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.
House Chairman Threatens to Subpoena DeVos Over Dream Center Debacle
House Education and Labor Committee chairman Bobby Scott (D-VA) is threatening to subpoena Trump Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, citing her Department’s failure to provide documents responsive to the Committee’s probe of the collapse of Dream Center Education Holdings. DCEH was a non-profit entity that acquired and, for about a year until it shut down,
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Ukraine Scandal’s Gordon Sondland Invested in Predatory College Loans
American Banker has examined investments held by Gordon Sondland, the hotelier who parlayed donations to the GOP into a post as U.S. ambassador to the European Union and apparently sought to implement President Trump’s disgraceful effort to pressure Ukraine into investigating Joe Biden. The publication found that, in addition to operating luxury hotels, Sondland
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Bill in Congress Would End Taxpayer Aid to For-Profit Colleges. Good.
Today Representative Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) and Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) introduced a bill that would bar the Department of Education from sending federal student grants and loans to for-profit colleges. I support this legislation, at the very least for its value as a wake up call to a bad-behaving industry and its paid cheerleaders in
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Our Country Needs To Wake Up
Our country needs to wake up. We have a president who is extraordinarily corrupt, dishonest, incompetent, unbalanced, immature, vindictive, racist, misogynist, and who acts with utter contempt for the law and utter disregard for our security. It’s time for everyone, every day, to say this person is not capable of serving as president. Today, the
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She’s Not Going To Jail, But DeVos Needs To Act On Predatory College Collapses
While a federal judge pondered throwing the book at Betsy DeVos for abusing ex-students of a shuttered predatory for-profit college chain, DeVos’s Department of Education seemed to finally take a small step to protect students and taxpayers from the possible collapse of another of these institutions. Monday morning in federal court in San Francisco, U.S.
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Koch Puppet to Trump Henchman: Mike Pompeo’s Never Gonna Be President Now
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is stonewalling, using contrived excuses to delay House investigators from questioning State Department officials who have information relevant to the Trump impeachment inquiry. He’s also been concealing his own involvement: It emerged last night that Pompeo actually listened live to the fated call between Donald Trump and Ukraine president Volodymyr
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Our Republican Politicians Have Left America
The President of the United States was caught red-handed engaging in a blatant crime against our country: using hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars, committed by Congress for national security purposes, and the new Ukrainian president’s interest in a White House meeting, as leverage to pressure that foreign leader to announce a corruption investigation of
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CFPB Probes, Rebukes Controversial College Operator CEHE
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is investigating student loan practices at the college chain operator Center for Excellence in Higher Education (CEHE), which already has been facing law enforcement actions by the U.S. Justice Department and the Colorado attorney general. Filings posted on the CFPB website show that the controversial college operator this spring
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