Senate Leader Kevin de León and Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, both Democrats, said Wednesday that Holder will serve as outside counsel to the legislature and advise them in efforts to “resist any attempts to roll back the progress California has made.”

Holder’s “involvement sends a loud and clear message to all Californians that we have their backs and to Washington that we’re not backing down,” de León said Wednesday in an interview.

“We’re talking about worker’s rights, civil rights, voting rights, environmental protections, climate action, protecting children from being separated from their mothers, massive deportation,” he said, as well as the possible repeal of the Affordable Care Act.

As Attorney General, Holder helped shape Obama’s progressive work within the Justice Department, investigating the deaths of unarmed Black men and women across the United States, and working to reduce the harmful effects of the so-called War on Drugs. Now he will continue in this vein, assisting California Democrats on both offense and defense against the regressive and reactionary Trump White House and GOP-controlled Congress.

The strategy, which will entail the state bringing multiple lawsuits, thus forcing the Trump administration to defend its laws and choices, is similar to that used by Republicans against Obama. California Democrats are taking aim specifically at Trump’s proposed immigration policies, including his pledges to deport millions of people, including the children of undocumented immigrants.

Newly elected California Senator Kamala Harris is working on a national level to protect California’s large population of immigrants and undocumented DREAMers, as my colleague Alison Parker writes, and will be backed up by the work California is doing at the state level.

Governor Jerry Brown, who will be working closely with Holder on their legal strategy, said that California is “no stranger to this fight.”

“We’ve got the scientists, we’ve got the lawyers, and we’re ready to fight,” he commented.

Trump may have won the Electoral College, but with the country’s most populous state gearing up to fight against him, he is surely in for the battle of his life.