<em>The Atlantic</em> Daily: Strictly Speaking

What We’re Following

North Korea: China has ordered North Korean companies operating within its borders to close in its toughest move against the Kim regime since its weapons tests prompted the harshest-ever UN sanctions. Thus far, China has been slow to satisfy U.S. demands to put pressure on North Korea. As former CIA Director David Petraeus hypothesizes, China may be the real audience President Trump is thinking of when he makes threats to North Korea—though that’s not to say such threats won’t inflame Pyongyang and alarm Americans. Amid the escalating rhetoric, here’s how to tell how close the U.S. really is to war with the North.

Lawmakers’ latest proposal for tax from progressive attempts at tax reform of the 20th century—and the gap stems from how both conservatives and liberals reinvented their goals in the 1980s and ’90s. Today, Republicans are of the working- and business-class voters that make up their coalition. Meanwhile, their signature effort to undo the Affordable Care Act is in spite of its failures in Congress.