Palmer Heenan & Paul Osadebe

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Two US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) lawyers, Palmer Heenan and Paul Osadebe, told a Senate panel Jan. 13, 2026 they felt compelled to come forward as whistleblowers after watching the Trump Administration steadily reverse decades of progress to end discrimination in housing.

“We had no choice but to come forward,” Osadebe told a so-called “shadow hearing” convened by minority Democrats on the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. “The fair housing mission is being dismantled piece by piece and worker by worker.”

Our clients testified that HUD leadership is preventing enforcement of the 1968 Fair Housing Act (FHA) and that they suffered retaliation for coming forward to protect the public and uphold the law. With Whistleblower Aid’s support, they spoke out against what they describe as systematic efforts to prevent them from enforcing the FHA, long viewed as a bedrock of US civil rights law. The FHA mandates that HUD protect people from discrimination in housing based on race, religion, gender, family status, or disability. Such enforcement notably includes investigating and prosecuting landlords, realtors, lenders, and others accused of discriminating based on race, religion, gender, family status, or disability. Under the Trump Administration, civil rights attorneys like our clients have been prevented from enforcing this and other basic civil rights protections.

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, said she was “particularly grateful” to Osadebe and Heenan: “You didn’t have to speak up… And you faced consequences for doing this. I want to say on behalf of Congress: You help us in exercising our oversight role.” Senator Cory Booker (D-New Jersey), a housing lawyer, described how the FHA had changed his life, enabling his family to purchase a home free of discrimination.