Last month, the political and cultural earthquake of 2016's Brexit vote produced another powerful aftershock. Once again, pundits and prognosticators were shocked by the British people's determination to assert their sovereignty by electing Boris Johnson as prime minister. They shouldn't have been. Nor should the broader nationalist awakening that has since swept the Western world occasion the astonishment and angst that it has. This is nothing new.

Searching for analogues to explain this sudden preoccupation with national sovereignty, our intelligentsia have reached about as far back in history as our culture still seems able to remember, to the clash of Great Powers in the First World War and the clash of civilizations in the Second. But to understand the motivations driving the tectonic realignment of our politics today, and the long-awaited Brexit that now seems set to rapidly become reality, we must look a bit further back--to the original Brexit that helped birth what Yoram Hazony has called "the Protestant construction of the West" and the order of sovereign nation-states that anchored it.

In the spring of 1533, the Parliament of England, meeting in an extraordinary fifth consecutive annual session, passed a landmark piece of legislation that profoundly altered the course of the island-kingdom's history: the Act in Restraint of Appeals. Striking a decisive blow against the Pope's supremacy over a host of legal and fiscal matters across the European continent, the Act forbade any further judicial appeals beyond England to Rome, and asserted the supremacy of the Crown and Parliament in English law. 

But what prompted this bold declaration of independence? The standard history books have a ready answer: so that King Henry VIII could divorce the aging Queen Catherine of Aragon and marry the fetching young Anne Boleyn! This explanation may tickle our fancy for scandal, but it hardly suffices as an explanation of the most significant constitutional reform in English history, one which required the consent of Parliament and ultimately the support of a whole people. How did a divorce case lead a devout Catholic monarch and nation to renounce their allegiance to the supra-national authority of the Papacy and to chart their own national course, establishing the legal framework for church, Crown, and Parliament that would anchor the development of British and American institutions for the next five centuries? 

Whether we explain this original Brexit from the perspective of its capricious but charismatic monarch, his exasperated subjects, or his shrewd advisors, we find ourselves presented with the central elements of nationalism--national security, economic nationalism, and legal sovereignty--which together shed light on our own contemporary Brexit and the broader nationalist awakening it represents.

Financial-services giant Visa says it has met its goal to use 100% renewable electricity by 2020 across its 131 offices in 76 countries and four global processing centers.

Since setting the renewable goal in 2018, Visa V, +0.20%   pursued a sustainable mix of renewable energy sources such as solar and wind.

Globally, the average costs to generate electricity from solar photovoltaic and onshore wind both declined 13% year-on-year in 2018, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency.

The rights group cited verified images and eyewitness testimonies indicating authorities had targeted protesters with rubber bullets, tear gas and pepper spray, along with pointed air-gun pellets normally used for hunting.

That sound you may have heard Wednesday morning was that of a heavy truck spinning its wheels, as President Trump signed an agreement with China that imposes a cease-fire in a trade war that has achieved virtually nothing for Americans, except the imposition of enormous economic costs on U.S. consumers, farmers and manufacturers. [...]

Notwithstanding Trump's mantra that the tariffs are paid by the Chinese, trade experts are virtually unanimous in concluding that they've been paid entirely by Americans. As a result, according to recent research by the Federal Reserve, that meant higher prices for U.S. consumers, lower manufacturing growth and the cratering of agricultural exports.

Steep tariffs are "the new normal in the troubled US-China economic relationship," Chad P. Bown of the Peterson Institute for International Economics observed last month after the essentials of the deal were first announced.

Even after the agreement, the average U.S. tariff on China imports will still be 19.3%, a modest reduction from the pre-agreement level of 21% and more than six times its level of 3% before Trump launched the tariff war.

Neoliberalism is a slippery concept with a contested history. Its intellectual origins date back to the aftermath of the First World War, when the break-up of central European empires and the emergence of democratic nation states put private property at the mercy of elected governments.

Faced with this political transformation, conservative neoliberals set out to insulate the market economy from democratic forces. In the mid-20th century, while John Maynard Keynes sketched out the postwar order and led the British delegation at the 1944 Breton Woods conference, the Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek attacked technocratic planning and state intervention in The Road to Serfdom, which was published the same year.

But it wasn't until the 1980s that neoliberalism became the ascendant doctrine of modern politics, when world leaders such as Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, and Augusto Pinochet in Chile instigated a now-familiar programme of economic deregulation, financial privatisation and union-busting.

A major weakness of the term "neoliberalism" is its ubiquity - especially on the left, it has become a rhetorical insult so hackneyed it fails to capture anything in particular. The term "can mean whatever you want it to mean", Ed Conway, the economics editor of Sky News, wrote in 2018. The Observer's Will Hutton called it "a catch-all to indicate contempt for any policy or figure... the left considers to be departing from true 'socialism'".

Iran's president on Wednesday slammed the disqualification of thousands of people, including 90 current lawmakers, from running in upcoming parliamentary elections.

Although hard-liners were among those disqualified by the powerful Guardian Council, most of those rejected were reformist and moderate candidates, according to Tehran's reformist newspaper Etemad.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani appeared to confirm this in his stinging critique of the council, which barred more than 9,000 from the over 14,000 people who had registered to run. Among them are 90 sitting lawmakers out of some 247 who registered to run for re-election.

Rouhani said it is not possible to run the country with just one faction in power.

[M]aybe this is exactly the moment to think about the so-called deep state, if by that we mean the little-noticed machinery of governance that keeps dependably churning on in that same snow globe's pedestal, whatever mayhem may be swirling around above it. Maybe this is even the moment to be grateful for those parts of the government whose inertia keeps the ship of state moving in the same general direction, regardless of who's on the bridge at any given time.

The son of two immigrants, he graduated high school valedictorian of his class and earned his bachelor's degree in economics from the University of Michigan, sticking around Ann Arbor long enough to nab a law degree as well.

But he is disloyal--at least in the Trumpian sense of the word. Amash has voted in line with Trump's position just 63 percent of the time according to FiveThirtyEight, a lower "Trump score" than any Republican save Walter Jones, who passed away last February, and Jeff Van Drew, who was a Democrat until about four weeks ago. Amash spent his final few months in the GOP calling for the president to be impeached, much to the joy of Democrats and some of his constituents, but much to the chagrin of everyone in his own party.

Amash isn't any less libertarian now than he was when he rode the Tea Party wave to D.C. in 2010, just two years after being elected to the Michigan House of Representatives. He'd contend it's those around him who've changed.

On January 26, 2015, Amash and a group of eight other Republican congressmen (all men) formed the House Freedom Caucus (HFC) to stand up to a House leadership--then helmed by Speaker John Boehner--that they believed wasn't conservative enough. Amash wrote the mission statement.

"The House Freedom Caucus gives a voice to countless Americans who feel that Washington does not represent them. We support open, accountable and limited government, the Constitution and the rule of law, and policies that promote the liberty, safety, and prosperity of all Americans."

On May 20, 2019, the bloc, now boasting more than 30 members, unanimously condemned their co-founder when Amash determined--after the release of the Mueller Report--that President Trump had "engaged in impeachable conduct." Three-and-a-half weeks later, Amash quit the group of limited-government stalwarts he helped create.

They "sanctioned him for coming out in favor of impeachment in the same week that like, they increased the debt by another trillion dollars or something," Welch said, referring to a two-year budget deal that was floated at the time, but ultimately never came to fruition. "It's like, what is the use of this group?"

"As soon as you had a Republican president, and especially one who is fairly charismatic and entertaining and can rally a lot of people," Amash said, choosing his words very carefully, "Republicans totally mailed it in. They said, 'Look, we're just going to go with this guy on everything.' And when I started to see even my House Freedom Caucus colleagues do that, it was really disheartening."

"This is a group that had formed," he continued, "for the purpose of standing on principle, standing up for the American people, doing what was right, ensuring that all voices were heard. And now, the group had moved more toward Trump cheerleading and that's not why the group was formed. And that was really tough."

Not everyone in Washington would agree with Amash's assessment of the caucus, which, once it grew large enough, wielded its influence to hold Republican leaders hostage and otherwise wreak havoc on the legislative process.

"Previously, groups of members on the right flank of the House Republican Conference operated under a version of the 'Buckley Rule': they fought for the most conservative legislation that could pass," said Michael Steel, former aide to Speaker John Boehner. "The self-described 'Freedom Caucus' often seemed more about the fight than the result, and--when they chose not to get to 'yes' on must-pass bills--the House Republican leadership had to go to Democrats for votes, leading to worse policies and higher spending."

When Trump was first elected, many wondered if the House Freedom Caucus would even continue to serve a purpose. After all, the GOP center of gravity no longer revolved around the speaker of the House. But the HFC made its presence known early on in 2017, scuttling the White House's first attempt to overhaul the Affordable Care Act. 

"The Freedom Caucus will hurt the entire Republican agenda if they don't get on the team, & fast," Trump wrote at the time. "We must fight them, & Dems, in 2018!"

Now? One of the caucus's founding members, Mick Mulvaney, serves as Trump's chief of staff. Another, Mark Meadows, is one of the president's most enthusiastic advocates, and is rumored to be Mulvaney's replacement in waiting.

Amash believes the co-opting of the Freedom Caucus was no accident. "I think that was intentional," he said. "Whether it was the president's calculation or someone else's, to try to take some of the House Freedom Caucus members and bring them into the fold ... I think this was a concerted effort by leadership and perhaps White House officials to pick off House Freedom Caucus members, to bring them in, to make them a part of the Republican team, in some sense, and then get them to stop battling Republicans."

While his old Freedom Caucus buddies may have finally stopped battling Republicans under Trump, Amash was just getting started. But he claims his newfound independence has actually improved his connections on the Hill. 

"I have better relationships with Republicans and with Democrats. When you're a Republican and you break from the Republicans on a piece of legislation or you disagree with the president or whatever it might be, they tend to come down hard on you because it's like you're a family member who has betrayed the family," he said. "Since becoming an independent, my colleagues are more trusting. They are friendlier, on both sides of the aisle, and it's certainly been an improvement on the Republican side."

Efforts to talk to his peers about this bore little fruit. A spokeswoman for the House Freedom Caucus declined to comment for the story, and no individual members contacted responded to emails from The Dispatch.

"I think John Boehner is the best speaker that we've had since I've been here," said Amash. "And I say that as someone who tried to oust him from the speakership!"

This sentiment doesn't represent a newfound appreciation for the Republican establishment or hint at new moderation from Amash. Instead, it's a reflection of his belief in having big, messy debates--not avoiding them.

"If I were to create, like, an ideal speaker in my imagination, it would not be John Boehner," Amash said. But in retrospect, "his successors are not better than him."

"Boehner would swear at me, he would curse me, he would criticize me in public," Amash recounted with a grin, almost fondly. "But he also, in some sense, would listen. He didn't dismiss you totally. You could engage with him. You could have some back and forth. He might swear at you, but then also allow you to have an amendment vote."

Three years later, down to the same month, the Justice Department on Oct. 10 unsealed an indictment of Parnas for using a straw donor and laundering foreign money into U.S. elections. Federal prosecutors claim he and his Fraud Guarantee co-owner, Igor Fruman, used the shell company Global Energy Producers to funnel $325,000 in foreign cash into America First Action, a Trump super-PAC.

Federal records show that the total donations from Parnas, Fruman, Global Energy Producers and an alter ego identified by prosecutors exceeded $620,000.

Representative Kevin McCarthy, the Republican minority leader of the Democrat-controlled House, would later redirect to charity the $2,700 campaign contribution he received from Parnas, as well as a $2,173 contribution from Fruman to Majority Committee PAC, McCarthy's leadership political action committee.  [...]

Now that Parnas is sharing information with the House Intelligence Committee, top Republicans financially tied to the indicted Giuliani allies have been pulled back into a scandal that erupted with their arrests in October.

Donald Sherman, deputy director at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, explained why politicians are quick to dispose of foreign money.

"Accepting foreign donations is obviously a crime, and that is the threshold problem," said Sherman, whose group is often abbreviated as CREW.

Before Tuesday, he was best known as a little-known, scandal-scarred Republican congressional candidate who tweeted an obscene joke at Kamala Harris. But new documents from the House Intelligence Committee have put a completely different kind of spotlight on Robert F. Hyde, the Trump donor who appears to have tracked U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch's movements in Ukraine. 

In WhatsApp messages exchanged in March 2019 with Rudy Giuliani associate Lev Parnas, who provided the committee with the files, Hyde and Parnas discussed Yovanovitch's location. Hyde, a retired Marine, appeared to have associates in Ukraine monitoring her.

"They know she's a political puppet," Hyde wrote to Parnas. "They will let me know when she's on the move... They are willing to help if you/we would like a price."

"Guess you can do anything in Ukraine with money... what I was told," Hyde wrote in another message.

"As we're looking at other auto companies, seeing how far behind Tesla they are, we're beginning to believe they might not lose market share, which is a huge change in our assumptions," [Ark Investment founder Catherine Wood] said, pointing out that market share was a concern when she first predicted in February 2018 that Tesla would reach $4,000.

Autonomous vehicles will also be a big driver going forward, with Tesla, in her view, positioned to be the dominant player in the space. "The winner in autonomous platforms, and in any artificial intelligence project, is that company with the most data and the highest-quality data," she said. "That company is Tesla."

Dated May 10, 2019, the letter showed the former New York mayor telling Zelensky he wanted to meet in person on May 13 and May 14.

"Just to be precise, I represent him as a private citizen, not as President of the United States," Giuliani wrote. "This is quite common under American law because the duties and privileges of a President and a private citizen are not the same." [...]

"We're not meddling in an election, we're meddling in an investigation, which we have a right to do," Giuliani told The Times when asked whether by going to Ukraine and pressing for the inquiry, he was inviting foreign interference in the 2020 election.

Trump and Giuliani's efforts to pressure Ukraine into delivering dirt on the Bidens and Burisma make up the center of Congress' impeachment proceedings against Trump. Last month, the House of Representatives impeached Trump for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

The president has said that his request for Ukraine to investigate the Bidens was linked to an interest in rooting out corruption, which is in the US's national interest.

But Giuliani's letter directly undercuts that because it specifies he was acting in his capacity as Trump's private attorney; in other words, he was representing the president's personal political interests, and not the country's interests.