Barack Obama called Texas state Rep. James Talarico last week to express support for his leadership in the state’s redistricting battle, according to two people familiar with the call.
The former president specifically praised Talarico as an effective spokesperson for showing up on different media and platforms, including his recent interview with Joe Rogan — which Obama told him requires risk and authenticity.
Obama’s call to Talarico comes as the Texas Democrat weighs entry into the state’s Senate race, which would pit him against former Rep. Colin Allred in a Democratic primary. The recent call between the two was not Obama signaling a preference in such a primary, the sources familiar said, and the two did not discuss a potential Senate run.
The call also comes as Obama has reengaged in the political moment in ways broadly uncommon for a former Oval Office occupant in response to President Donald Trump’s actions during his second term.
In private, he’s holding calls with the party’s rising stars. Earlier this summer, Obama called Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic candidate for mayor in New York City, where the former president “offered him advice about governing and discussed the importance of giving people hope in a dark time,” The New York Times reported.
In public, he’s rallying Democrats in a number of ways. He’s actively encouraging Democrats to fight the GOP’s Trump-inspired mid-cycle gerrymandering efforts — “an existential threat to our democracy,” Obama said in a video he posted Thursday. This week he trumpeted the party’s upset victory in a special election for a seat in the Iowa state Senate. “When we are organized and support strong candidates who are focused on the issues that matter, we can win. Let’s keep this going,” he said.
He’s endorsed, via X, Wednesday’s edition of Ezra Klein’s New York Times show. In that episode, the host shared his concern that Trump is “creating crisis and disorder so he can build what he has wanted to build: an authoritarian state, a military or a paramilitary that answers only to him — that puts him in total control.”
It all amounts to something of an escalation for Obama. In April, he spoke about the importance of the “rules-based” order and criticized the Trump administration’s crackdown on Big Law. In June, he shared his concern that America was fast approaching a “situation in which all of us are going to be tested in some way, and we are going to have to then decide what our commitments are.”
Perhaps now that test has arrived.
It comes at a moment when the Democratic Party is largely rudderless at the national level, seemingly adrift. In that vacuum — no clear leader, no clear vision, no identifiable cause at the moment aside from stopping Trump — Obama may be the party’s most unifying figure.
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