Biden to include minimum tax on billionaires in budget proposal
The White House will ask Congress on Monday to pass a new minimum tax on billionaires as part of a budget proposal intended to revitalize President Joe Biden’s domestic agenda and reduce the national deficit. The tax would require that U.S. households worth more than $100 million pay a tax rate of at least 20% on their full income, as well as unrealized gains in the value of their liquid assets. Biden’s proposal to impose a tax on billionaires is the first time he has explicitly called for a wealth tax. The “Billionaire Minimum Income Tax” would apply only to the top 0.01% of U.S. households.
Colorado jury awards $14m to demonstrators injured in Floyd protests
Jurors in Colorado on Friday ordered the city and county of Denver to pay $14 million in damages to 12 plaintiffs after finding police officers used excessive force against them during demonstrations over the killing of George Floyd in 2020. The civil case in the U.S. District Court of Colorado was the first in which a lawsuit accusing the police of misconduct during the 2020 protests went to trial. The jury of eight Coloradans concluded that the city and county failed to properly train its police and, as a result, officers violated the plaintiffs’ constitutional rights.
Hotelier’s post barring Native Americans prompts outrage in South Dakota
A recent social media post by a hotel owner in Rapid City, South Dakota, announcing that Native Americans would be barred from the business after a shooting in one of the hotel’s rooms has prompted swift condemnation from community leaders, a protest and a federal civil rights lawsuit. The owner, Connie Uhre, was upset about an attack at the 132-room Grand Gateway Hotel early March 19 in which the gunman and victim were both Native American. On the same day the lawsuit was filed, hundreds of community members marched from a park to the federal courthouse in downtown Rapid City.
Arizona offers driver’s licenses on iPhones. Other states want to be next.
It started as a digital catchall for credit cards and concert tickets. The technology then expanded to vaccine passport records during the pandemic. This week, the Apple Wallet, an app for iPhones and Apple Watches that stores payment information and QR codes, added driver’s licenses. On Wednesday, Arizona became the first state to offer digital copies of driver’s licenses and state identification cards as part of a partnership with Apple that was announced last year. The project is expected to expand to Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Hawaii, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, Ohio, Oklahoma and Utah, as well as Puerto Rico.
Mideast feels the pinch of rising food prices as Ramadan nears
Grocery prices were going up everywhere Souad Amer checked, so it was with nervous hope that she waded into a government-subsidized market in her Cairo neighborhood where a loudspeaker blared a jingle promising cheap essentials for Ramadan. Ramadan arrives in a week: a festive season when people across the Middle East and North Africa normally look forward to gatherings with friends and family, new clothes and feasts that begin after sundown and stretch late into the night. But this year, prices of staples such as oil, sugar, flour and rice have surged across the region, thanks to global supply chain snarls and the war between Russia and Ukraine.
First round of plea discussions in 9/11 case wrap after focus on custody
Prosecutors and defense lawyers returned to the United States on Saturday from a first round of plea bargain talks that focused on how the five men who are accused of helping to plot the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, would serve out sentences in U.S. military custody. No agreement was reached in the talks, which could resume in May after the court’s Ramadan recess. Negotiations could continue for months, some lawyers have predicted. The talks are aimed at averting a death penalty trial by having Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and his four co-defendants plead guilty in exchange for sentences of up to life in prison.
By wire sources