Evening Briefing: New taxes for multinationals and millionaires

April 5, 2021

Your Monday Evening Briefing

By Victoria Shannon and Judith Levitt

Good evening. Here's the latest.

Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times

1. Democrats target multinational corporations and millionaires.

Senator Ron Wyden, above, the Oregon Democrat in charge of writing tax legislation, released a plan to overhaul the way the U.S. taxes multinational businesses, tweaking several aspects of President Donald J. Trump's 2017 tax law.

The plan, which could be a blueprint for how lawmakers finance part of President Biden's infrastructure plan, seeks to discourage companies from shifting profits and jobs to other countries to avoid paying U.S. taxes.

Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen made the case for a global minimum tax, calling for coordination on an international rate that would apply to multinational corporations, regardless of where they locate their headquarters.

Separately, New York State neared a budget agreement that would make New York City's millionaires pay the highest local tax rate in the nation to address pandemic-era budget shortfalls. The proposed legislation would raise income and corporate taxes to generate an extra $4.3 billion a year.

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Stephen Maturen/Getty Images

2. The chief of the Minneapolis Police Department testified that Derek Chauvin "absolutely" violated department policies when he knelt on George Floyd for more than nine minutes in May.

Chief Medaria Arradondo said Mr. Chauvin had failed to follow policies on de-escalation, use of force and the duty to render aid to people in need.

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Chief Arradondo, the city's first Black police chief, fired Mr. Chauvin and three other officers involved in the arrest within a day of Mr. Floyd's death. He publicly called Mr. Floyd's death a murder the following month.

Also today, an emergency room doctor who tried to save Mr. Floyd's life for 30 minutes before pronouncing him dead testified that he believed Mr. Floyd had most likely died of a lack of oxygen, bolstering a central argument of the prosecution. Above, outside the Hennepin County Government Center today.

Noah Seelam/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

3. India recorded 100,000 new coronavirus infections, its highest daily tally.

More than a year into the pandemic, officials in the western state of Maharashtra, which includes the financial capital Mumbai, reimposed lockdowns and warned that hospitals were running out of beds.

Yet India is also vaccinating more than three million people every day, one of the largest efforts in the world. Above, a vaccine site in Hyderabad.

In other pandemic news:

Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain announced plans for free twice-weekly coronavirus tests in England and Covid status certificates that would allow people with immunity into nightclubs and sporting events.
A new coronavirus vaccine entering clinical trials in Brazil, Mexico, Thailand and Vietnam could change how the world fights the pandemic. If NVD-HXP-S proves safe and effective, low- and middle-income countries may be able to make it for themselves or acquire it at low cost.
The U.S. infectious disease agency made vaccinations for cruise lines a recommendation instead of a requirement. The move averted a standoff with Florida, which has banned businesses from requiring customers to show proof of vaccinations.

Justin Hamel/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

4. "You all have one thing in common — courage."

President Biden, struggling with the perilous politics resulting from the influx of migrants at the border with Mexico, released a video thanking newly naturalized citizens.

Forty percent of Americans disapprove of the administration's handling of the surge in children at the border, according to a poll published today by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, with only 24 percent approving.

More than 18,700 unaccompanied children and teenagers were taken into custody last month after crossing the southern border, nearly double the roughly 9,450 in February, government documents obtained by The Times showed last week. Above, migrant youths in Midland, Texas, today.

Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times

5. The Supreme Court sided with Google over Oracle in a long-running copyright dispute over software used to run most of the world's smartphones.

The 6-to-2 ruling spared Google from having to face claims for billions of dollars in damages, in a decade-long battle over whether it improperly used Oracle's Java code in its Android operating system.

Justice Stephen Breyer, writing for the majority, said that Google was protected by the "fair use" exception to copyright protections.

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Mohammad Ali/EPA, via Shutterstock

6. A rare public rift within the Jordanian ruling family seemed to edge closer to a peaceful resolution.

The royal house announced that King Abdullah II and his estranged half brother, Prince Hamzah, had agreed to mediation measures, and then quoted the prince as saying he pledged his loyalty to the king.

Their long-simmering dispute exploded into public view on Saturday when Prince Hamzah was accused of plotting to undermine the country's security, with hints that the prince, aided by unidentified foreigners, had been involved in a coup attempt.

The prince's whereabouts today were unknown; he has not been seen in public since he claimed on Saturday to have been placed under house arrest. Above, a shopkeeper in Amman with framed pictures of the king over the weekend.

Robert Deutsch/USA Today Sports, via Reuters

7. Gonzaga and Baylor play in the N.C.A.A. tournament final.

The teams will vie for the men's college basketball championship at 9:20 p.m. Eastern at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis. The Bulldogs (31-0) are 5-point favorites over the Bears (27-2).

The tournament's success has already had a big impact. A year after March Madness was the first big U.S. sporting event to be canceled because of the pandemic, its return showed that the country might be turning a corner, our columnist Kurt Streeter writes. Above, a Final Four game last week.

Roff Smith for The New York Times

8. A cyclist on the English landscape.

Grounded by the pandemic, the travel photographer Roff Smith spent the year pedaling the roads around his home in a faded seaside town in Sussex, on the southern coast of England, resulting in a series of poetic self-portraits. Above, daybreak on Sluice Lane.

He learned that you don't need to jet off to the far side of the world to experience the romance of difference.

"It lies waiting on your doorstep — if you look," he writes. "When I push off down the street, the world becomes big again, the way it used to be when I was a child: rich in detail, ripe for discovery."

Elliot Ross, left, Ryan Jenq, right, for The New York Times

9. "I don't think I can go back to a 'before.'"

That's Mary Fugate, one of the people we spoke to for a project that reflects on our lives after a pandemic year. "I've just grown and changed, and many priorities and values have shifted," she told us.

Will we go back to living the way we did before? Do we risk losing something we've learned from one long and terrifying year? Our project takes you on an introspective journey of words and pictures that tries to capture how the meaning and shape of life have changed for many people.

Eduard Florin Niga

10. And finally, the world at our feet.

We share Earth with at least 15,000 species of ants. Even in the densest human habitations, there are orders of magnitude more ants than there are of us.

A new book of ant macrophotography by Eduard Florin Niga helps us see up close the creatures that are doing the hard work of making our crumbs disappear, and much more.

Why care about ants? Many species, from plants to beetles to birds, depend on their relationships with ants to survive. Winnow ants disperse so many seeds that removing them from an ecosystem causes wildflower abundance to drop by 50 percent.

Have a f-ant-astic evening.

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