Florida Governor Ron DeSantis escalates Disney criticism

Yahoo Finance’s Allie Canal joins the Live show to discuss the latest surrounding Disney’s battle against Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and the outlook for Disney’s expected job cuts.

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- The battle of Disney versus Ron DeSantis escalating as the Florida governor continues to criticize the media giant's parks and properties. Yahoo Finance's Allie Canal has the latest on Disney versus DeSantis. All right, what do we know now?

ALLIE CANAL: Well, it seems like this battle is never ending, right? And DeSantis, he's been on a tour promoting his book. And he's basically using that to attack Disney every chance he gets. Especially after Disney outmaneuvered the governor with his hand-selected Oversight Board, basically passing last-minute legislation that essentially renders this new board powerless. So that created a whole new set of problems.

But on Wednesday, that board did make a move to try to regain power by eliminating a planning agency and transferring the responsibility for all future planning over to the board. On top of that, this move comes just two days after DeSantis threatened to develop land near Disney. Some ideas he floated was a state park or a state prison. That created quite a few headlines there.

So it's been this back-and-forth drama for quite some time, all stemming over Disney's unfavorable response to the Parental Rights and Education Act, otherwise known as the Don't Say Gay bill, which bans education of sexual orientation and gender identity from kindergarten to third grade. Bob Iger has defended the company's actions, calling DeSantis policies antibusiness and anti-Florida. So Disney clearly not backing down on this. In fact, last night the company announced that it will break ground next year on a planned affordable housing development just a few miles away from the Magic Kingdom.

And the timing of this was interesting because DeSantis and the board had just criticized Disney for the lack of affordable housing for its 75,000 employees. That is set to be completed in 2026. But before then, I'm sure we're still-- the drama is going to continue.

- Yes. And there have been some Republicans who have actually sided with Disney or at least sided against DeSantis in this whole fight as well, which is interesting. In the meantime, while this is going on, Disney is reportedly moving ahead with job cuts next week. That's according to CNBC, starting, perhaps, with the ESPN.

ALLIE CANAL: Yeah. CNBC reporting that ESPN will be affected by these job cuts. Bob Iger did announce back in February that the company is planning to 7,000 jobs by this summer. Those cuts at ESPN, it will include management. It will include on-air talent. Bloomberg also reported that the entertainment division is going to be affected, with 15% of those workers cut.

And remember that Bob Iger, he did say that these layoffs will happen in three waves. The first wave happened last month. This would be wave two. And then the third wave happening right before the summer. And this is all in an effort to slash $5.5 billion worth of costs, including $3 billion in content costs.

This coming as profitability has become paramount for investors, Disney really focused on improving its free cash flow. It's reorganized the business into three separate divisions as a result of that. And these layoffs are just a part of that greater effort as Disney tries to steer this company in a new direction.

- We'll see how it goes. And we'll count on you to keep us posted.

ALLIE CANAL: Yeah, I'll keep you posted.

- Thanks so much, Allie. Appreciate it.