Axios

2020 candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden launched his campaign inside a union hall in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on Monday with an appeal to the blue collar workers who helped hand Trump his electoral college victory in 2016.

The personal income of farmers in the U.S. declined by an annualized $11.8 billion between January and March, the biggest 1st quarter drop in 3 years, Bloomberg reports, citing Commerce Department data released Monday.

The big picture: The drop is being driven primarily by the fallout from President Trump’s trade disputes, a nosedive in commodity prices and record flooding in the Midwest. As a result, farmer bankruptcies in the Midwest have shot up to levels the U.S. hasn't seen for approximately a decade.

WeWork announced on Monday that it confidentially filed IPO registration paperwork with federal regulators last December, and an amended filing more recently. Axios has learned that the co-working giant has not yet picked bankers, and that the offering is likely to occur in the third or fourth quarters of 2019.

Why it matters: This would be one of the year's most controversial mega-IPOs, as WeWork is a "love it or hate it" sort of company among investors. One person close to the company told Axios that it could become the second-most shorted stock, behind Tesla.

Chewy, a pet-focused online retailer acquired for $3.3 billion by PetSmart in 2017, filed for an initial public offering on Monday.

The bottom line: Chewy has managed to successfully enter and grow in an e-commerce market where Amazon already played, with revenue climbing 50% last year to $3.5 billion. But it also will join a long line of other unprofitable tech companies going public, with a $268 million net loss for 2018.

Disney's "Avengers: Endgame" ruled the box office this weekend, torching all-time single-day, weekend and per-screen records on its way to well over $1 billion in global ticket sales. It was just the latest victory for Disney, which has had the No. 1 grossing movie every year since 2012 and been the top grossing studio since 2016.

The big picture: Disney is on pace to take a 29.1% share of box office receipts, the largest percentage on record, according to data from Nash Information Services.

President Trump says he thinks he could strike a bilateral trade deal with Japan by the time he visits Tokyo in May. (Trump made this prediction during a Friday meeting at the White House with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.)

Reality check: Multiple sources close to the U.S.-Japanese trade talks tell me this is ridiculous spin. Trump's big demand — that the Japanese drop their massive tariffs on U.S. agricultural products — isn't going to happen anytime soon. They say the two sides haven't even agreed on the scope of these trade talks, let alone crafted serious plans for the timing of a possible deal.

In an op-ed Sunday, New York Times columnist Bret Stephens condemned the same newspaper in which his writing appears for publishing an anti-Semitic cartoon, arguing that the media's "torrential criticism of Israel" and "mainstreaming of anti-Zionism" has desensitized people to its "inherent bigotry."

Context: The Times' international edition published a cartoon on April 25 that depicted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a guide dog for a blind President Trump. After issuing an editor's note that called the cartoon "an error of judgment," the Times put out a second statement with a more forceful apology.

Disney continues to take theaters by storm. The company's 3-hour-long presentation of Marvel’s "Avengers: Endgame" has obliterated box office records, bringing in a whopping $350 million in North America and $1.2 billion worldwide during its opening weekend.

Why it matters: No other movie has ever made this much money at the box office during its weekend opener. The 2nd-highest opening weekend for any film globally was Disney's 2018 presentation of Marvel's "Avengers: Infinity War," which brought in roughly half as much money at $640.5 million.

Dairy farms in Wisconsin are on the brink of vanishing as they struggle to survive falling prices, overproduction and President Trump's trade war, the New York Times reports.

Why it matters: President Trump is managing a delicate balancing act, as he seeks to force concessions through his global trade war without losing the support of farm districts he won in 2016. Many dairy farmers are being forced to turn to beef or vegetables to make a living.

After President Trump labeled the media "fakers" at a Wisconsin rally Saturday evening, the White House Correspondents' Association president warned of the dangers of attacks on a free press.

"I've had death threats, including one this week — too many of us have. It shouldn't need to be said in a room full of people who understand the power of words that 'fake news' and 'enemies of the people' are not pet names, punchlines or presidential."