Two attorneys in the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) anti-discrimination division said they were fired on Monday, a week after going public with a whistleblower report alleging that the Trump administration had dismantled efforts to combat residential segregation.
Paul Osadebe and Palmer Heenan worked in Hud’s office of fair housing (OFH), which is tasked with bringing cases against parties accused of discriminating against tenants and homebuyers under a landmark civil rights law. In a report sent last month to Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren, Heenan, Osadebe and two anonymous colleagues wrote that fighting discrimination under the Fair Housing Act of 1968 was “not a priority” for the administration, and that their office had been targeted for downsizing because it presented an “optics problem”.
