Maximillian Alvarez:  Whistleblowers working in the federal government are going public with an emergency alarm message from within the Department of Housing and Urban Development. According to their formal whistleblower complaint — Which they have already filed with Sen. Elizabeth Warren from Massachusetts, who herself will be formally notifying HUD Inspector General Brian D. Harrison and requesting the contained charges be thoroughly investigated.

“HUD leadership has already violated the law and taken actions that will result in legal violations, gross mismanagement, gross waste of funds, and present a specific danger to public health and safety.” The complaints were filed by four attorneys and staff workers at HUD’s Office of General Counsel and Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity.

In their first on-air appearance, we are speaking with two of those four whistleblowers here on The Real News now. They are speaking with us on their own behalf, not on behalf of HUD or any office therein.

Welcome to you both. Thank you so much for being here and for speaking with us. Please, let’s start by introducing yourselves, and give our audience a short summary of the allegations that you have presented to Sen. Warren.

Paul Osadebe:  Sure. So I’m Paul Osadebe. I’m a trial attorney in the Department of Housing and Urban Development Office of General Counsel, Fair Housing, and I’m also a steward with AFGE Local 476, and an organizer with the Federal Unionists Network.

To put it simply, we work on housing. We make sure that people have safe and affordable and equal housing in this country, that everyone has the chance to achieve the American dream and have a roof over their head. And that’s what we came to HUD to work on.

But every avenue that we have to do that crucial work is being dismantled piece by piece from political interference, and going as far as to remove complaints that have already been investigated and where we’ve already found that someone discriminated against an American, or removing settlements.

We’re talking about political interference when it comes to gag orders, restricting our ability to talk with complainants or other parts of HUD or other federal agencies. We’re talking about restricting our ability to make sure that federal funding is spent without facilitating discrimination or allowing discrimination to happen.

Every way that someone could come to us and get help for free and see that someone is speaking with the voice of the American people and with the government, all of that is being dismantled.

And we knew that as that was happening, we couldn’t just stay silent and allow that to happen. And we knew that by coming forward there was going to be some risk to us, of course, but people fought and marched and bled and died for these rights that we enforce. That’s our job. And as part of that job, we took an oath to the American people to defend the Constitution, to defend them.

And in that moment I think that required us to organize, to talk with each other as coworkers, as union members, and to say, this is wrong. The law has to be enforced. People need equal access to housing, period, and it’s our job to make sure that they get it.

And what that meant in this moment was going public to tell the American people, to tell Congress and the inspector general what is being broken under Secretary Scott Turner’s watch. And we had to do it. There was no other choice.

Palmer Heenan:  Thanks, Paul, and thanks, Max, for having us. We really appreciate it. My name is Palmer Heenan. I’m also a trial attorney in the Office of General Counsel, Fair Housing Enforcement. Also, I’m a member of the AFGE 476 union as well.

Paul mentioned that when we came to the federal government, we took oath, and that is absolutely true. And part of that oath was to ensure that the law is faithfully executed. That is particularly true in our office. We are one of the only federal agencies that is charged and, in fact, required by Congress to investigate and prosecute discrimination across the country. Our investigators wear badges, they are law enforcement agencies. That is what Congress has charged them with. And that is the oath that we took when we decided to take these positions.

And the frank fact of the matter is that right now discrimination is not being prosecuted. Fair housing laws are not being enforced. And what that means is that every American is less able to secure safe and stable housing. And that’s why we decided to go public because our mission — And not just our mission, but the oath that we swore was to make that happen for our fellow Americans, and that’s not what we’re being allowed. And so we felt that we had no choice but to go public despite, as Paul said, possible risk to ourselves.

Maximillian Alvarez:  It’s a real shame that our history is forgotten so quickly. And folks may be hearing this wondering, well, what’s the point of civil rights law enforcement at HUD? And I’m here sitting in Baltimore, the home of redlining, where racial segregation in housing was perfected and exported around the rest of the country. So if you’ve forgotten that part of our history, you should really pick up a book and educate yourself.

Let’s take a quick step back and make sure that people watching have the necessary inside context that they need to understand the weight, scope, and impact of what we’re talking about here. Can you tell us more about the jobs that you do, the day-to-day work that those jobs entail, and the functions of the offices within HUD that you work at?

Paul Osadebe:  Sure. So, like I said before, what we do is enforce fair housing. We make sure that everyone has the backing of the government so that when someone discriminates against them or restricts housing, the government is there to say, that’s wrong and you have to stop.

So, we do that in a bunch of different ways. We prosecute complaints; we investigate complaints; we help people settle complaints without going through the entire litigation process; we help write regulations; we advise Congress on when they pass a law that might implicate civil rights, we tell them what effect that’s going to have; and when the federal government parcels out money to build housing or rebuild housing after a natural disaster, we make sure that that’s done in compliance with all civil rights requirements; and when the government itself provides housing through vouchers or public housing, we make sure that those housing providers are not discriminating, they’re not restricting people and kicking them out of housing, or they’re not building housing so inaccessible that parts of the population can’t even use that housing. That’s what we do.

And every element that I just talked about is something that we are now being restricted from doing. And that’s a real tragedy for the American people because there is no private sector version of a lot of the things that we do. There’s no law firm or nonprofit that can speak with the power of the government and has the resources and authority that we have.

So, when people lose that, they’re losing something fundamental to the American dream, to the economy, to their lives. And it has a real, concrete impact. It’s not just abstract. It impacts not just your housing, your employment, your healthcare, your education, your physical safety, everything is tied back to that. And that’s why it’s so important that we’re allowed to do what we do. And sadly, right now we’re not.

Palmer Heenan:  Paul’s absolutely right. Year in, year out, decade in, decade out, through Republican administrations and Democratic administrations, no matter who was in charge, people saw the importance, until now, of enforcing these fair housing laws.

And when we talk about fair housing law enforcement, I think people have an abstract notion of what that means. So, I just want to take a second to talk about the kinds of cases that our office investigates because Paul said it: This doesn’t just affect housing, but this whole set of other concerns. Stable housing, safe housing is one of the strongest correlates with childhood health outcomes in existence. It affects the whole kit and caboodle.

The cases we investigate are things like lending discrimination, where a lender might just decide, well, that area, there are too many people who are Black, and so we’re going to charge more to get a mortgage in that area. And that means that if you want to live in that area, that’s an extra $100, $200, $500 out of your pocketbook. Those are cases that we investigate that we’re not investigating now.

Cases where a power plant or a garbage company decides we’re going to put our garbage dump or our power plant in the backyards of those people over there because they’re disfavored, they’re a member of a protected class, whatever it is. Those are cases where HUD was able to come in and say, hey, no, no, no. Folks don’t want a power plant or a garbage dump in their backyard. You gotta put that elsewhere. Those are cases that we’re not investigating.

Cases where a mom and her three kids are looking for a place to live, and a landlord says, I don’t want kids here. I just don’t want kids here. That’s a case that we investigated, and now we’re not investigating them. So even if that mom is able to find housing — Which is not guaranteed — And her and her three kids might be out on the street, the housing they’re going to find is not going to be as good.

We investigate cases that involve housing providers that just don’t want to build accessible housing. So, the disabled veteran who was injured and maybe doesn’t have use of their legs anymore because of an injury they suffered serving our country, they literally can’t get in the door of that housing. Those are cases that we’re not able to investigate.

And finally, we investigate cases where federal funds themselves are being used. Cases where a county, a city, or an entity might decide they want to use federal dollars to discriminate. And part of our job was to prevent that kind of discrimination, that kind of fraud, that kind of waste, and that kind of abuse. We’re not able to investigate those cases anymore.

That’s what this means for people. It’s not just this idea of civil rights, it’s literally your day-to-day life because housing is your day-to-day life. Where you live is at the center of practically everything.

Maximillian Alvarez:  You mentioned, Paul, earlier that y’all are part of the Federal Unionists Network. And we’ve been interviewing federal workers and agencies across the board over these recent months. And the overwhelming response that we’re getting from folks is it’s chaos. And from people working at the VA, healthcare workers who are having more work piled onto fewer people, to people in the National Park Service having to do the same, to people at the CFPB, being fired en masse, and the NLRB being effectively rendered unfunctional.

So, I wanted to, continuing with that coverage, ask if you, as workers for the federal government, if you could give us an inside view of what you, your coworkers, and your clients have been experiencing at the Department of Housing and Urban Development over the past year. What does this look like for you all on the day-to-day basis? How has your work changed with the transition from the Biden administration to the new Trump administration? Walk us through that timeline and the course of events that led you to file this whistleblower complaint and go public with it.

Paul Osadebe:  It’s been, from day one, an attack from the top through everything that could possibly be used to help people, that was set up to help people, that’s what it’s been. So, from the beginning, there [have] been attacks on probationary employees. There’s been an atmosphere that’s so toxic that people felt the need to leave through the deferred resignation program — And then they did another one because they wanted to cut staffing and harm the ability of the agency to actually help people.

There’s been restrictions on our ability to talk to the public, to help complainants, to give legal advice. We’re lawyers that can’t give legal advice. That makes no sense.

Everything that you could imagine that could be done to slow down certain types of work, especially civil rights work, to disparage, to cause fear, to cause chaos, to have people so scared of what management might do that they’re censoring themselves.

That’s the environment that’s been created, and that does not save anybody any money. That does not improve safety or efficiency for anyone. It only causes harm to you out there who need someone to enforce their rights and to be concerned about everyday Americans and not just landlords and developers and people who can bend the government to their whim. We’re the ones who are here to serve the ordinary person who doesn’t have all that backing and all that money.

And because of that, that’s exactly why we’ve seen the attacks that you just talked about. And that’s exactly why we’ve had to come together in this moment. As much as we’ve been under attack and as much as our work has been restricted, we’ve recommitted to the importance of that work. And we’ve recommitted to each other, we’ve recommitted to our agency, and because of the intensity of the attacks towards us, the level of solidarity among us has increased dramatically.

And that’s what could make a public collective whistleblowing action like this possible. Because we saw that if we didn’t do something, if we were not the ones to speak out, we knew that things would be destroyed in silence and there wouldn’t be anyone to sound the alarm. And we knew that we couldn’t wait for someone else to do it, it had to be the people who were actually responsible for people’s safety and health, which is us — Federal workers, federal union members. It’s us who’s responsible.

And so that’s why we’ve come forward in this way through coming together collectively, thinking collectively, moving collectively, finding all potential connections we have to the community and the people that we serve, building power in that way. That’s what it’s going to take to get things under control. And that’s what we’re doing.

Palmer Heenan:  And just to add on to that, and Paul put it perfectly, that collective action has been necessary because when we came to HUD, we came in order to help people, in order to fulfill this mission that Congress charged us and our office with decades and decades ago.

And the frank fact of the matter is that with the changes to our day-to-day, in a normal day, we might call a complainant, work on a case, interact with a respondent in a case and say, hey, these are the other cases that we’ve tried that look like this. If we move forward, this is the possible end result. Maybe don’t discriminate. Those are all things that we haven’t been able to do. And slowly but surely, every avenue that a person who’s been discriminated against [has] has just been closed off in terms of getting any kind of resources to get assistance.

And again, the Fair Housing Act requires HUD to investigate and prosecute these complaints when a member of the public brings forward a complaint. It’s not optional. There’s a lot of federal agencies where they have some discretion in their ability to investigate and bring these cases. We don’t, and we need the people and we need the resources to be able to fulfill that mission. And we’ve had to come together collectively because we’ve been systematically deprived of those resources and those people to do this critical mission.

Maximillian Alvarez:  I want to dig into some of the specific actions that have led to this result. And y’all mentioned one earlier that I didn’t want listeners to just pass by. You mentioned both here and in the whistleblower complaints a top-down gag order that has been implemented there. Could you say a little more about that and what that alleged gag order entails?

Palmer Heenan:  Sure. So, we are lawyers. When the Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity decides that there’s reasonable cause to believe that discrimination has occurred, our office is the one who prosecutes that complaint. So, they do a neutral investigation with our assistance. We provide them legal advice, we are their lawyers. And then, we are, essentially, the prosecutors of these cases where they’ve completed the investigation. We file them, we litigate them.

And as part of that, we, of course, talk to complainants, the person who’s been discriminated against. We talk to the respondents, essentially the defendant in those lawsuits. And we try to either help conciliate the case or do the things that lawyers need to do to actually bring the case to trial and bring it to a resolution to get some justice for somebody who’s experienced terrible discrimination.

All of those things involve talking to people, whether it’s talking to the person who’s discriminated against, the person who FHEO has determined there’s reasonable cause to believe has engaged in discrimination, or just the court or other federal agencies who we might need to interact with in order to get some information.

We’re not able to do any of those things. Those are all things that, in the past, we’ve been able to do because they were necessary to do the work. We’re not able to do any of those things now, and we haven’t [been] for going on seven months since, essentially, the first days of the administration.

That makes it almost impossible to adequately prosecute these cases. And these are cases that affect real people’s lives. These are people who have been put in physical danger, who have been called terrible racial epithets, who are unhoused because of discriminatory acts that their landlord might’ve undertaken, who can’t get a mortgage because they were charged more than somebody with a different background or a different skin color. These are people who deserve justice. And whether or not they deserve it, by statute, the federal government is required to give them justice. That’s what the Fair Housing Act requires. And we’re not able to do that if we’re told you can’t talk to anybody. We’re the ones prosecuting the cases, and yet we can’t talk to anyone at all.

Paul Osadebe:  And of course, it’s not everyone that has those restrictions. Other parts of the office can talk freely. For example, the parts of the office that defend the agency’s actions or that defend personnel actions, those parts of the agency can talk freely. It’s the parts that help people, the parts that help your average American out there, those are the parts that are restricted.

And that’s really sad because it drastically limits the effectiveness of the government when it comes to enforcing people’s rights. And we were given these responsibilities for a reason. This system was set up for a reason because it was known from the beginning that without the government’s expertise and without the government’s authority, landlords, banks, developers, states, and cities will discriminate freely.

And you need someone who has that experience and the ability to speak with that voice to actually make sure that people’s rights are protected. That’s what we are supposed to be doing. That’s [why] I’m doing this, to be allowed to do again. And this is the only way that I saw to be able to do that.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Let’s talk specifically about the Violence Against Women Act, or VAWA, the role that HUD has played, traditionally, in protecting survivors of domestic abuse, sexual assault, and human trafficking, and the charges made in your whistleblower complaint that these top-down administrative changes will, and I quote, “place survivors in greater danger of suffering additional trauma, physical violence, and even death.”

Paul Osadebe:  Yes. This is what has me truly angry and sad for people out there because they need help urgently, urgently. We are talking about cases where people are on the street and the only housing available for miles is government-provided housing that HUD provides. We fund the housing, we build the housing. The only way that someone will have a roof above their head and for their kids is if they are allowed in the housing, but for some reason, a landlord does not want to allow someone with a history of domestic violence, or they have a partner or a spouse or stalker that is abusing them and the landlord doesn’t want to allow them in.

We are the only ones who enforce the law and stop that from happening. The only ones. The attorneys in this office, including me, I am on the Violence Against Women Act team. I am one of the people who actually protects women.

This administration has issued executive orders and made a lot of pretty statements about defending women, and yet they take away the team that actually defends women, that makes sure that people are physically safe. That’s what our job is supposed to be, and we’re not being allowed to do it.

And that means that people who need emergency transfers to get out of a dangerous situation, physical danger, people who are unhoused, people with kids who need a safe place to stay, that is what we’re supposed to help with. And we’re being stopped from doing that.

The team that is supposed to investigate those cases, that was trained to have the ability to actually talk to people in a trauma-informed way, to be able to put people at ease, to get all the information that they need, to analyze it, to know what they’re even looking at, because this stuff is not intuitive. You need specialized training to understand all the dynamics of abuse, of public housing, of vouchers, all of this. You need specialized training. That entire team has been destroyed under this administration. It was just made, and they destroyed it. That is not protecting women. And someone has to say something about that. That’s what I’m doing right now.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Well, and another bombshell allegation in your whistleblower complaint states that HUD leadership has actually intercepted and rescinded referrals to the Department of Justice concerning at least 115 “major investigations and cases concerning alleged housing discrimination and segregation, including some where the agency already found civil rights violations.”

So, can you guys break this down for us? Because this seems even more egregious than just the internal gag order that we were just talking about.

Palmer Heenan:  Absolutely. I have worked on a number of cases where the referral of the charge has been rescinded or, in some cases, the case itself has been dismissed. One case in particular involved a large HOA in Texas that HUD found had engaged in systemic racial discrimination.

And I spoke to many of the complainants involved in the investigation. It was actually more than 50 separate cases involving more than 150 people that were impacted. And many of them experienced horrific racial discrimination. They were harassed, called racial epithets. Some of them told us that they were physically threatened, all with the idea of driving them out from this community. And FHEO found reasonable cause to believe that discrimination had occurred after a years-long, thorough investigation.

Our office, as we are required to do by the Fair Housing Act, charged the case, we filed our charge of discrimination, essentially HUD’s version of a lawsuit, and DOJ became involved as part of the Fair Housing Act — Some cases do what’s called electing, where they proceed in federal court through the Department of Justice. And once the case was over at the Department of Justice, we were told that the case, the referral of the case, had been rescinded, and that was it.

And for months and months and months, the case has now just sat, or nothing has been done with it. And those folks who represent survivors of domestic violence, who represent people who experienced horrific discrimination, we had veterans, as I said, survivors of domestic violence, all of whom experienced this horrific treatment, have not been able to get justice through the process that was mandated by statute for we at HUD to engage in.

So, that’s just one example of the many cases where the referrals of the charges have been withdrawn, where the cases themselves have been dismissed, where, essentially, political interference has led to outcomes that contravene, that contradict what it is we’re supposed to be doing under the Fair Housing Act.

Maximillian Alvarez:  This is going to sound like a really naive question: Why? Why do that in a case that seems this transparently awful and egregious, what the hell’s the point of the DOJ or others getting involved and just dropping that?

Palmer Heenan:  Look, I can’t tell you what’s in a person’s heart. I do know that, at his confirmation hearing, Secretary Turner was asked whether he would enforce the Fair Housing laws, and he said yes. If we take him at his word, then things have gone off the rails because the fact is that we are not able to enforce the Fair Housing laws because we have been subject to systematic efforts to prevent us from doing so.

And that’s why we’re going public and why we’re going public now. People deserve justice. And like I said, even if they don’t deserve justice, the statute requires that we get it for them. And right now, we simply can’t.

Maximillian Alvarez:  So what happens now? What can be done, both with this whistleblower complaint and beyond?

Paul Osadebe:  So, that’s a question that people ask a lot in times like these when a lot of people feel hopeless, shocked, they’re not sure what they can actually do to contribute to anything changing. And it’s not easy to answer those questions, but I do know the solution does lie in solidarity and all the people who feel that something has gone wrong and that they want to get involved and do something, now is the time to do it. And you do that through joining your union, making your union better, and finding out ways to build the type of power that can actually hold people to account.

So if you’re a federal worker, for example, a lot of us are facing similar attacks all across the government, and they’re wondering, what can I do in this moment? If you come together with your coworkers and plan and decide that you are committed to your agency and your oath and you use all the resources that you collectively have, your connections, your ability to think, organize, and care, I believe that we all have the power to change what needs to be changed right now.

And that’s what led me to get involved in this in the first place. I wouldn’t be doing it if I believed it had no hope of changing. And even if it didn’t, it’s the right thing to do. Someone has to tell people what’s going on, and I believe that’s all of our roles. That’s what the Constitution calls us to do right now. It’s what our oath calls us to do.

And we don’t have to do it alone. You can do it with your coworkers, and you can join together with all the groups that need your services, that benefit from your services if you’re a federal worker. And if you’re outside the federal government, if you are just a citizen out there that’s concerned, you can join together with federal workers, you can join together with groups that really need the services that the federal government provides. If you’re a veteran, join with veterans groups and workers that actually provide veterans care. If you care about the environment, join with EPA workers and join with environmental groups.

Together, I believe we have more than enough power, but we have to get past the fear right now. We have to get past being paralyzed, demoralized, and apathetic. And I think if we come together in this moment and really move forward on that basis, I think people will feel a lot more sense of power. Despite the fear that I do feel in this moment, I feel a lot better knowing that I am doing the right thing, that I didn’t wait for someone else to tell me what to do.

We just have to all move together in this moment. And I think when people do that, they will feel a sense of power, a sense of agency, and a sense that they can actually solve problems — And not just solve problems, build something better for the future. It’s going to be up to us.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Well, I think Paul really hit on this final question already, but I wanted to give you both the chance to, if you have any final messages that you wanted to share with the American public, with other federal workers, as Paul was just addressing, anything you want to say about why they need to care about this, what they can do to fight back, and what will happen if they don’t?

Paul Osadebe:  I think it’s really important because, in this moment, so many things are happening. There’s a flood of information and a flood of attacks, and it disorients people, and people feel like they can’t really do anything to respond. But the number of people who feel that way, if every one of them was to actually join together with the others who felt that way and just do one thing about something that you care about, I think that we could really turn the tide on a lot of the attacks that are happening right now.

And whether that looks like rallies, whether that looks like union organizing, whether that looks like calling your member of Congress, whether that looks like joining a civil rights group and trying to raise the pressure and the voice of what’s happening right now, I think any of those steps are better than doing nothing. I think as many of those as you can combine, that’s what you should be doing right now.

And you can join us in the Federal Unionists Network and workers in the federal government in general. I think you’ll be seeing more people doing similar things to what we’re doing right now.

It’s not always going to look the same. It’s not going to look the same for federal workers as it does for people who are not in the federal government. But there are people that you can hold accountable, and there are people that you can join with. That’s what you should do.

Palmer Heenan:  And just to add to that, there are so many critical services that the government provides, things that affect your day-to-day life. And my concern is that, as we erode and erode and erode the ability to do that, to fulfill our basic, statutory responsibilities, that that becomes an excuse to make things worse and worse and worse, and it becomes almost a self-fulfilling prophecy.

So, like Paul said, we have to stand together. We have to do what we can where we can, even if it’s just one small thing to make sure that when people are discriminated against, they get justice. That we are able to provide the basic services that we promise in our Constitution and in the laws that Congress has passed and have been on the books for years and decades.

So, like Paul said, please just do something, anything, even if it’s a small thing.