About: David Halperin
Twitter: @DaHalperin
Bio: David Halperin is the co-founder and editor of Republic Report. Halperin, a self-employed lawyer based in Washington DC, engages in public advocacy, investigative work, and legal representation on a wide range of issues, including higher education, climate change, democracy, corruption, open government, and national security. He also advises organizations and companies on strategy, policy, communications, and legal matters. He is of counsel to Public.Resource.org, a non-profit focused on making legal and government materials available for free to the public.
Halperin’s investigative and advocacy work on predatory for-profit colleges since 2010 has spurred reforms in policy and regulations, triggered law enforcement investigations, and led to the closure of numerous deceptive schools.
Halperin was from 2004 until 2012 the founding director of Campus Progress and senior vice president at the Center for American Progress. Before that, he was: senior policy advisor for Howard Dean’s 2004 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 Networks (now called RealNetworks); counsel to the Senate Intelligence Committee; law clerk to U.S. District Judge Gerhard A. Gesell (D.D.C.); research assistant to Robert S. McNamara; and research analyst at the Arms Control Association.
Halperin has represented clients in the U.S. Supreme Court and various state and federal courts. Among many other efforts, Halperin helped represent Greenpeace in an unprecedented 2004 Miami criminal jury trial over protest activity, resulting in a directed verdict of acquittal; aided climate groups facing investigation by the House Science Committee during 2015-16; and represented Public Resource in landmark copyright litigation from 2012 to 2024 over efforts to make federal regulations publicly available online without charge.
Halperin 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 several federal agencies, and he has spoken at major conferences and events across the country. Halperin has served since 2007 on the board of directors of Public Citizen.
Halperin graduated from Yale College and Yale Law School.
Goodbye Betsy DeVos, Who Treated Struggling Students As Con Artists
U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has resigned today in the wake of the MAGA terror attack on the Capitol, writing in a letter to President Trump, “There is no mistaking the impact your rhetoric had on the situation, and it is the inflection point for me.” I’m glad she broke with Trump on his
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Should You Work for a Criminal President?
President Trump’s most recent crimes — inciting a violent mob to maraud in the U.S. Capitol, leading to loss of life, and then praising the terrorists afterward — has led some of his most egregious enablers, including Bill Barr, Mick Mulvaney, Stephanie Grisham, and Lindsey Graham, to finally denounce him and / or resign from
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Any Functioning Government Would Expel Donald Trump Tonight
For six years, Donald Trump has fed his supporters a fatty diet of grievances, lies, and exhortations to violence. It was only a matter of time before that incitement produced a major upheaval, and it happened today — a violent and deadly, if aimless, assault on the U.S. Capitol by Trump-supporting thugs, after Trump, standing
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As Predatory College Stumbles, Founder Melts Down Over Ayn Rand Dispute
At the end of a year in which the Center for Excellence in Higher Education’s career training schools have fallen into deeper and deeper trouble with regulators and accreditors because of their predatory abuses against students, the schools’ founder, Carl Barney, has been engaged in an embarrassing public spat with a philosophy organization to which,
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Who Will Lobby Biden To Shield Predatory For-Profit Colleges?
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have pledged to hold for-profit colleges accountable for ripping off taxpayers and ruining students’ lives, and their task is urgent, as many for-profit schools have expanded their deceptive and predatory practices to increase enrollment in the pandemic era. But the for-profit college industry is retooling its strategy, moving well-connected
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Biden Must Cut Off Taxpayer Billions To Predatory Colleges That Ruin Students’ Lives
On a quarterly earnings call for investors last week, Todd Nelson, the CEO of Perdoceo Education Corporation, bragged about his company’s financial success providing online career training programs, especially during COVID-19. “The pandemic has further reinforced and validated the value proposition of online learning,” Nelson declared, “and I believe that our primarily online universities and
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Final Reckoning: The 50 Most Disgraceful People of the Trump Administration
It’s all over but the shouty fact-free violence-inciting tweets, frivolous election lawsuits, sad state legislature / electoral college / Congress bluster, Bill Barr fake investigation, McConnell-McCarthy-GOP complicity, punitive firings, principled resignations, transition obstruction, supplemental super spreader rallies, marginal militia mobilizations, potential efforts to bargain, and likely total humiliation when he finally gives up. So it’s
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Trump Vows to Beat Biden in Court. Meet His Legal Team.
The major news organizations today called the election for Joe Biden, and the Biden team is moving ahead with the transition and serious plans to fight the pandemic, rebuild the economy, and address other challenges. But Donald Trump insists “this election is far from over…. Beginning Monday, our campaign will start prosecuting our case in
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