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TODAY'S HEADLINES:

The Democrats are preparing to finally raise some taxes: setting their sights on big multinational companies as Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen calls for a global minimum rate for corporations.

Meanwhile, the doctor who pronounced George Floyd dead testified that Floyd likely died of oxygen deprivation, striking a blow against alleged killer cop Derek Chauvin’s defense.

And lastly, the disparity between vaccinations in rich and poor countries is becoming more stark, as the U.S. vaccinates 4 million in one day while Haiti lacks even a single dose.

THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:

You heard it here first: the Democrats are actually going to try to raise some taxes. Probably not your taxes, however, unless you happen to be a millionaire or a multinational corporation.

On Monday, a trio of Senators and the Biden Administration started unveiling plans to overhaul the U.S. corporate tax system, particularly focusing on multinational corporations and the highest earners in the economy.

Biden’s Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen also jumped in, coming out in favor of an international global minimum tax, which would help cut down on corporations who stick their headquarters in some backwater tax haven to save money.

In the U.S., President Biden proposed raising the corporate tax rate to 28 percent, a 7 point jump from where it was but still far shy of the 35 percent that it was at before Trump. And in Congress, Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden and fellow tax writers Sherrod Brown and Mark Warner put out a proposal that mirrored most of Biden’s plan, but delved further into the details of international corporate taxes.

In other words, the details still have to be hammered out, but it appears that the Biden administration is serious about making at least some incremental gains on the laissez faire, tax cut happy system Donald Trump enabled. Biden said, “You have 51 or 52 corporations of the Fortune 500 that haven’t paid a single penny in taxes for three years. Come on, man. Let’s get real.”

The hope in all this, of course, is that a bump in tax revenue from big corporations could help finance Biden’s ambitious infrastructure bill, which is expected to cost around $2 trillion. And we know for sure that the bloated corporations that got even richer under Trump certainly have that to spare.

The emergency room physician who pronounced George Floyd dead testified in the murder trial for former Minneapolis cop Derek Chauvin today, saying that Floyd likely died of oxygen deprivation.

Doctor Bradford Langenfeld’s testimony puts a major hole in the core of Chauvin’s defense, which has sought to blame Floyd’s death on substances in his system, and not on the fact that Chauvin knelt on his neck for nine minutes.

Langenfeld testified that Floyd’s condition of heart failure was more consistent with a lack of oxygen to the body, rather than another acute cause like a heart attack.

Later that day, Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo took the stand, and said unequivocally that Chauvin should have stopped pinning Floyd to the ground. Arradondo has previous called Floyd’s death murder, so it’s clear why the prosecution wanted him on the stand.

But despite the wealth of evidence against him, and the way that witness testimony is trending, prosecutors still have a tough task ahead to convict Chauvin.

Reporting from the Washington Post this week showed that only around 1,400 officers were arrested for a violent crime committed on duty between 2005 and 2015. And when they were arrested, the conviction rate was just around 50 percent, even for the most serious crimes like murder.

Let’s hope that the jury comes down on the right side of that coin toss this time.

As the vaccine rollout roars through America, the divide between rich nations and poor ones is getting even steeper. On Saturday, more than 4 million Americans received a dose of the coronavirus vaccine, breaking prior records and showing just how quickly the rollout is picking up steam.

But in Haiti, for instance, after a year of the pandemic the government doesn’t have a single dose of the vaccine available for its citizens.

The Associated Press reports that Haiti, which has a population of 11.26 million, is slated to receive only 756,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine through a United Nations program. They were supposed to get those doses by May, but may see delays after missing paperwork deadlines.

Part of this is due to misappropriation of funds and corruption in the Haitian government, the sad result of a political crisis the U.S. had a large hand in creating. And AP also reported that current political violence supersedes the coronavirus on most Haitians’ list of worries, something that’s been reported in other unstable countries like Afghanistan.

The fact that Haiti and countries like it don’t have access to the vaccine or the infrastructure to distribute it properly is an international scandal, brought on as richer countries monopolized doses early on in the pandemic by simply out-bidding everyone else in the game.

As those countries, including our own, start to approach normal again, the inequality already present across the world is only going to get worse, as impoverished areas deal with the pandemic far longer than the developed world.

AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, of all people, offered a concurrent opinion in a court ruling on Monday that argued that social media companies should be treated and regulated like public utilities. Of course, part of his reasoning was that Donald Trump’s twitter ban was unfair, so you know what they say about broken clocks.

Arkansa Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a Republican, vetoed a bill on Monday that would make it illegal for transgender minors to receive gender-affirming medication or surgery, in a rare example of a conservative sticking up for the rights of trans people. But his GOP-heavy state legislature could override the veto.

Nina Turner, longtime surrogate for Bernie Sanders, posted a massive fundraising haul in her race for a Congressional seat in Ohio, raising $2.2 million total and a whopping $1.55 million in the first quarter of this year.

The Intercept reports on a surreal case of police hypocrisy, where officers in Thurston County Washington fundraised tens of thousands from the public for one of their police dogs medical bills, without admitting that their own cops were the one who shot the poor pooch.

APRIL 6 , 2021 - AM QUICKIE

HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner

WRITER - Jack Crosbie

PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn