Hi, I'm Dan Pramak and welcome to Axios Recap.

Today's Tuesday, February 23rd.

U.S. COVID deaths are up past half a million.

Tech stocks keep going down and we're focused on corporate America's soured relationship with politicians.

Google yesterday announced it will resume accepting political advertisements this Wednesday. relationship with politicians.

Google yesterday announced it will resume accepting political advertisements this Wednesday

on all of its platforms, including search and YouTube.

This comes about five weeks after it banned such ads in the aftermath of the Capitol

Hill insurrection.

Why it matters isn't because there's all sorts of political advertising right now.

There isn't, given where we are in the election cycle. Instead, it matters because Google

might be on the leading edge of all sorts of companies that backed away from politics

last month, but might slowly slink back. The most obvious comp here is Facebook, which also banned political ads and

so far as sticking with it. But there also is a much larger list of companies that publicly

decided to stop making donations to federal politicians, really seeming to reexamine

whether it was a proper use of resources. Again, this is giving donations instead of accepting ads,

but it was a similar thought process. And some of those companies specifically said they'd

stop giving just to those who oppose certification of the presidential results. Others said

they'd stop donating altogether. Now, a lot of these corporate decisions came after a series of

hastily called CEO conversations, convened by Jeffrey Sondonfeld, a lot of these corporate decisions came after a series of hastily called CEO conversations

convened by Jeffrey Sondonfeld, a Yale School of Management professor.

One attendee told me afterwards that the amount of anger directed at the senators who oppose certification

...