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Tax Plan, Amtrak, John Skipper: Your Tuesday Briefing

Inside the U.S. Capitol on Monday. The House is expected to vote today on the Republican tax overhaul bill.Credit...Al Drago for The New York Times

(Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the sign-up.)

Good morning.

Here’s what you need to know:

• Vice President Mike Pence is postponing a long-planned trip to the Middle East to see the Republican tax overhaul “through to the finish line,” an aide said. (He also wants to be in place in case a tiebreaking vote is needed in the Senate.)

The House is expected to take up the $1.5 trillion measure today. We’ll be tracking the vote as it happens.

Here’s a look at what’s in the final bill, and a calculator to help you determine how your taxes might change.

Ever felt sorry for the I.R.S.? (No, really.) Now might be the time.

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President Trump and the Republicans aim to pass their tax overhaul before Christmas. Does it deliver on their promises?CreditCredit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

• An Amtrak train that jumped the tracks south of Tacoma, Wash., was traveling 80 miles an hour in a 30 m.p.h. zone, the National Transportation Safety Board said Monday night.

At least three people were killed and about 100 others injured as rail cars slammed into a busy highway.

The train was on the first run of a new service from Seattle to Portland, Ore. It was unclear whether technology that automatically slows trains if they exceed speed limits or approach dangerous conditions was in use.

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The locomotive fell onto Interstate 5, the Northwest’s busiest travel corridor. Two passenger coaches also fell partly in the traffic lanes.Credit...Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

• President Trump used a campaignlike address on Monday to outline his strategy to protect the nation, calling again for a border wall with Mexico and praising the state of the economy.

Warning of rising threats from China and Russia, he presented a plan that hints at a Cold War view of the world. Our correspondents note that the strategy “is animated by a single idea: that the world has been on a three-decade holiday from superpower rivalry; and it suggests that that holiday is now over.”

“America is in the game, and America is going to win,” Mr. Trump said. We assessed some of his claims.

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President Trump is expected to address the expanding influence of China and Russia, and the importance of an "America First" security agenda.CreditCredit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

Separately, the U.S. formally accused North Korea of being behind the cyberattack that placed ransomware on computers around the world and that briefly paralyzed the British health care system.

• A Republican research group has requested the emails of Environmental Protection Agency employees who criticized the organization or who mentioned its administrator, Scott Pruitt, or President Trump.

Now, the agency has hired a company to provide “media monitoring” of stories about E.P.A. operations.

The moves have created a wave of fear at the agency: “This is a witch hunt against E.P.A. employees, who are only trying to protect human health and the environment,” one worker in Philadelphia said.

The Daily Poster

Listen to ‘The Daily’: The Heroes of Burial Road

For some Haitians, death is harder to afford than life. The men who tend to the bodies of the unclaimed dead told their stories to a Times reporter.

Electric vehicles still have a tiny share of the market, but the auto industry is betting billions that they will soon be as cheap as conventional cars.

Those who rely on tips are among the casualties of an increasingly cashless society.

The president of ESPN, John Skipper, announced his resignation on Monday, citing a “substance addiction” of “many years.”

U.S. stocks were up on Monday. Here’s a snapshot of global markets.

Tips, both new and old, for a more fulfilling life.

Don’t waste your time with bad resolutions. Do them right.

Save a bundle on your prescription drugs.

Recipe of the day: How about smashed cucumbers with sesame oil and garlic, alongside takeout-style sesame noodles?

Dancing down the years.

Today’s 360 video is the first in a series in which dancers of retirement age reflect on why they’re still practicing. At 79, Gus Solomons Jr. said, “I am playing the instrument as hard as it can be played.”

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transcript

Dancing With Gus Solomons Jr.

"I am playing the instrument as hard as it can be played, given the instrument."

When I look at myself, I think, Wow, he’s an old man. He’s still doing that. But people seem to respond to it. And I think it’s because I am playing the instrument as hard as it can be played, given the instrument. Oh, [laughs], yes, my body is my friend and my body is my enemy. I had spinal fusion in 2012. So, my spine now, instead of having 24 movable joints, has 12. Despite injury, I just keep doing it. And I think that’s because of what Merce gave us, the idea that there were infinite possibilities. So, if you couldn’t do this, you could do that. Like singing — all singing isn’t grand opera and all dancing isn’t ballet. And the range of movement that is available to us is absolutely infinite. As I got older, being on stage was more intimidating when the stage was empty, because the thing that you lose is the ability to devour space, when you lose the physical strength to move quickly through it. I just enjoy the idea of performing, the sensation of performing, the ability to become — to transform myself physically and/or emotionally into someone else or something else. That still excites me.

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"I am playing the instrument as hard as it can be played, given the instrument."CreditCredit...Erik Madigan Heck for The New York Times. Technology by Samsung.

Partisan writing you shouldn’t miss.

Writers from across the political spectrum discuss the investigation by Robert Mueller, the special counsel.

19 acts of heroism in 2017.

Many unheralded moments of courage, altruism and sacrifice lurk behind news stories. Here are some of our favorites.

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Aisha, 15, was abducted by Boko Haram militants in Nigeria. Equipped with a bomb and assigned a suicide mission, she later escaped.Credit...Adam Ferguson for The New York Times

A museum’s hard truths.

The new Mississippi Civil Rights Museum refuses to sugarcoat history. The results are riveting, our reviewer writes.

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A Ku Klux Klan uniform at the museum in Jackson, Miss.Credit...William Widmer for The New York Times

Critics loved “The Last Jedi.”

“Star Wars” fans, less so. (Spoilers ahead!)

Best of late-night TV.

Trevor Noah looked back at 2017 in a year-end edition of “The Daily Show”: “Every day I wake up terrified at the notion that he’s president of the most powerful nation in the world, but I must admit, every day I also wake up knowing he’s going to make me laugh.”

Quotation of the day.

“Just because you’ve seen ‘My Cousin Vinny’ doesn’t qualify you to be a federal judge.”

Senator John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana and a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, after video of him grilling a nominee for the federal bench last week spread online. The nominee, Matthew Petersen, was unable to answer many of the senator’s questions and withdrew his nomination over the weekend.

The National Hockey League wrapped up a yearlong celebration of its 100th anniversary on Saturday with an outdoor game between the Montreal Canadiens and the Ottawa Senators.

It commemorated a matchup between the teams on this day in 1917, when the first games in the league’s history were played. On the same night, the Canadiens beat the Senators, 7-4, and the Montreal Wanderers defeated the Toronto Arenas, 10-9.

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Still skating after all these years. The Ottawa Senators beat the Montreal Canadiens, 3-0, in Saturday’s N.H.L. 100 Classic.Credit...Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press, via Associated Press

Now with 31 teams from South Florida to Vancouver, the N.H.L. started with four Canadian teams spread over less than 350 miles. The league was founded in a Montreal hotel in late November 1917, in the thick of World War I, when professional hockey was still fairly new.

The Canadiens are now one of North America’s oldest professional sports franchises. The Arenas eventually became the Maple Leafs. And although the original Senators folded in 1934, the franchise returned as an expansion team in 1992.

But the Wanderers are a blip in N.H.L. history. Their victory on opening night was their only win in the league. They lost their next five games and quit the league after their arena burned down on Jan. 2, 1918.

Naila-Jean Meyers contributed reporting.

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