According to Holder, it’s his job to “change things” using the powers of the DOJ.

Via The Hill:

Only two years ago, House Republicans voted to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress. Recently, Senate Republicans have trashed the former head of his civil rights division, Thomas Perez, and blocked his current choice to run the division, Debo Adegbile. […]

Holder remains indifferent to conservative protests that he is an ‘activist’ looking for trouble by digging into what he calls “policies [with] disproportionate impact on communities of color.”

“If you want to call me an activist attorney general, I will proudly accept that label,” he said. “Any attorney general who is not an activist is not doing his or her job. The responsibility of the attorney general is to change things [and] bring us closer to the ideals expressed in our founding documents.”

Later, he defiantly added that critics who say his department includes an “activist civil rights division and this is an activist attorney general — I’d say I agree with you 1000 percent and [I am] proud of it.”