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.
Cancel Your Washington Post Subscription
With American democracy on the line in just a few days, of course people opposed to Donald Trump are wasting time fighting with each other on social media this weekend. This time it’s about whether folks should cancel their subscriptions to the Washington Post in the wake of that paper’s decision to spike an editorial
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Non-Profit Keiser University Holds Partisan Event in Run-Up to Election
The LinkedIn page, and X profile, of Florida’s Keiser University reported last month that on September 13 the school “hosted a public policy forum in West Palm Beach featuring discussions on safety and the economy.” But the Facebook page of Florida state Representative and state Senate candidate Randy Fine, a Republican who participated in the
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GOP Attorneys General Shop for Judges in Effort to Crush Student Loan Debtors
When a federal trial judge in St. Louis issued an order last week blocking the latest Biden-Harris administration student loan relief plan, the Republican state attorneys general who filed the case gleefully celebrated yet another court victory over Americans struggling to pay their college debts. But those GOP AGs apparently don’t want to discuss the
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The Reason Judge Merchan Should Send Donald Trump to Prison
New York state trial judge Juan Merchan is scheduled to sentence Donald Trump on September 18, after the former president’s May 30 conviction by a jury of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in the first degree. Judge Merchan could decide to delay the sentence pending legal proceedings regarding the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision
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Department of Education Opens Trove of Reports on College Abuses
Last week, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Federal Student Aid (FSA) took some long-overdue steps toward sharing with the public critical information about its dealings with troubled colleges. One new web page provides details on the Department’s Program Participation Agreements with schools, the contracts that set out the terms for eligibility for federal
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5 Reasons Trump Was Our Worst President Ever
A group of 150 academic experts recently rated Donald Trump the worst president in US history. Why might that be? Here are five reasons: 1. Leadership failures. Trump concealed the dangers of COVID-19 because he was worried about his political popularity. He promoted phony treatments and suggested we inject bleach in our bodies. As a
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Groups Urge Biden To Cancel Debt of Students of Perdoceo’s Brooks Institute
A dozen advocacy groups, including the NAACP and the Debt Collective, on Wednesday wrote to U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona, calling on the Biden Administration to cancel the student loan debt of borrowers who attended the for-profit Brooks Institute, which from 1999 until just before its 2016 closure was owned by for-profit giant Career
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Florida’s City College Suddenly Announces Closing
Hollywood, Florida’s City College has suddenly announced it is closing. According to WPLG-10 television, the school, which has offered degrees in health care careers, sent an email to students Monday saying the school will “cease enrollment and teach-out its existing programs.” The email said the school “anticipates” continuing to teach students through the fall and
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