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.
DeVos Tries Everything to Force Deceived Students to Repay Loans
Betsy DeVos’s four-year immoral crusade to harm American education has included a thoroughly corrupt effort to protect predatory for-profit colleges and force students who were scammed by these schools to pay back their student loans anyway. Advocates for veterans, single mothers, immigrants, and others ripped off by for-profit colleges have been determined to fight back.
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Lunch at the White House with Judd Deere and Hogan Gidley
White House press office, some Tuesday. Deputy press secretaries Hogan Gidley and Judd Deere chat while enjoying lunch at their desks.* Judd: President Trump spoke to millions of Americans on television from the Lincoln Memorial, one of the most iconic and unifying symbols in the world, with a message of hope and optimism about the
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John Roberts May Save Our Democracy from Trump
Since November 2016, I have expressed concern that Donald Trump, if he loses re-election, will claim the ballot was rigged and refuse to leave. My worries escalated in February 2019 when lawyer Michael Cohen, who worked closely with Trump for years, explained that the very reason he agreed to testify to Congress was to warn
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As Perdoceo Fights VA Suspension, Employees Say Recruiting Abuses Persist
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs must decide in the coming weeks or months whether to stand by its determinations to throw five universities out of the G.I. Bill program for deceptive advertising or recruiting practices, or instead to reverse one or more of those actions and allow student veterans to keep enrolling in those
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Where Did the Daily White House Coronavirus Briefing Go?
Watching Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York deliver his daily fact-, science-, people-driven coronavirus briefing today, I was thinking: Where did the daily White House coronavirus task force briefing go? Has the pandemic ended? Not by a long shot. About 10,000 of the 110,000 U.S. deaths occurred in the past ten days. In some states,
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A Racist White Supresident, Still Supported By a Majority of White Americans
Just before election day in 2016, I came across a video on social media that showed a confrontation in a parking lot between a black man and a white man. Though neither was yielding, the white man was angry and aggressive, while the black man remained measured and calm. Before using the n-word on camera,
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A Presidential Poem
I was rushed to the bunker for an inspection. I was rushed to the hospital for a physical. I don’t know who marked Alabama on the map. I wouldn’t want to get into my favorite Bible verse because to me that’s very personal. I alone can fix it.
The Most Vile, Corrupt, Incompetent President in U.S. History
Monday morning, United States President Donald J. Trump, abruptly taking over a conference call scheduled between U.S. governors and Vice President Mike Pence, demanded that states accept the deployment of military troops in the face of nationwide protests over the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. Trump demeaned the governors. “Most of
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