Good morning. The Securities and Exchange Commission is facing widespread opposition to its climate rule, but one group is breathing a sigh of relief after some final changes: small and medium-size businesses, which feared they would be casualties of the new disclosure requirements.

• Agency in the crossfire: The rule has detractors from all quarters. Republican attorneys general sued the day the rule was announced, while both the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Sierra Club, an environmental group, sued last week, the latter alleging the new rule doesn’t go far enough. A U.S. appeals court has halted the implementation of the rule. But small businesses seem at least partially placated.
   
• Major tweak: The SEC’s decision to ax a controversial requirement that public companies report on so-called Scope 3 emissions—the carbon footprint from supply chains and the use of their products—seems to have buoyed small businesses that worried they would be roped into their big customers’ compliance and accounting burdens.
   
• 'Where do I start?': “If they come to us and say, we need to know what are your emissions of diesel engines or our ammonia refrigeration systems, that’s like ‘Holy cow, where do I start?’ Well, I’d hire a very high-price consultant,” said Bruce Lackey, chief executive of Grove City, Ohio-based food wholesaler Happy Chicken Farms and Merry Milk Maid, which sells to grocery chain Kroger.

DOJ uncovering more misconduct through self-disclosure program.

More companies are choosing to voluntarily disclose misconduct to prosecutors after a policy revision last year that increased the potential benefits of doing so, a top Justice Department official said.

The Justice Department also has started to receive disclosures on a wider range of potential criminal activity than previously reported, including securities and healthcare fraud, acting Assistant Attorney General Nicole Argentieri said Thursday. In some cases, the Justice Department has rewarded companies that voluntarily confess to wrongdoing by agreeing not to prosecute them—what prosecutors call a declination.

U.S. sues Apple, alleges tech giant exploits illegal monopoly.

The U.S. accused Apple of monopolizing the smartphone market in a landmark antitrust lawsuit that threatens to disrupt the tech giant’s business model and how millions of consumers use their iPhones.

The Justice Department, 15 states and the District of Columbia sued Apple on Thursday, alleging the tech giant makes it difficult for competitors to integrate with the iPhone, ultimately raising prices for consumers. The antitrust suit, filed in a federal court in New Jersey, says that Apple tries to keep users from switching to devices on outside operating systems, such as Android smartphones.

• A progressive Democrat and a populist Republican are teaming up to attack big mergers, offering a new proposal that would remove a cornerstone of the corporate tax code and potentially reshape dealmaking.
   
• U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren renewed calls on the Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate whether Tesla ran afoul of regulations governing board independence at public companies.

Xi Jinping to meet U.S. CEOs in Beijing.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping plans to meet a group of U.S. business leaders next week after a government-sponsored forum as Beijing steps up efforts to woo American firms amid an exodus of foreign capital.

The meeting with China’s top leader is set for Wednesday, and insurer Chubb’s CEO, Evan Greenberg, along with Stephen Orlins, president of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, and Craig Allen, president of the U.S.-China Business Council, are expected to attend, people familiar with the matter said.

• The Fed has a conundrum: interest rates are both too high and too low.
   
• The eurozone is edging closer to a rebound in private-sector activity despite continued weakness in the bloc’s manufacturing sector, according to a purchasing managers’ survey.
   
• Build-A-Bear is seeing the effects of the attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea on its supply chain. Shoppers may too.
   
• The U.S. is set to bring a draft United Nations resolution calling for an immediate and sustained cease-fire in Gaza to a vote in the Security Council on Friday, a U.S. official said, raising the pressure on Israel to pause its five-month-old war with Hamas.

• Tech job seekers without AI skills are facing a new reality: lower salaries and fewer roles.
   
• Distress at regional banks has spurred some buyout firms to invest in a sector they typically ignore.
   
• Corporate security executives are beefing up supplier oversight following extensive supply-chain attacks.
   

• 🎧 Listen to Amazon’s chief security officer discuss how his team implements artificial intelligence to help protect the online retailer’s customers.

• All three major U.S. stock indexes rose to new records Thursday, boosted by investors’ growing conviction that the post-Covid surge in borrowing costs is coming to an end soon.
   
• Truth Social, the social-media platform started by Donald Trump, has performed poorly as a business. Yet it could be the best investment the former president has ever made.
   
• As China wraps its authoritarian rule more tightly around once-boisterous Hong Kong, no corner of society has been left untouched.
   
• Buying a home this spring just got more chaotic.
   
• The U.S. government should consider immediate consequences, including sanctions, against authoritarian countries that wrongfully detain reporters, an executive for the publisher of The Wall Street Journal said Thursday.

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.

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