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.
Trump Declared “Total Acquittal.” Here’s Why It Wasn’t.
At his White House “celebration” today, President Trump called the outcome of his impeachment a “total acquittal.” A White House statement declared that the process “ended with the full vindication and exoneration of President Trump by the Senate.” At the end of the trial, Chief Justice John Roberts declared, “It is, therefore, ordered and adjudged
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Her Firm Represented Awful For-Profit Colleges. Now She’s DeVos’s Enforcement Chief.
Trump education secretary Betsy DeVos gutted her department’s student aid enforcement unit, which was created during the Obama administration to crack down on predatory abuses and scams by for-profit colleges. Now DeVos has put in charge of college investigations a lawyer who represented for-profit colleges, from a law firm, Cooley, whose clients have included some
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ITT Tech Directors Get Away With It, But Modany Still Faces Claims
An Indiana federal judge has let the directors of collapsed, disgraced for-profit college ITT Tech off the hook, rejecting claims from the company’s bankruptcy trustee that the board’s failure to fire CEO Kevin Modany breached their fiduciary duties. But U.S. District Court Judge James Patrick Hanlon rejected Modany’s own effort to escape liability, ruling that
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Sean Spicer Shills for Predatory For-Profit Colleges
As White House press secretary, he started off telling us the falsehood that President Trump drew the biggest inaugural crowd ever, then defended Trump’s lie that millions voted fraudulently in 2016, and kept going downhill from there. Seeking his fortune after leaving the administration, Sean Spicer started his own consulting firm, became an advisor to
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Adam Schiff: The truth matters. Otherwise we are lost.
Some of the closing words of Rep. Adam Schiff’s summation tonight in the Senate impeachment trial of Donald Trump are below, along with the video. Trump has ceaselessly attacked Schiff, calling him names, mocking his physical appearance, questioning his integrity without a shred of justification. Schiff has carried on with skill, intelligence, dignity, and purpose,
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The Trump Coalition: Rich People and Angry People Coming Together
In 2007, after the Republican Party had suffered a crushing midterm election defeat, the American Prospect magazine asked me, and others, to offer new slogans for the seemingly imperiled GOP, which had announced a “rebranding” project. My idea was: Rich People and Angry People Coming Together. Rich people love the GOP’s tax cuts for rich
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The 30 Most Disgraceful People of the Trump Administration, So Far
On Monday we will be three full years into the Donald Trump presidency, a period marked by relentless corruption of our democracy to benefit wealthy special interests, as well as to soothe Trump’s own vanity and vindictiveness. Until late 2018, Republic Report published a weekly “Trump Terrible 10,” counting down the ten most disgraceful people
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Judge Rejects Dream Center Claim of Blamelessness in Art Institutes Deceptions
A federal judge in Chicago on Monday rejected a motion by the Dream Center Foundation to be dismissed from a lawsuit brought by former students who claim they were deceived by the Illinois Institute of Art. The Dream Center Foundation (DCF), a faith-oriented charitable organization based in Los Angeles, in 2017 acquired the Illinois school,
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