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.
As Pompeo Rounds Out Koch Administration, Perils for Climate Change
As Mike Pompeo faces the Senate Foreign Relations Committee today in his hearing to be Secretary of State, there are numerous reasons to oppose his confirmation: his seeming enthusiasm for military conflict with Iran and North Korea, his blatant promotion of Islamophobia, his support for waterboarding of prisoners, his hostility to LGBT rights, his opposition
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Pruitt’s Successes, Like Pruitt’s Offenses, Are Rooted in Corruption
Scott Pruitt is under heavy fire for an unbelievably long list of ways that he’s sought to wrap himself in luxury and security while running the EPA. The list includes, so far, regular first-class flights, private jets, frequent trips home to Oklahoma, questionable overseas travel, a troubling Paris layover, a soundproof booth in his office,
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Senators Demand Probes of For-Profit College Shifts to Non-Profit
In two separate letters sent over the past week, Democratic U.S. senators are demanding government investigations of a wave of troubling conversions of bad-acting for-profit colleges into non-profit educational institutions. In these finalized or proposed transformations, for-profit school chains — including Kaplan, Grand Canyon, EDMC, Bridgepoint, CollegeAmerica, Ultimate Medical Academy, and Keiser — are changing
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Grassley Attacks ACICS-Approved For-Profit Colleges As “Visa Mills”
As Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos seems to be moving toward restoring her department’s blessings on the discredited college accrediting body ACICS, a powerful Republican has sent a letter that cites tawdry practices at a number of ACICS-approved schools. Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Charles Grassley has written to Homeland Security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen seeking answers about U.S.
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Senators Question DeVos Aide’s Potential Conflicts of Interest
Four Democratic senators — Catherine Cortez Masto (NV), Dick Durbin (IL), Elizabeth Warren (MA), and Kamala Harris (CA) — have sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Education’s ethics official expressing concerns about Acting Under Secretary James Manning’s potential conflicts of interest. Manning is a career Department official whom Trump education secretary Betsy DeVos, in
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Trump Terrible 10: I Am Very Happy Edition
People are standing up to him, abandoning him, rejecting him, mocking him, informing on him; Bob Mueller and ladies are closing in; and Donald Trump’s all: everything’s great here, I’m very happy with my team, everyone wants to work for me, believe me. Um, defensive much? Since 2017, Republic Report‘s “Trump Terrible 10” has ranked the week’s
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Congratulating Putin? Trump Knows What He’s Doing, Believe Me
Washington’s upheaval of the hour is about Donald Trump, against the directions of his advisers, congratulating Vladimir Putin on his election victory in Russia. Trump’s action seems like a disgrace, given that Putin rigged the Russian election, interfered in the U.S. election, poisoned two exiled Russians in Britain, invaded Ukraine, etc., and given Trump’s general
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Vets Say For-Profit School Didn’t Warn Them GI Bill Funding Was Threatened, and Now It’s Gone
Veterans in Jacksonville, Florida, say that for-profit Florida Career College didn’t warn them before they enrolled that the school was in danger of losing its eligibility for GI Bill funding from the Department of Veterans Affairs, according to a local TV report from Action News Jax. And now the school has lost its GI Bill eligibility,
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