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 Diane Jones, The Worst Trump Official You Probably Never Heard Of
Apparently, someone at the U.S. Department of Education, with access to sensitive information, is pleased to see Diane Auer Jones, the top higher education official at the department, leave as the Trump administration ends. Politico‘s Michael Stratford reports today on a preliminary finding of the department’s inspector general office that Jones exceeded her authority in
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We Elected Donald Trump, But Then We Defeated Him. Thank You All.
Dear Friends, We made it. You did it. Four years ago, our country elected a racist con man, entirely unfit for office, to be president of the United States. And he stayed in the post a full four years, despite numerous crimes and abuses and an unprecedented two impeachments by the House of Representatives. As
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Florida Man Impeached For Second Time
A Florida man was impeached this week — for the second time in 13 months. Donald J. Trump, 74, of Palm Beach, was once again charged in a complaint by a neighbor living near Trump’s second home in Washington, DC. The neighbor, Nancy Pelosi, reported that Trump, a federal government employee, incited insurrection by falsely
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Senate Democrats Have A Chance to Do This Trump Impeachment Right
On Wednesday, even though just a week remained in the presidential term, and even with prospects for conviction in the Senate highly uncertain, the House of Representatives was one hundred percent right to impeach Donald Trump for the second time. The facts, our values, and the nation’s security demanded that the House act. Trump’s ugly
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Will Trump Pardon the Capitol Terrorists? I’m Asking Pat Cipollone
Here’s an email I just sent to White House counsel Pat Cipollone: Pat Cipollone, Esq. Counsel to the President The White House Washington, DC 20500 Dear Mr. Cipollone, I am writing to you as a concerned citizen. (I am a Washington, DC, attorney and former staff member of the National Security Council and
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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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