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whistleblowers
Warren Calls for Probe as Whistleblowers Accuse Trump Appointees of 'Systematically Destroying' Fair Housing Act
Warren says new whistleblower reports "show the extent of the Trump administration's attack on civil rights and show how the administration appears to be ignoring the law."
Sep 22, 2025
US Sen. Elizabeth Warren is calling for an investigation into the Department of Housing and Urban Development after several whistleblowers reported that Trump appointees have gutted enforcement of the decades-old law banning housing discrimination.
A New York Times report published Monday, quotes "half a dozen current and former employees of HUD’s fair housing office" who "said that the Trump political appointees had made it nearly impossible for them to do their jobs" enforcing the 1968 Fair Housing Act "which involve investigating and prosecuting landlords, real estate agents, lenders and others who discriminate based on race, religion, gender, family status or disability."
In a video posted to social media, Warren (D-Mass.) explained that “if you’re a mom protecting her kids from living with an abusive father or if you’re getting denied a mortgage because of the color of your skin, you have civil rights protection under US law. But the Trump administration has been systematically destroying these federal protections for renters and homeowners.”
According to the Times, when President Donald Trump's Department of Government Efficiency, formerly led by billionaire Elon Musk, launched its crusade to dismantle large parts of the federal government at the start of Trump's second term earlier this year, the Office of Fair Housing (OFH) had its staff cut by 65% through layoffs and reassignments, with the number of employees dropping from 31 to 11. Just six of the remaining staff now work on fair housing cases.
The number of discrimination charges pursued by the office has plummeted since Trump took office. In most years, it has 35. During Trump's second term, the office has pursued just four. Meanwhile, it's obtained just $200,000 total in legal settlements after previously obtaining anywhere from $4 million to $8 million per year.
Emails and memos obtained by the Times show a pattern of Trump appointees obstructing investigations:
In one email, a Trump appointee... described decades of housing discrimination cases as “artificial, arbitrary, and unnecessary.”
In another, a career supervisor in the department’s [OFH] objected to lawyers being reassigned to other offices; the supervisor was fired six days later for insubordination.
In a third, the office’s director of enforcement warned that Trump appointees were using gag orders and intimidation to block discrimination cases from moving forward. The urgent message was sent to a US senator, who is referring it to the department’s acting inspector general for investigation.
Several lawyers said they have been restricted from using past cases in enforcement and communicating with certain clients without approval from Trump's appointees.
A memo also reportedly went out to employees informing them that documents “contrary to administration policy” would be thrown out, and that “tenuous theories of discrimination” would no longer be pursued.
Among those supposedly "tenuous" cases have been ones involving appraisal bias—the practice of undervaluing homes owned by Black families—zoning restrictions blocking housing for Black and Latino families, and cases related to discrimination against people over gender or gender expression.
The administration has also abandoned cases related to the racist practice of "redlining"—the decades-old practice of denying mortgages to minorities and others in minority neighborhoods—with memos from Trump appointees calling the concept "legally unsound."
The changes follow a sweeping set of executive orders from Trump during his first week in office, targeting "diversity equity, and inclusion" (DEI) programs. Employees at the Office of Fair Housing told the Times that Trump appointees had begun to describe much of the department's work as "an offshoot of DEI."
A HUD spokesperson, Kasey Lovett, told the Times that it was "patently false" to suggest that the administration was trying to weaken the Fair Housing Act. She pointed out that HUD was still handling approximately 4,100 cases this year, on par with the previous year. As the Times notes, "Lovett did not address, however, how many of the cases had been investigated or had resulted in legal action."
According to the Times:
Hundreds of pending fair housing cases were frozen, and some settlements revoked, even when accusations of discrimination had been substantiated, according to the interviews and the internal communications.
In one instance, a large homeowner’s association in Texas was found to have banned the use of housing vouchers by Black residents. That case had been referred to the Justice Department, but the referral was abruptly withdrawn by the new Trump appointees.
Four current staff members have provided the trove of documents to Warren, who announced Monday that she'd sent a request to Brian Harrison, HUD’s acting inspector general, to open an investigation into its handling of discrimination cases.
Warren said that the documents "show the extent of the Trump administration's attack on civil rights and show how the administration appears to be ignoring the law."
In a press release from the Democrats on the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, Warren, the ranking member, highlighted the particularly devastating impact staffing cuts have had on the enforcement of complaints under the Violence Against Women Act, which the Times says only two of the six lawyers remaining at HUD have experience with.
According to Warren, whistleblowers said the cuts were "placing survivors in greater danger of suffering additional trauma, physical violence, and even death."
Warren said that as a result of the hundreds of dropped cases, "Now people are asking, 'well, why would I file a case at all if nothing's going to happen?'"
Calling for an independent investigation, Warren said, "We wrote these laws to make this a fairer America, and now it's time to enforce those laws."
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I’ve Seen States Collapse; Now I See It Happening Here
After years reporting from post-authoritarian states, I now see the same patterns in my own backyard—where justice has collapsed, truth is suppressed, and power no longer answers to the people.
Sep 07, 2025
I’ve seen the aftermath of collapsed nations—now I see it happening here.
As a journalist and analyst, I’ve spent the last several years living and reporting in regions that have undergone massive political transformations. I lived for years in the Czech Republic, where I met many people with direct ties to the Velvet Revolution. I walked the streets of Prague with those who once occupied them in protest. I studied the Russian language, traveled extensively through the former Eastern Bloc, and listened closely to the survivors of failed regimes—those who remember the slow unraveling of authority, trust, and truth.
I’ve also spent significant time in South America, where I witnessed a very different kind of collapse—and rebirth. In Bolivia, I spoke with officials and journalists who lived through the 2019 coup and saw their country fight its way back to democracy. I’ve walked with communities who understand, firsthand, how empires and juntas collapse—and how people organize in the rubble.
Now I believe this country is collapsing.
Not in the dramatic, Hollywood fashion we tend to imagine—there are no tanks in the streets, no blackout zones or food lines. But what I am witnessing now in Northern Kentucky, through my work with the Northern Kentucky Truth & Accountability Project (NKTAP), is unmistakable: a slow-motion institutional implosion. And it mirrors what I have seen in failed or failing states around the world.
In Northern Kentucky, I’ve uncovered a network of corruption that spans law enforcement, prosecutorial offices, courts, and local media. I’ve documented how whistleblowers are silenced, public records denied, and criminal cases manipulated to protect the powerful.
Police ignore credible murder leads. Prosecutors bury evidence. Courts issue orders without hearings. And journalists—some out of fear, others out of complicity—refuse to report the truth. In my own case, I’ve faced obstruction, threats, targeted harassment, and retaliatory smears simply for investigating what any decent system should have investigated itself.
Our institutions are no longer capable of self-correction. That means the burden of accountability, truth telling, and justice now falls on us.
The structures of governance still stand. The buildings are still open. But the rule of law has collapsed in all but name. What remains is theater—a simulation of justice that functions to preserve power, not serve the public.
This isn’t just about Northern Kentucky. It’s a microcosm. I’m in touch with colleagues around the country—investigators, reporters, former civil servants—and I hear the same story again and again:
- Entire state agencies captured by private interests;
- Local governments ignoring open records laws;
- Whistleblowers retaliated against without recourse;
- Judges ruling from sealed dockets with no oversight;
- Public health policy shaped by ideology, not science; and
- Independent journalism gutted, bought, or blacklisted.
We are in a moment of mass epistemic failure, where truth itself is destabilized and power no longer answers to reason, law, or fact.
It doesn’t come with a bang. It comes with:
- The quiet refusal to investigate credible crimes;
- The steady normalization of lawlessness;
- The dissolution of public trust; and
- The emergence of parallel systems of truth-telling and justice.
This is what I’ve seen before. In Prague. In La Paz. In the fractured republics of the former USSR. It begins when the official channels of accountability no longer function—and the people must build their own.
That’s what I’m doing with the Northern Kentucky Truth & Accountability Project. We’re documenting. Archiving. Speaking to victims. Exposing public records that local officials tried to bury. We’re creating a people’s archive—a living record of a regime in decline.
Because when institutions stop telling the truth, the only way forward is to tell it ourselves.
I used to believe that America was “different”—that our legal tradition, constitutional system, and civic institutions would inoculate us from the kinds of collapse I saw abroad. I no longer believe that.
The US is not collapsing because it is uniquely broken. It is collapsing because it is a state like any other, vulnerable to the same corruption, elite decay, and loss of legitimacy that have brought down countless systems before.
The question is not whether collapse is happening. It is. The question is what we do after we accept that reality.
We can pretend this is just “polarization.” We can tell ourselves that if we just wait for the next election, the pendulum will swing back. Or we can admit the truth: Our institutions are no longer capable of self-correction. That means the burden of accountability, truth telling, and justice now falls on us—on journalists, organizers, whistleblowers, and ordinary people with the courage to say: enough.
I’ve seen what happens when people organize. I’ve also seen what happens when they don’t.
And I’m telling you: Now is the time to choose.
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'Cowardice': Senate GOP Brushes Whistleblowers Aside to Confirm Trump Loyalist Emil Bove
"Bove, facing a wave of damning allegations that the overwhelming majority of Republican senators refused to take seriously, has been confirmed for one reason only: obedience to Trump."
Jul 30, 2025
Nearly every Senate Republican on Tuesday voted in favor of confirming Trump loyalist Emil Bove to a lifetime federal court seat, brushing aside whistleblowers who alleged that the Justice Department official expressed support for defying court orders and lied during his sworn judiciary committee testimony.
The final Senate vote on Bove's confirmation to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit was 50-49, with every member of the Democratic caucus voting no. Just two Republicans—Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska—opposed Bove's confirmation.
Maggie Jo Buchanan, interim executive director of the advocacy group Demand Justice, said the vote "represents some of the worst aspects of far too many elected to office in Washington—cowardice and political expediency over duty to constituents."
"The American people want and deserve judges who are independent and fair, not ones who have done nothing to hide their political loyalties," she added. "Bove, facing a wave of damning allegations that the overwhelming majority of Republican senators refused to take seriously, has been confirmed for one reason only: obedience to Trump."
Tuesday's vote came hours after The Washington Post reported that a third whistleblower had shared evidence with senators suggesting that Bove "misled lawmakers about his handling of the dismissal of public corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams."
Democratic senators demanded an investigation into the allegations before the final vote to confirm Bove, but Republicans rushed ahead with the vote anyway.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) said in a statement following Tuesday's vote that "this sham, hide-the-ball confirmation process is a new low for subservient Senate Republicans."
"Even as the lawless Emil Bove appears to have misled the committee about multiple, credible, backstopped allegations of misconduct, this body has sunk to simply being a partisan rubber stamp for President Trump," said Whitehouse. "Republicans have ignored whistleblower after whistleblower who bravely came forward to corroborate evidence of Bove's misconduct."
"Bove's confirmation sets the stage for the president and his allies to seek out favorable rulings, no matter how unconstitutional their actions may be."
Whistleblower Aid, a group representing one of the Bove whistleblowers, said prior to Tuesday's vote that Trump's Justice Department claimed to have lost a complaint "documenting Emil Bove's contempt for the rule of law" before finding it again on Monday.
The group noted that the Justice Department's Office of Inspector General "received an online copy of the complaint from Whistleblower Aid on May 2 and signed in a couriered copy three days later." The complaint, according to Whistleblower Aid, "provided documentary evidence that Bove and other senior DOJ officials instructed department lawyers to violate a court order relating to the Trump administration's immigration deportation policies."
"They also directed DOJ lawyers to commit perjury in federal court to cover up the violation, the evidence shows," according to the group. "Yet the office now says the documents were lost and refound only after Whistleblower Aid presented proof of submission and receipt. Evidence relevant to the Senate's final vote on the Bove nomination has thus sat unacknowledged for almost three months, foreclosing the possibility of any meaningful investigation into a lifetime judicial appointment."
Last month, The New York Times reported that one whistleblower—a DOJ lawyer who has since been fired—alleged that Bove said earlier this year that the Justice Department "would need to consider telling the courts 'fuck you'" if they ruled against the Trump administration's attempts to deport immigrants without due process.
Caroline Ciccone, president of the watchdog group Accountable.US, said Tuesday that Bove's confirmation "should send a chill down the spine of every American."
"Bove has shown total loyalty to Trump above the American people; refused to commit to recusing himself on cases involving the president; and is the subject of multiple whistleblower complaints," said Ciccone. "His extreme ideological record and ethical lapses have raised grave concerns about his integrity, but that didn't stop Republican senators from ramming his confirmation through, falling in line with Trump's scheme of hand-selecting judges who vow personal loyalty over the rule of law."
"Bove's confirmation sets the stage for the president and his allies to seek out favorable rulings, no matter how unconstitutional their actions may be," she warned. "And that is a threat to fundamental freedoms everywhere."
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