Two of the federal workers who filed an emergency complaint about the Department of Housing and Urban Development speak out about the Trump administration’s actions.
It should not have come as a shock. The Trump administration’s agenda to roll back civil rights was outlined in Project 2025, the 900-page roadmap written by conservative think tanks and former administration officials. Upon his inauguration, the president began issuing executive orders, ending programs, halting investigations, and appointing anti–civil rights loyalists to key positions in his government. Some democratic leaders spoke out and condemned budget cuts and layoffs. But in the months since, the administration has largely gotten away with casting its actions as reining in cumbersome DEI regulations or cutting corporate red tape. It has taken organizing by the very same workers who are the most under attack to sound the alarm about what is really going on. Namely, this nation’s progress on civil rights and equality under the law is being reversed, ended in front of our eyes with clear intent and it’s happening fast.
Recently, four attorneys and staff workers at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD’s Office of General Counsel and Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity, went public with an emergency complaint, which they filed through US Senator Elizabeth Warren’s office, and taken to the press. I spoke with two of those courageous whistleblowers about what made their actions necessary. Paul Osadebe is an attorney working in the federal government, a shop steward for the American Federation of Government Employees, or AFGE, Local 476 in Washington, DC, and a member of the Federal Unionists Network. Palmer Heenan is also an attorney working in the federal government and also a member of AFGE and FUN.
The two were fired by HUD shortly after our conversation, in what has been called a “stunning act of illegal retaliation.”
Laura Flanders: Lay out some of the key points in your whistleblower complaint.
Paul Osadebe: Civil rights enforcement at HUD and throughout the federal government is being dismantled. If you are someone who’s renting or trying to buy a home, if you’re a veteran with a disability or a survivor or someone who’s being discriminated against based on your race or for having kids, you’re supposed to get help. The problem is we are being stopped from helping you. When you come to us with a complaint, it might not even get investigated because of the staffing cuts or because political appointees say that, “We don’t want to look into that type of case anymore. That’s DEI now. We’re just not going to do that.”
LF: Who is making these decisions?
Palmer Heenan: Recently installed political leaders within HUD. Some of them are, and some of them aren’t attorneys. But the fact of the matter is our office represents the most experienced group of fair housing advocates, practically across the country. In large part, that’s because our office was created during the Reagan administration to do this work. The government required HUD to investigate cases, and that’s our investigative arm, the Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity. They created our office as essentially the prosecutors. We’re the ones that are bringing the fair housing cases. We are the ones that recruit some of the top fair-housing advocates, administration in and administration out. There are many people in our office that have served in Republican and Democratic administrations, and that’s because housing isn’t political, or at least it shouldn’t be. But because of the decisions that are being made now, it’s become a political issue and the downstream consequences are going to be catastrophic.
LF: I hear both of your passions for this work and your concern about those who are not going to be served or even helped. You and the folks at FUN, the Federal Unionist Network are standing up, and I want to hear more about what is making that possible.
PO: The thing that will actually get us through this is solidarity, recognizing what potential power we have as federal workers in the workplace and building connections among each other, learning the skills to actually do that, even in an atmosphere of extreme fear. That is the method of the administration. They want to create fear, which leads to silence, which lets things be dismantled without anyone standing up and saying, “This is illegal, this is wrong, and this is harming people.” It’s up to federal workers, the ones in the building, to actually do that. That’s what FUN is about. We make sure that people know that they’re not alone, that there are people who are ready to fight and know how, and that it is our job to not just sit here and take it or be apolitical. When political appointees won’t let you do your job, it’s up to you to defend your agency and to come together with your coworkers who are all under attack and protect yourselves, your agency, and the people that we serve.
LF: And I should say it’s not a coincidence that the two of you are union members as well. FUN is not a union, but you are members of AFGE.
PH: That’s exactly right. We were able to work collectively before all of this, and extend our natural feeling towards community along with our union membership to come together, and say, “Whatever risk there is to us is outweighed by the risk to the people that we serve. Part of our duty and part of our oath as federal workers is to take action. If that means going public and losing our livelihoods, that’s what we have to do.”
LF: Palmer, would you describe yourself as a far-left radical?
PH: Absolutely not. I would not describe myself as a far-left radical. I would describe myself as someone who has spent their legal career trying to help people, regardless of their politics, when they’ve been discriminated against based on any of the protected classes under the Fair Housing Act. Your religion, your race, your color, your sex, your national origin, because of disability status. There are so many protected categories. Every American is protected by the Fair Housing Act. In my work, politics don’t matter. What matters is somebody comes to me, I investigate their case, and if there’s reasonable cause to believe discrimination occurred, I go after the one that hurt them. Because in this country, we don’t allow that, or at least we didn’t allow that.
LF: Donald Trump and his family in the 1970s, before the establishment of your office, were brought up on charges of discrimination against Black and Latino residents in their housing developments. Is it crazy to think the guy just holds a grudge?
PO: They’ve been pretty consistent from the first administration until now that they’re not super happy with housing enforcement. It seems like they’re much more concerned with the opinions of developers, landlords, people who want to discriminate than they are with the ordinary Americans that face discrimination every day, the thousands of people that make complaints and the far more than that, that never make a complaint. I don’t know why they do what they do. It doesn’t seem to help people.
LF: What do you hope will come of an inspector general investigation?
PH: I hope that it gives transparency into the inner workings of HUD and how these cuts, these reassignments, this dismantlement has impacted the work we do. The inspector general already found that our office was understaffed and that meant case processing times were through the roof. These cuts to both our office and the investigative part of HUD, the Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity, are going to make those wait times even longer, putting aside the hundreds of cases that have already been withdrawn, stalled out, or cases where settlements have been revoked or reduced, or what have you. We need transparency from an investigation so that the American people can see the full scope of what it is that’s been done at HUD. It’s only then that we’re really going to be able to start to fix it.
LF: Paul, you were one of the founding members of FUN. How has the organization grown? Would you say there is a rising tide of previously unorganized people moving into action?
PO: I was an early member, not sure if I quite classify myself as a founder, but it existed before this administration. We saw we would have to be ready for the possibility of an administration that didn’t value federal workers and the protections we provide or was anti-worker and anti-union. Now that moment has come and that’s why FUN has really exploded over the last several months. We are trying to organize people who are currently under attack, who are still employed, the people who have already been fired or who were chased out of their job through the Deferred Resignation Program. Anyone who values federal work and protecting the American people, we are trying to get those people more organized, more trained, and more ready to use every tool at their disposal and to recognize their power. That’s what FUN is about. I believe we will see more people doing things like what we have just done, because workers are the ones who know best about how to protect their agency and serve the public. As long as we understand that it’s our position to do that and our oath demands us to do that, I think we’re going to see a lot more action and fight from federal workers and our allies.
Laura Flanders
Laura Flanders is the author of several books, the host of the nationally syndicated public television show (and podcast) The Laura Flanders Show and the recipient of a 2019 Lannan Cultural Freedom Fellowship.
