Good morning. States have a new adversary: China.

• What states are doing: From Florida to Indiana and Montana, an expanding array of local proposals, bills, laws and regulations aim to block Chinese individuals and companies from acquiring land, winning contracts, working on research, setting up factories and otherwise participating in the U.S. economy.
   
• Why they are getting involved: State officials, overriding traditional local interests such as drawing investment and creating jobs, say they are acting where Congress hasn’t to address grassroots American distrust of the Chinese Communist Party.
   
• Inflection point: The states have generally been moving faster on China legislation than Congress. By the time a bill that could force a sale of TikTok by its Chinese owner ByteDance reached President Biden’s desk Wednesday, over 30 state governments had passed regulations targeting the short-video app.
   
• Stepping in: In their efforts to challenge perceived China threats, states are often claiming authority to define national-security risks. “There is a real responsibility on behalf of governors and state legislatures to look out for the safety and protection of our citizens,” said Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who last year blocked Ford Motor from setting up a battery venture in his state with China-based Contemporary Amperex Technology, or CATL.

Washington’s telecom cop seeks new beat: cybersecurity.

The nation’s main telecom regulator sees its future in cybersecurity.

The Federal Communications Commission’s new net neutrality order, which advanced Thursday in a 3-2 vote, added provisions that seek more authority to protect the internet’s plumbing from online threats like ransomware, denial-of-service attacks and sophisticated state-sponsored hacks.

Policy shift. The effort aligns with FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel’s cybersecurity agenda, which includes a bigger role policing the infrastructure that carries everything from credit-card transactions to video-enabled doctor’s visits.

How TikTok lost the war in Washington.

TikTok spent the past four years trying to fend off a U.S. ban, but it never figured out Washington.

The law signed by President Biden on Wednesday requiring a sale or ban of the popular app was in part the product of tectonic shifts in U.S.-China relations and coordinated, stealthy efforts by its critics on Capitol Hill.

Those factors were compounded by a series of miscalculations that, in the end, left the Chinese-backed company scrambling for support among its users in ways that were ineffective or even backfired.

• Federal auto-safety regulators have opened an investigation into the adequacy of Tesla’s December recall of 2 million vehicles equipped with Autopilot software. Meanwhile, Elon Musk met with senior Chinese officials in Beijing on Sunday as he pushes for approval to introduce Tesla’s advanced driver-assistance technology in its biggest overseas market.
   
• A real-estate brokerage firm that is part of Warren Buffett’s conglomerate has reached a settlement in the landmark antitrust case against the industry, though the amount was a fraction of what the plaintiffs have aimed to recover.
   
• A former McKinsey partner sued the consulting firm and its leader, Bob Sternfels, on Friday, alleging that it misled Congress after improperly deleting records while under government investigation for its work advising opioid companies, according to WSJ Pro Bankruptcy (subscription required).
   
• The Biden administration is reversing course on its plan to ban menthol cigarettes, after the White House weighed the potential public-health benefits of banning minty smokes against the political risk of angering some Black voters in an election year.
   
• Sam Altman of OpenAI and the chief executives of Nvidia, Microsoft and Alphabet are among technology-industry leaders joining a new federal advisory board focused on the secure use of artificial intelligence within U.S. critical infrastructure.
   
• The specter of World War II is haunting Western attempts to seize Russian assets and funnel them to Ukraine’s defense against Moscow.

Blinken meets with Xi as U.S. pressures China to end support for Russia.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged Chinese leader Xi Jinping to cut back on his nation’s support for Russia’s defense industry during a meeting in the Chinese capital on Friday and warned that the U.S. was prepared to act if Beijing didn’t heed its concerns.

“Russia would struggle to sustain its assault on Ukraine without China’s support,” Blinken said at the end of a three-day trip to China. “In our discussions today, I made clear that if China does not address this problem, we will,” he added, alluding to economic sanctions under consideration by the Biden administration, first reported this week by The Wall Street Journal.

Regulators seize troubled Philadelphia bank, Republic First.

Regulators seized the troubled Philadelphia bank Republic First Bancorp and sold it to fellow regional lender Fulton Financial, the fourth high-profile bank failure since last spring.

The bank was closed by the Pennsylvania state regulator on Friday and sold after an auction run by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., confirming an earlier report by The Wall Street Journal.

U.S. Treasury takes a closer look at cyber, terrorism risks.

The Treasury Department said Friday that its Federal Insurance Office will partner with the National Science Foundation to establish a research center that brings together insurance industry experts and academics. The partnership aims to improve the insurance industry’s modeling and underwriting of catastrophic cyber risks, as well as terrorism.

The new group, dubbed an industry-university cooperative research center, will seek to help insurers estimate risk with greater certainty and contribute to the potential expansion of reinsurance and capital markets.

• Chinese buyers, spooked by a protracted property slump and a recent stock-market rout, are rushing toward gold as economic uncertainty looms.
   
• Egypt offered a new proposal for a truce between Israel and Hamas. Meanwhile, Israel and Hezbollah are locked in an escalating cycle of violence that risks spiraling further.
   
• Renewable electricity is growing fast. The trouble is, it can’t keep up with growing power demand.
   
• French President Emmanuel Macron is rekindling debate over whether France’s nuclear arsenal should play a role in deterring attacks against European allies.

• Thought you were done traveling for work? Think again.
   
• The new most dreaded word at work is ‘hey.’
   
• Donald Trump’s allies are quietly drafting proposals that would attempt to erode the Federal Reserve’s independence if the former president wins a second term.
   
• As the world’s biggest elections get under way in India, candidates to national office will need to beat something more perilous than political rivals—extreme heat.
   
• For the second year in a row, President Biden called on Vladimir Putin to release Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich from a Russian jail during a black-tie gala Saturday evening in Washington that celebrates press freedom.

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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