President Barack Obama is back!!!

OBAMA IS RAMPING UP HIS FIGHT AGAINST GERRYMANDERING

The former president announced a new extension of his redistricting-focused organization All On the Line.

BY ALISON DURKEE

While former President Barack Obama may still be holding back when it comes to attacking his successor or wading into the 2020 race, there is one political issue that the one-time Commander-in-Chief has not been hesitant to throw his weight behind: gerrymandering. Obama announced his intention to tackle the issue earlier this year, combining his Organizing for America organization with former Attorney General Eric Holder's redistricting efforts to create the organization All On The Line, which describes itself as a “national campaign to restore fairness to our democracy and ensure every American has an equal say in our government” by fighting against gerrymandering and advocating for fair maps nationwide. On Monday, Obama went one step further by announcing Redistricting U, a new extension of All On The Line which will provide free, in-person training for redistricting activists.

“Training is at the heart of organizing,” Obama wrote in a tweet announcing the initiative. “It’s why I’ve always made it a priority—from my 2008 campaign until now.” The training initiative, per its website, will send trainers to cities nationwide to “to train volunteers, give them the tools to impact the redistricting process in their state, hear from them on how to best make change in their communities, and empower them to be leaders in the movement for fair maps.” Redistricting U's training program will take place on top of All On The Line's broader grassroots efforts to take on partisan and racial gerrymandering, which are launching now in advance of the next redistricting wave in 2021.

Redistricting efforts, which are still primarily done by state legislatures, have often come under fire for manipulating voter maps to reflect either racial or political biases. More states are beginning to adopt separate commissions to draw voter maps, though, and a number of challenges to current redistricting systems are currently pending in court. (That strategy has been proven to work, as Pennsylvania's map was forced to be re-drawn ahead of the 2018 election to get rid of its Republican bias.) While All On The Line's activism will take place nationwide, the organization says that its efforts will particularly be targeting Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin.

Obama's Monday announcement marks the former First Family's latest move to embrace voting rights as their primary post-White House cause, as both Barack and former First Lady Michelle Obama have so far favored nonpartisan voter pushes over more overtly pro-Democratic issues since stepping down in 2017. Michelle launched the When We All Vote initiative ahead of the 2018 midterms, frustrating Democrats who hoped she'd actively campaign for candidates instead, while Barack, though he did endorse candidates and campaign in 2018, was criticized for largely keeping his distance from the campaign trail. In a December 2018 statement announcing his intention to tackle redistricting, though, the former president made it clear that this is where he believes he can have the biggest impact, saying that with fair maps, “the bounds of what is possible will fundamentally change.” “I’m making redistricting a top priority, because there is no issue it doesn’t touch,” Obama wrote. “There is no better opportunity to bend the great arc of history toward justice. And to bend it, we’ve all got to push together.”