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.
VIDEO: Mitch McConnell “truly the most corrupt politician in the U.S.”
Earlier this month, journalist Jane Mayer published a blockbuster report on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), a deep dive into the deep corruption of a powerful politician who seems to have no moral compass, no strongly-held values, just an intense desire to increase his own power by aiding the entrenched special interests that fund
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Who’s Lobbying To Get COVID-19 Cash to For-Profit Colleges?
Howard “Buck” McKeon, a Republican former chairman of the House Education Committee, heads up the list of lobbyists paid, largely with your federal tax dollars, to lobby Congress to send even more tax dollars to for-profit colleges in the COVID-19 era. Lobbying reports for the first quarter of 2020 show that just a few of
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Florida For-Profit College, Getting $17 Million in COVID-19 Aid, Accused of Scamming Black Students
Faced with concerns from critics in Congress and elsewhere that many for-profit colleges will take advantage of the COVID-19 crisis to accelerate predatory behavior, the industry’s chief lobbyist, Steve Gunderson, has been repeating his claim that the bad actors among for-profit schools have shuttered, and what remains are sincere, hard-working operations focused on helping students.
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Scam Websites, Promising COVID-19 Advice, Steer Students to Predatory Colleges
This article is the first in a new series, produced by Republic Report and the Project on Predatory Student Lending (part of Harvard Law School’s Legal Services Center) — COVID College Cons. Steve Gunderson, the Republican ex-congressman who runs CECU, the frequently-dishonest lobbying group of for-profit colleges, emailed his members on Monday, warning that in
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DeVos Reversed Obama Decision, Recognized Predatory Colleges As Non-Profit
I’ve been asking for some sixteen months to know why the Center for Excellence in Higher Education dismissed its lawsuit over the Department of Education’s refusal, during the Obama administration, to recognize the controversial for-profit college operation’s troubling conversion to non-profit status. The Obama administration had concluded that the conversion was a sham that mostly benefited
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Warren Says COVID Act Denies Aid to For-Profit Colleges. DeVos: Nah.
Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), joined by three Senate colleagues, wrote to Trump Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos Wednesday to point out that the CARES COVID-19 relief act, as drafted, seems to exclude new funding for for-profit colleges. Warren and senators Dick Durbin (D-MA), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), and Sherrod Brown (D-OH) also noted that the law
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This Isn’t The First Time Trump Has Hawked Unproven Pills
President Trump has been aggressively touting the drug hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19, despite the lack of significant studies demonstrating its effectiveness, and despite concerns raised by medical professionals about the risks of side effects for some patients and about the need to maintain supplies of the drug for proven uses treating malaria, lupus,
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Seven Ways Trump Has Deepened His Corruption During COVID-19
Before COVID-19 struck, Donald Trump was already a deeply corrupt president — leveraging his presidential office to make money for his businesses, engaging in obstruction of the Russia investigation, pardoning cronies, pressuring Ukraine’s leader to launch a phony investigation of Democratic rival Joe Biden, and much more. But as with his incompetence, ignorance, bigotry, malevolence,
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