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Jeb Bush Super PAC Hit With Record Fine

Right to Rise USA, the super PAC that supported Jeb Bush's 2016 presidential campaign, has been fined $390,000 by the Federal Election Commission for accepting $1.3 million from an international investment holding company owned by Chinese nationals that counted Jeb's brother Neil as a board member. (It is illegal for foreign nationals to be involved in making donations to American political campaign committees.) The FEC has also fined the company, American Pacific International Capital, $550,000.

The penalties have not been made public but were reported by Mother Jones based on FEC filings. The report claims the combined fines were the largest levied in a single case in the nine years since the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling opened the political fundraising floodgates – and also the biggest FEC fine in a case of foreign national participation.


"This illegal $1.3 million is a direct result of Citizens United," since before that 2010 ruling companies were restricted in what they could give to super PACs, said Brendan Fischer of the Campaign Legal Center, the nonpartisan watchdog that first made the FEC aware of the APIC contribution.

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From Alaska to NYC: Levers for Expanding Democracy

From Alaska to NYC: Levers for Expanding Democracy

Welcome to the latest edition of The Expand Democracy 5 from Rob Richie and Eveline Dowling.

In keeping with The Fulcrum’s mission to share ideas that help to repair our democracy and make it live and work in our everyday lives, we are publishing The Expand Democracy 5 weekly update each Friday.

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View over Harvard Yard of Harvard University.

View over Harvard Yard of Harvard University.

Getty Images, SBWorldphotography

Why Harvard’s Fight Is Everyone’s

The great American historian, Richard Hofstadter, author of the prophetic, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” (1964) wrote, “A university's essential character is that of being a center of free inquiry and criticism—a thing not to be sacrificed for anything else." Unfortunately, up until now, no great university has heeded these words when it came to challenging the Trump administration’s war on higher education and other key social institutions.

Harvard is finally standing its ground. As Trump escalates his campaign against higher education, President Alan Garber’s rejection of the White House’s outrageous demands is both overdue and essential. His defiance could mark the beginning of broader resistance to an agenda determined to reshape—or dismantle—America’s leading universities. This bold move could inspire other institutions to defend their autonomy and uphold the principles of academic freedom. But one question remains: why didn’t Columbia, or powerful institutions like the Paul Weiss law firm, take a similar stand?

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