This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.
Donald Trump’s reported idea to replace the income tax with huge tariffs on imports exposes the hollowness of his populism.
First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:
The 1970s movie that explains 2020s America
Trump dreams of a swifter death penalty.

Water gave every living thing on Earth the gift of existence. And yet, of late, it seems determined to wipe us out. The Atlantic hurricane season, widely predicted to be a fierce one, is here, and early this morning the first named storm, Alberto, made landfall in northeastern Mexico and drenched everything in its path.
And in Florida last week, it was as if the heavens had turned on the tap and simply left it running.

This is an edition of Time-Travel Thursdays, a journey through The Atlantic’s archives to contextualize the present and surface delightful treasures. Sign up here.
Working on the Books desk of a 167-year-old publication offers incredible opportunities—and dredges up some insecurities.

Like the members of Fleetwood Mac, or the Mamas & the Papas, or the Beatles, or Van Halen, the rock band at the center of the Broadway play Stereophonic can’t seem to keep its act together. The bassist stumbles drunk and late into a recording session; the guitarist keeps futzing with the tempo on a song. The musicians are clearly close with one another—lots of inside jokes, lots of casual touching—but that only makes the bickering more personal.

This article was originally published by Undark Magazine.
When Ina Chung, a Colorado mother, first fed packaged foods to her infant, she was careful to read the labels. Her daughter was allergic to peanuts, dairy, and eggs, so products containing those ingredients were out. So were foods with labels that said they “may contain” the allergens.
Chung felt like this last category suggested a clear risk that wasn’t worth taking. “I had heard that the ingredient labels were regulated.

Recently, an old friend of mine from elementary school ran a hand over my bookshelf, stopped, and said, “You stole this.”
“I did not!”
“Yes, you did. You totally stole it from school.”
She pulled out my copy of The Once and Future King, and showed me the inside of the front cover. It was stamped: Board of Education, City of New York.
Okay, so I stole it. But I had a good reason. I loved that book so much; I couldn’t bear to return it to the school library.

Professional athletes are now playing sports in a gamblers’ world, and it isn’t going well for them. In April, the NBA banned Jontay Porter, a 24-year-old role player for the Toronto Raptors and a younger brother of the Denver Nuggets star Michael Porter Jr., for allegedly wagering on NBA games, including his team’s, and throwing his own performances to influence prop bets.

In July 2020, Lisa Lucas was hired as the publisher of Pantheon and Schocken Books, prestigious imprints of Penguin Random House. She was the first person of color to hold the post. Black Lives Matter was resurgent after the murder of George Floyd. Demand for books by Black authors had spiked. Publishing employees had organized a day of action to protest the industry’s ongoing “role in systemic racism.

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.
For Juneteenth, three Atlantic writers and editors share their recommendations for what to listen to, read, and watch.