Good morning. Deere & Co. said it would dial back some of its diversity initiatives after it was targeted by a conservative activist, becoming the second agricultural company in recent weeks to bow to such criticism.

• The background: Deere was targeted in a series of posts on X from Robby Starbuck, a former Hollywood director turned conservative activist. The posts included criticism of what he characterized as diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, initiatives at the company, including photos that he said showed people from Deere holding Pride flags.
   
• Dial back: Deere, the world’s largest farm-machinery manufacturer by sales, said it would ensure the absence of what it described as “socially motivated messages” from company-mandated training materials and policies unless otherwise required. It also pledged to reaffirm that “the existence of diversity quotas and pronoun identification” aren’t, and never have been, company policy.
   
• More companies are facing criticism over DEI: Deere’s announcement follows a similar retreat last month by Tractor Supply, a rural retailer known for selling animal feed and workwear, which cut back on corporate diversity and environmental efforts. The company experienced a wave of complaints, led by Starbuck, about its DEI efforts on social media.

Elon Musk wants his AI bot to deliver the news. It is struggling with the job. 

Elon Musk wants people to get news from Grok, his AI model accessible through the X platform. Grok is having trouble meeting the moment.

The artificial-intelligence model’s limitations were on display in the hours after the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump on Saturday, when it served up some erroneous headlines based on its read of content on X.

One headline wrongly said Vice President Kamala Harris was shot. The error seemed to stem from sarcastic references some X users made to a previous, unrelated incident where President Biden had mixed up Trump’s name with Harris.

Another Grok news summary incorrectly named a purported shooter and claimed the man was a member of antifa, a loose network of people on the far left. Authorities later gave a different name for the suspect and have yet to identify a motive.

SEC Sues CEO of Trump-Linked SPAC.

The one-time chief executive of the blank-check company that acquired Donald Trump’s Truth Social violated securities laws in connection with the deal, the Securities and Exchange Commission said in a lawsuit filed Wednesday.

Patrick Orlando is accused of misleading investors by denying that special-purpose acquisition company Digital World Acquisition Corp. wanted to buy any specific company even as he was pursuing a deal to acquire Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company of Truth Social.

SPACs have no business operations of their own and raise money from investors to buy other companies. Orlando’s alleged lie violated securities laws that bar defrauding and misleading investors, according to the SEC. A lawyer for Orlando didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

• Thai authorities are still investigating an apparent murder-suicide in a luxury Thai hotel, while trying to calm concerns about the safety of travelers in the tourism-reliant Southeast Asian nation.

JD Vance is a big Ukraine critic. Europe is wary of his addition to the GOP ticket.

GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump’s decision Monday to have Vance join him on the ticket is raising concerns across Europe that an already skeptical Trump might be persuaded to abandon Ukraine as it tries to repel Russia’s invasion. The fear in European capitals is that, without strong U.S. aid, Kyiv will have less leverage in any peace talks with Moscow or could outright lose the war.

Vance is a leading voice among ultraconservative Republicans opposed to sending funds to Ukraine, pitting him against many hawkish members of his party who sided with Democrats in viewing the issue as a U.S. national-security imperative. Vance, who is closely aligned with the style and views of Trump’s conservative, populist movement, was the lone senator who opposed a North Atlantic Treaty Organization-backed no-fly zone in Ukraine.

• An early June rescue mission has become the most prominent example of Israel’s famous undercover units on the battlefield in the Gaza Strip, a dangerous foray into a territory that its covert forces once found nearly impenetrable. Subterfuge is a skill set that Israel’s security services have honed for decades in the West Bank, with operatives known as “mista’arvim”—a Hebrew moniker borrowed from an Arabic term for people steeped in Arab culture.

• Two top Federal Reserve officials suggested an interest-rate cut could be warranted in the coming months—though not at the central bank’s meeting in two weeks—if a recent inflation slowdown continues.

• For the Federal Reserve, an accelerating pace of inflation looks like less of a risk than a weakening labor market.

• Wage rises in the U.K. cooled in the three months to May, after months of stubbornly high growth, keeping an August interest-rate cut in play at the Bank of England.

Data breaches highlight lack of basic cyber controls.

Breaches at companies including AT&T and UnitedHealth Group in recent months have one thing in common: Hackers gained access because basic security measures weren’t implemented.

There was no software bug or formidable nation-state hack, or clever social-engineering tactic that let attackers in. Rather, it was because companies didn’t enable multifactor authentication on one or more key systems.

The pension fund managed about C$632.3 billion, equivalent to $462.1 billion, as of March 31, 2024.

Finra appoints enforcement deputies. 

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Wall Street’s self-regulatory body, has appointed two new senior vice presidents of enforcement: Julie Glynn and Tina Gubb.

Glynn, who joins from JPMorgan Chase, where she served as general counsel for the bank’s wealth management line, and Gubb, who has been at Finra since 1998, will both report to enforcement head Bill St. Louis.

In their newly created roles, the two will act as senior advisers to St. Louis on high-impact investigations and disciplinary actions, Finra said.

• The U.S. is facing potential disruptions at major seaports for the second time in as many years. Harold Daggett, the head of the union that represents dockworkers at East Coast and Gulf Coast ports, is warning that time is running out to secure a new longshore labor deal before the current multiyear contract expires Sept. 30. and that a strike “is becoming more likely.”
   
• The Democratic coalition backing President Biden showed new signs of cracking Wednesday as top congressional leaders successfully pushed to delay a procedural vote on his nomination and Rep. Adam Schiff of California called for Biden to bow out of the race in the midst of growing party fears of steep down-ballot losses.
   
• The Wall Street Journal’s latest quarterly survey of business and academic economists shows forecasters remain firmly optimistic about the economic outlook, despite some hints of weakness in recent data.

Follow us on X at @WSJRisk. Follow Risk & Compliance editor David Smagalla @DSmagalla_DJ and reporters Mengqi Sun @_MengqiSun, Dylan Tokar @dgtokar and Richard Vanderford @VanderfordRich.

You can reach us by replying to any newsletter, or email David at david.smagalla@wsj.com.