Axios

Beef between Disney and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis shows no sign of abating.

Why it matters: The highly public feud is entering a new chapter, as Disney looks to flex its muscles from inside the Statehouse and double down on social values.

Over the last year, the world's major central banks have tightened their policies more rapidly than has been seen in decades, ending an era of ultra-low interest rates that had become a basic assumption across global commerce and finance.

• We are now in the early stages of a slow-moving process of markets, companies and governments adapting and readjusting to that reality.

Why it matters: Events like the failure of Silicon Valley Bank in March and the debt and currency market freakout over a British fiscal plan last fall are not so much isolated blowups, but early examples of what could be a rolling series of mini-crises in the coming months and years.

Regional banks are seeing declining deposits as people remember that banks should actually pay them interest on their money.

Driving the news: Large regional banks reported quarterly results on Thursday — and declining deposits were a common theme.

The spring homebuying season got off to a piddling start in March.

Why it matters: The mismatch between housing supply and demand — and the surging prices that resulted — is a lingering side effect of the COVID crisis on the economy.

The "care economy" is the backbone of the whole economy — yet the U.S. doesn't have centralized, easy-to-understand data on it. A project launched by a former Census Bureau economist this week aims to change that.

Why it matters: Without solid data, policymakers and media wind up leaning on stereotypes to understand the economy — and those stereotypes are often wrong.

Elon Musk on Thursday said that he is personally paying for select users to remain verified on Twitter, even when those users had indicated they didn't want that status under his new system of blue check marks as a subscription perk.

State of play: Earlier Thursday, Twitter finally began removing most of the blue check marks from the hundreds of thousands of accounts belonging to celebrities, journalists, and other public figures who had been verified by Twitter before Musk changed the rules.

Corporate America's crush of first-quarter results is sending an unambiguous message about the U.S. economy: The long-awaited slowdown is here — but isn't as bad as expected.

Why it matters: The first three months of 2023 have been a doozy. The Fed is hiking borrowing costs and Russia is (still) at war with Ukraine. The U.S. and China are sparring over just about everything. And America's banking sector survived a near-2008 experience.

The shuttering of BuzzFeed News after years of painful layoffs and cutbacks represents the end of an era for the digital publishing industry.

Why it matters: Companies like BuzzFeed, Vox Media and Vice Media that rapidly expanded and raised lots of cash at high valuations in the aughts are struggling in a dramatically different media landscape.

Fox Corporation CEO Lachlan Murdoch has dropped his defamation lawsuit against Australian news website Crikey, his lawyer confirmed in a statement Thursday.

Why it matters: Murdoch, who's also co-chair of News Corp and the elder son of media mogul Rupert Murdoch, dropped the lawsuit days after Fox News settled a historic defamation lawsuit with Dominion Voting Systems for a record $787 million.