In Uncle Sam’s equivalent of a yearly earnings call, President Biden outlined his plans to play hardball with the corporate jet set while helping Americans who fly economy.

During a forceful State of the Union Address last night, Biden said he wants to raise the minimum tax for multinational corporations to 21%, as well as lift the corporate tax rate to 28% from the current 21%. The White House said that bumping the minimum rate will make it more difficult for pharma companies and other corporate behemoths to sidestep taxes. The president also hopes to:

• Stop letting corporations get tax deductions for all employee salaries over $1 million (the current rule applies only to C-suite pay) and make it harder for companies to write off executives’ private jet travel.
• Raise the tax on corporate stock buybacks from 1% to 4% to encourage companies to spend more of their revenue on salaries and improving productivity.
• Make billionaires pay a minimum of 25% income tax.

Meanwhile, for the non-mansion dwellers, Biden unveiled a scheme to boost homeownership by offering a $5,000 credit to first-time homebuyers for the first two years of their mortgage.

The anti-Trump plan

Biden’s tax plan comes as he prepares to go full campaign mode against his predecessor and likely opponent (again), Donald Trump. The ex-president slashed corporate taxes during his White House term, but those cuts are set to expire in 2025. Republicans want to renew all of those tax breaks, which would cost the government $3.5 trillion over a decade, per the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Trump hasn’t yet formulated a definitive tax plan of his own.

You’ll probably hear a lot more about taxes…as the two candidates are expected to make their contrasting views on the issue a central part of their platforms.—SK

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Biden ordered the US military to build an emergency Gaza port. The temporary port will allow for large-scale aid delivery, aiming to ease the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Gaza as a result of the Israel–Hamas war. The president made the announcement during his State of the Union address last night as he draws criticism from some in his own party for not doing enough to facilitate the distribution of aid. Biden has reportedly grown frustrated with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and has sought workarounds, including airdropping the aid. The port will take weeks to build and will not require US military personnel to operate onshore, officials said.

Sweden formally joined NATO. The move ends Sweden’s long-standing policy of neutrality in armed conflicts, which dates back to the 1800s. Sweden applied to join the military alliance in 2022 in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine but was initially blocked by Turkey and Hungary, which changed their positions earlier this year, opening the door for the Scandinavian country to become NATO’s 32nd member. Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky welcomed the addition, while Russia vowed to take unspecified countermeasures, the BBC reported.

The FDA is expediting the development of LSD to treat anxiety. A single dose of the LSD formulation MM120 had a 48% rate of remission from generalized anxiety disorder after 12 weeks, the biotech company MindMed revealed yesterday. The positive clinical trial results were enough for the FDA to grant the drug breakthrough therapy status, which can lead to a fast-track approval. While psychedelics have long been used to treat mental illness in conjunction with psychotherapy, the MindMed study was the first to prove LSD can alleviate anxiety without the help of therapy. MindMed’s stock soared after reports of the encouraging trial.

Netflix said yesterday that on July 20, it will livestream a fight between former heavyweight world champ and ear-biter Mike Tyson and Jake Paul, the guy who pranked his way to YouTube stardom, at the 80,000-seat AT&T Stadium in Arlington, TX.

The only thing more shocking than the experience gap between the two fighters is the 30-year age difference. Tyson, who will be 58, hasn’t fought officially since losing to Kevin McBride in 2005.

• Tyson was in a 2020 exhibition match against fellow boxing legend Roy Jones Jr. The two lasted eight rounds, but the fight ended in a draw.
• Tyson was seen using a cane in 2022 after a reported “sciatica flare-up.”
• Paul is 27 and has a 9–1 record after getting into boxing four years ago, fighting mostly people who are not professional boxers. Paul’s older brother, Logan, previously fought Floyd Mayweather Jr. in an exhibition bout.

Big picture: The match is part of Netflix’s plans to become your go-to streaming platform for live niche sports entertainment (emphasis on entertainment). In November, Netflix hosted The Netflix Cup, a live golf tournament with athletes from its golf series, Full Swing, alongside drivers from Formula 1: Drive to Survive. The streaming company also signed a $5 billion deal this year with WWE to stream Monday Night Raw exclusively on the platform for 10 years beginning in 2025.—MM

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An electric vehicle startup is spinning its wheels in mud after botching its response to a viral tech reviewer’s criticism of its new car.

ICYMI: Popular consumer gadgets YouTuber Marques Brownlee (aka MKBHD) tore down the EV-maker Fisker’s new Ocean SUV in a video titled “This is the Worst Car I’ve Ever Reviewed.” It’s gotten 4.3+ million views since going up less than three weeks ago.

“You could give me this car and I wouldn’t want to drive it,” Brownlee concluded. He applauded the car’s handsome physical design but tore into “a lot of weird” choices—including unlabeled buttons, sunroof solar panels you can’t monitor, and software glitches with the keyfob, cameras, and more.

Then Fisker unintentionally gave the fiasco gas this week when a self-identified Fisker senior engineer called the dealership that loaned Brownlee the car to try to do damage control…but ended up admitting that even after the car’s new update—which is supposed to fix several problems Brownlee noticed—Fisker’s software “still got some holes in it.” The dealership’s owner posted a recording of the call, which 3.6+ million people have viewed.

Wide reach: More people subscribe to Brownlee’s YouTube channel than to the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today combined, according to Fast Company, underscoring how influential social media reviewers have become in the product space.

Fisker might have bigger problems…the company announced last week that it may not have enough money to survive the year.—ML

Quote: “Scientifically, it’s a big loss. I think—emotionally—it’s maybe even a bigger loss.”

Rage, Voyager 1, rage against the dying of the light. The little space probe that could, which launched in 1977 to explore the cosmos, may have gone dark, NASA said. The craft, now 15 billion miles into space, is sending incoherent data back to Earth, and researchers can’t figure out why. Mission project manager Suzanne Dodd said it’s the “most serious issue” she’s seen. If it really is Voyager 1’s time to go gentle into that good night, it’ll have earned it: The probe has made countless contributions to our understanding of space, but perhaps none as profound as the “Pale Blue Dot,” pictured above, a legendary photograph of our home planet taken by Voyager 1 from 3.7 billion miles away. Even when Voyager 1 ceases to operate, it will continue to journey further and further into places unknown, likely outliving humanity itself.

Stat: Gum chewin’ just ain’t what it used to be. US gum sales rose less than 1% last year, down 32% from 2018. Meanwhile, global sales rose 5% to $16 billion, but still down 10% from 2018. Covid is mostly to blame: At the height of mask-wearing and social distancing, no one was worried much about bad breath. People also weren’t getting out of the house as often to make impulse gum purchases at the cash register. The Great Gum Slump is bad enough that some manufacturers, like Mondelez International, have gotten out of the business entirely.

Read: D.C. Weekly, the New York News Daily, and the Chicago Chronicle are not real publications—they’re Russian mock news sites. (New York Times)

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