Good morning. Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase are in the crosshairs of right-leaning activist groups privately pushing them to abandon or shrink their diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, according to people familiar with the matter.

Bank of America and Citigroup, meanwhile, are under pressure from activists accusing them of discriminating against customers because of their religious or political beliefs.

• The groups: The various groups—which include the National Center for Public Policy Research, the National Legal and Policy Center and the Heritage Foundation—each own small stakes in shares of the banks they are targeting, and submitted proposals challenging their business practices late last year, the people said. They argue that the banks’ policies leave them and their shareholders vulnerable to costly legal challenges.
   
• Not the first time: Shareholders could have a chance to vote on the proposals ahead of the banks’ annual meetings this spring. Boards typically recommend shareholders vote against such measures. The groups have filed similar proposals against companies including Apple, Walmart and Starbucks and all have been handily defeated, rarely getting more than 2% of shareholder support.

Meanwhile, President Trump’s plan to unravel diversity, equity and inclusion efforts began taking shape on Wednesday with an order closing such programs within federal agencies and placing all staff working on those programs on paid leave.​

• In process: The Agriculture Department, the Treasury Department and the Labor Department had removed some webpages on diversity by Wednesday morning. The Federal Communications Commission rescinded an action plan promoting DEI and shut down the agency’s advisory group, among other steps. Elsewhere, meetings on those issues were canceled quietly, and federal employees were uncertain about whether internal affinity groups would continue. Paid leave for employees who work on DEI programs was to take effect by 5 p.m. Wednesday.
   
• A reversal of the Biden administration policy: The Biden administration had required federal agencies to recruit a more diverse workforce and reduce racial and gender pay gaps as part of an executive order signed in 2021. 

Also:

An Anxious Federal Workforce Bids Goodbye to Job Stability and Remote Work

CEOs launch war rooms, hotlines to cope with Trump’s order blitz. 

JPMorgan Chase set up a war room. The law firm Fisher Phillips created an immigration hotline to help clients manage potential workplace raids. Manufacturers and retailers have teams working to soften the blow of potential new tariffs.

The blitz of executive orders and memos from President Trump left business leaders—some still in the tuxedos they wore to White House inaugural galas—scrambling to make sense of sweeping changes to tax, immigration, trade and energy policies.

Dubai forex firm settles with U.S. prosecutors over money-laundering compliance issues.

Wall Street Exchange, a Dubai-based currency trading firm, has agreed to pay more than $9 million in a settlement with federal prosecutors over problems with its anti-money-laundering compliance program.

WSE, when answering due diligence questions from an institution it banked with in New York, allegedly hid that U.K. authorities had taken action over its compliance lapses. Its misrepresentations amounted to bank fraud, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors said that WSE has entered into a nonprosecution agreement and won't be charged, and that it has received credit for cooperating after taking remedial measures to improve its compliance program. Under the agreement, the firm has accepted the allegations. WSE didn’t respond to a request for comment. Prosecutors didn’t name the bank that was misled.

—Richard Vanderford

• President Trump threatened sanctions and tariffs on Russia if its leader, President Vladimir Putin, doesn’t reach an agreement to end the war in Ukraine.
   
• Prince Harry reached a last-minute settlement with Rupert Murdoch’s U.K. newspaper group, ending a yearslong legal battle over press intrusion, unlawful information gathering and predatory practices by the tabloids.
   
• The U.K. government appointed an ex-Amazon boss as interim chairman of its competition watchdog after pressuring the regulator to do more to spur investment and economic growth.
   
• A group of U.S. pensions and other institutions is pushing private-equity firms to share more information on their fees and investment returns, in a bid to address simmering frustration with the industry’s disclosures.
   
• The European Union should put an end to anonymity of users on social-media platforms and hold their chief executives personally accountable if they fail to comply with the bloc’s regulations, Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said.

Natural disasters cost $417 billion worldwide in 2024.

Natural disasters and severe weather cost the global economy $417 billion last year, including $154 billion for which insurers were on the hook, according to a new report.

A record year. Last year was the warmest year on record dating to 1850 and saw a record 21 natural catastrophes with multibillion-dollar price tags, according to a report from Gallagher Re, a reinsurance broker. Gallagher Chief Science Officer Steve Bowen said the trend toward increased losses can be explained, in part, by the warming climate.

More than just a warming climate. “Climate change is a cause [of increased losses]. It is not the cause,” Bowen said. “You have folks that are very much wanting to attribute and simplify the reasons for increased losses to just one or two factors. But the reality is much more complicated than that.”

Trump’s arrival brightens U.S. outlook, darkens everyone else’s.

Usually, what’s good for the U.S. economy is good for the world. Not this year.

When participants at the World Economic Forum look at President Trump’s plans, they become more optimistic about the U.S. and more pessimistic about the rest of the world, especially Europe.

The U.S. was outperforming much of the world before Trump was elected.

His agenda could extend that outperformance by making the U.S. the preferred destination for foreign investment via lower taxes and regulation and even cheaper energy, while his promised tariffs hurt others’ exports.

• Israel launched what it called a major counterterrorism operation in the West Bank, expanding its campaign against militancy in the Palestinian territory after more than 15 months of deadly war in Gaza.
   
• ​Houthi rebels in Yemen have released the crew of the Galaxy Leader more than a year after they seized the ship in the Red Sea and signaled they would stop attacking vessels after the Israel-Hamas cease-fire agreement.
   
• President Trump has handed retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg the job of ending the Ukraine war in 100 days. Almost no one thinks he can do it—especially the Russians.

• A fast-spreading wildfire sparked in northern Los Angeles County, prompting new evacuation orders in a region already decimated by historic wildfires this month.
   
• Santee Cooper, the big power provider in South Carolina, has tapped financial advisers to look for buyers that can restart construction on a pair of nuclear reactors that were mothballed years ago.

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

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