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 Hiring Consultant To Figure Out Why Morale Is Low. Really?
Politico reports that Betsy DeVos’s Department of Education is looking to hire an outside consultant to help determine why employee satisfaction has fallen significantly as compared with where it stood at the end of the Obama administration. Back then, about 60 percent of employees in the Department’s Office of Elementary and Secondary Education said they were
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Trump Terrible 10: Horseface Caravan Body Slam Edition
While reports of West Wing scuffling exposed Kelly, John, and Corey as the Aryan Three Stooges, and Jared’s favorite monarch continued telling tall tales about the brutal murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, POTUS took his own lying, and schoolboy insults, to new lows. America, if you go to the polls and ratify this vileness, you…
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For-Profit College Chain Claims Financial Distress, Sues DeVos
The for-profit college chain Education Corporation of America (ECA) has filed a lawsuit against Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and is headed to federal court in Alabama today, seeking an emergency order from a court to appoint a receiver, protect the school from creditors and evictions, and keep taxpayer dollars flowing to school owners. In
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What Trump says are hoaxes are true. What Trump says are true are hoaxes.
This morning, President Donald Trump told reporters, among other things: — Regarding the apparent murder of Jamal Khashoggi: “It sounded to me like maybe these could have been rogue killers — who knows.” Yes, rogue killers somehow snuck into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, killed Khashoggi, and removed him so skillfully that the Saudis believed
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Trump Terrible 10: Saudi Edition
We’re Doing An Incredible Job™. Even though we’re being Treated Very Unfairly™. Since 2017, Republic Report‘s “Trump Terrible 10” has ranked the week’s 10 most disgraceful people in Trump world. Republic Report, which focuses on how money corrupts democracy, has met its abusive dream mate with the kleptocratic administration of President Donald J. Trump. Trump and his lieutenants
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Trump’s Aggressive Plans to Stifle Democracy
In a Trump administration where policy, on issues from taxes to education to the environment, is skewed sharply in favor of wealthy special interests and driven by officials who previously served as corporate lobbyists, and where the president himself mocks victims of sexual assault, makes common cause with racists, and seems to believe the justice
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Trump Terrible 10: Kavanaugh Kloture Kanye Edition
Wow. I didn’t realize that sons and fathers could be accused, in addition to regular men. Now that I get it, I’m all in to confirm for the Supreme Court someone who’s lying. Anyway… The President said the FBI should investigate fully, while his henchmen made sure that instead, the investigation was heavily constricted, with
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CBS Exposé on Wozniak Coding Camp Raises Questions About Student Loans
The net is buzzing over a CBS News investigative report this morning about Woz U, the coding bootcamp fronted by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. CBS says it interviewed more than two dozen current and former Woz U students and employees, who spoke of poor quality programs and a culture of relentless high-pressure recruiting. But one
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