About: David Halperin

Twitter: @DaHalperin
Bio: David Halperin, a self-employed lawyer based in Washington DC, engages in public advocacy work on a wide range of issues, including higher education and climate change. He also advises organizations and companies on strategy, policy, communications, and legal matters, and he is of counsel to Public.Resource.org. Halperin was previously: founding director of Campus Progress and senior vice president at the Center for American Progress; senior policy advisor for Howard Dean's presidential campaign; founding executive director of the American Constitution Society; White House speechwriter and special assistant for national security affairs to President Clinton; co-founder of the Internet company Progressive/RealNetworks; counsel to the Senate Intelligence Committee; and law clerk to U.S. District Judge Gerhard A. Gesell. He has represented clients in the U.S. Supreme Court and various state and federal courts. He writes at Republic Report, and his articles also have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, The Nation, Politico, Slate, Foreign Policy, and other outlets. In recent years he has testified before the House Oversight Committee and at the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Transportation, and spoken at major events held by the National Consumer Law Center, Consumer Federation of America, Arizona State University, American Educational Research Association, and Center for American Progress. Halperin has served for more than a decade on the board of directors of Public Citizen. He graduated from Yale College and Yale Law School.

November 14, 2024

Trump Pentagon Pick Hegseth, While Fox Host, Lobbied For Colleges That Scam US Troops

Fox News host Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s choice to serve as the next U.S. Secretary of Defense, was, during the first Trump administration, paid by the main trade group representing for-profit colleges, and he spoke out against legislation aimed at protecting military service members and veterans from deceptive schools that bury former students in debt.
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November 6, 2024

Stand Strong Patriots

  It was shocking that American voters in 2016 narrowly elected Donald Trump after he demonstrated he was a vile person who pledged to do reckless and hateful things to our country. It was much more disturbing that the populace more decisively elected Trump in 2024 after they had voted him out in 2020 following
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October 31, 2024

Carl Barney, Ex-Owner of Deceptive For-Profit Colleges, Donates Big to Trump

Carl Barney, the ultra-wealthy former owner of a chain of collapsed for-profit colleges, is the third biggest California-based donor to efforts to elect Donald Trump in 2024, the Los Angeles Times reports today. Barney has donated $924,600 to the Trump 47 Committee, according to federal records. Like Donald Trump, who in 2016 paid $25 million
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October 30, 2024

DeVos Funnels $250k to Musk’s Pro-Trump Super PAC

Billionaire Betsy DeVos, who resigned from her job as Donald Trump’s secretary of education over Trump’s incitement of the deadly January 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol, has donated $250,000 to America PAC, the pro-Trump super PAC created by the world’s richest man, industrialist Elon Musk. The contribution was disclosed in a Federal Election Commission
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October 27, 2024

Cancel Your Washington Post Subscription

With American democracy on the line in just a few days, of course people opposed to Donald Trump are wasting time fighting with each other on social media this weekend. This time it’s about whether folks should cancel their subscriptions to the Washington Post in the wake of that paper’s decision to spike an editorial
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October 9, 2024

Non-Profit Keiser University Holds Partisan Event in Run-Up to Election

The LinkedIn page, and X profile, of Florida’s Keiser University reported last month that on September 13 the school “hosted a public policy forum in West Palm Beach featuring discussions on safety and the economy.” But the Facebook page of Florida state Representative and state Senate candidate Randy Fine, a Republican who participated in the
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October 8, 2024

GOP Attorneys General Shop for Judges in Effort to Crush Student Loan Debtors

When a federal trial judge in St. Louis issued an order last week blocking the latest Biden-Harris administration student loan relief plan, the Republican state attorneys general who filed the case gleefully celebrated yet another court victory over Americans struggling to pay their college debts. But those GOP AGs apparently don’t want to discuss the
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September 5, 2024

The Reason Judge Merchan Should Send Donald Trump to Prison

New York state trial judge Juan Merchan is scheduled to sentence Donald Trump on September 18, after the former president’s May 30 conviction by a jury of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in the first degree. Judge Merchan could decide to delay the sentence pending legal proceedings regarding the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision
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