Good morning. Leading Chinese battery companies with ties to Ford Motor and Volkswagen should be banned from shipping goods to the U.S., a group of Republican lawmakers said, alleging their supply chains use forced labor.

• The companies: Contemporary Amperex Technology, the world’s largest maker of batteries for electric cars and a partner to Ford, and Gotion High-Tech, a battery company partially owned by Volkswagen, should be added immediately to an import ban list, the lawmakers said in two letters sent to the Biden administration, which are scheduled to be released publicly on Thursday.
   
• New additions: The lawmakers called for Contemporary Amperex, also known as CATL, and Gotion to be added to what is known as the entity list under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. The letters sent to Department of Homeland Security Undersecretary Robert Silvers came from Rep. John Moolenaar, head of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party; Rep. Mark Green, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee; Sen. Marco Rubio; and others.
   
• The impact: Being added to the entity list, which is managed by the Department of Homeland Security, would be a major hurdle for the companies’ U.S. aspirations. Though the U.S. and other countries have pushed for wider adoption of electric cars, Chinese clean energy manufacturers have faced an uphill battle to win support for projects.

Keith Gill’s GameStop trades pose conundrum for market cops.

Keith Gill placed a big bet on GameStop, then single-handedly moved the stock higher by returning to social media. Was that market manipulation?

Lawyers say it is unlikely that the Securities and Exchange Commission could bring a case against Gill, the meme-stock influencer known as Roaring Kitty, based on the facts currently known about his trading.

HF Foods settles fraud charges with SEC, to pay $3.9 million fine.

The Securities and Exchange Commission said it had settled fraud charges against food-distributor HF Foods related to a former executive buying luxury cars.

The SEC said Thursday that former Chief Executive Zhou Min Ni, with the help of former finance chief Jonathan Ni, had misappropriated about $3.4 million from the company between 2018 and 2020 for personal purposes, including purchasing and maintaining a stable of luxury vehicles.

• The Federal Trade Commission is investigating whether Microsoft structured one of its latest deals with an artificial-intelligence startup to avoid a government antitrust review of the transaction.
   
• Credit Suisse bondholders sued Switzerland in a Manhattan federal court on Thursday, alleging the country put national interests above the law when their bonds were voided in the bank’s rescue last year by UBS.
   
• Facebook and Instagram parent Meta Platforms’ new artificial-intelligence project faces complaints from a privacy-focused advocacy group in eleven European countries.
   
• British tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch was acquitted Thursday on criminal charges that he fraudulently inflated revenues at his company Autonomy before selling it to Hewlett-Packard for more than $11 billion in 2011.
   
• The Supreme Court ruled insurance carriers have legal standing to challenge bankruptcy plans involving large numbers of lawsuits, a win for insurers’ efforts to limit policy payouts on mass personal-injury claims, according to WSJ Pro Bankruptcy (subscription required).

ECB cuts interest rates for first time since 2019.

The European Central Bank lowered interest rates by a quarter point, beginning to reverse a historic series of rate increases and widening a policy gap with the Federal Reserve, which isn’t expected to follow suit for months.

The potential impact. The rate cut is a significant moment for investors and the world economy. It marks an inflection point in recent monetary policy and sends a signal that relief is on the way for households, indebted governments and businesses that have reined in investments in the face of high borrowing costs.

The aging U.S. power grid is about to get a jolt.

The country’s aging power grid, built over the past 100 years, is about to leap into the 21st century as the Biden administration scrambles to meet a coming burst of new power demand.

Overdue upgrades. To boost the grid’s capacity, the administration is pushing to step up efficiency of existing power lines with new technologies. The upgrades are far cheaper and faster than big transmission projects, which are often plagued by red tape and can take years to build.

• Hamas’s leader in Gaza told Arab negotiators that he would accept a peace deal only if Israel commits to a permanent cease-fire, affirming the militant group’s position in his first response to a proposal introduced by President Biden to end the eight-month war.
   
• Right-wing nationalist parties look set to surge in elections across Europe this week, but the shock wave will travel slowly due to rifts among the political forces.
   
• U.K. businesses expect wages to rise at a slower pace over the coming 12 months, a finding that will help reassure policymakers at the Bank of England that inflation has been tamed.
   
• It’s not officially summer yet, but the West is already dealing with its first heat wave of the year.

SEC cyber disclosures delayed several times since December.

The U.S. government has delayed public disclosures of cyber incidents several times since new rules came into force last December, a senior Justice Department official said.

On a number of occasions, the Justice Department has delayed companies’ disclosures because making the attacks public would create substantial risks and raise national-security concerns, said Matthew Olsen, assistant attorney general for national security. Olsen was speaking at The Wall Street Journal’s Tech Live: Cybersecurity conference here Thursday.

• CrowdStrike Chief, FBI Agent Discuss Fakes and Threats, at WSJ Tech Live: Cybersecurity

• Buyout firms have recently turned away from buying up smaller medical businesses as antitrust authorities have scrutinized such acquisitions.
   
• A law firm’s private-equity work cost it a chapter 11 assignment—and threatens an arrangement that other top firms use to tap into the lucrative business of bankruptcy. (🔒)
   
• The surge in U.S. government debt has reached levels that threaten to have a big impact on the rest of the world. (🔒)
   
• Companies can’t seem to quit decades-old spreadsheet tools. Some say that’s making it harder to use AI.

• Apple’s caution and characteristic secrecy, as well as the care it takes in upgrading devices have hobbled its early efforts in the AI arena, according to people familiar with the company's work. It now finds itself in the unusual position of having to take risks.
   
• Vladimir Putin has portrayed himself as a defender of global stability, leading a powerful nation that offers a robust economic, military and cultural alternative to the West. One challenge to his vision: Russia’s population has been in decline for years.
   
• Your co-workers Zoom, Slack, email and text with ease—but good luck getting many of them to make or answer an old-fashioned phone call.

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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