Good morning. The heat waves broiling tens of millions of Americans can warp roofs, shrivel crops, buckle roads and disrupt power supplies.

Much of that damage is hard to quantify—and isn’t covered by insurance. Now cities, regulators and companies are sounding the alarm about the escalating costs of heat waves, which cause tens of billions of dollars in damage each year.

• More intense heat waves: Heat waves have become more intense, longer lasting and three times as frequent as they were 60 years ago, according to government data. The upward trend is expected to persist as climate change makes more areas vulnerable to the record-breaking temperatures of recent weeks.
   
• 'Escalating disaster': “Extreme heat is not just a weather event,” said Ricardo Lara, California’s insurance commissioner, after issuing a report this month on the economic and human toll of heat waves. “It’s a silent, escalating disaster wreaking havoc on…health, economy and infrastructure.”
   
• Gradual damages: Standard insurance policies are designed for sudden and accidental damages, such as those caused by fires, storms and theft, and often don’t cover the effects of intense heat, which can be gradual.

America’s HR lobby scraps the ‘E’ from DEI.

The country’s top organization for human-resources professionals is distancing itself from the “equity” plank of diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI.

SHRM, a lobbying and advocacy group with 340,000 members, announced this week that it wants employers to focus on inclusion and diversity efforts—in that order. The group, a powerful lobby in Washington, said that it’s moving away from equity language to ensure no group of workers appears to get preferential treatment. The announcement is the latest example of business leaders grappling with diversity measures during a time when those very efforts face fire from legal, political and employee groups.

• One law firm is hitting businesses with thousands of disability suits.
   
• With the real-estate industry poised to abandon its longstanding commission structure next month, the Justice Department is signaling it isn’t done scrutinizing how real-estate agents get paid.
   
• Federal regulators are taking a closer look at ConocoPhillips’ planned $17 billion acquisition of Marathon Oil, widening government scrutiny of recent dealmaking in the oil patch.
   
• The Supreme Court’s new limits on federal agencies’ regulatory powers are rippling through the tax system, and they are poised to tilt some disputes against the government and toward large companies.
   
• Sweeping changes to Delaware corporate law could give more power to influential shareholders, letting them make more deals on behalf of the company without board oversight.
   
• Two of the nation’s major telecom companies are feuding over a plan to boost service for police, firefighters and other state and local agencies—a move Verizon Communications says would amount to a $14 billion gift to rival AT&T.

Big banks and customers continue to feel pressure from higher rates.

The fight to rein in inflation continues to weigh on some of the nation’s largest banks. Higher interest rates crimped their profits and left more consumers struggling to keep up with elevated borrowing costs. JPMorgan Chase, the biggest U.S. bank, and Wells Fargo both reported a drop in second-quarter profit Friday.

While Fed Chairman Jerome Powell signaled this week that a rate cut could come soon, the banks still have political uncertainty at home and abroad muddling their outlooks.

• Rate Cuts Could Make Things Worse for Banks Before They Help

• China’s economy slowed sharply in the second quarter, piling pressure on the country’s leaders to act more aggressively to rev up growth as they gather in Beijing to chart the course of the economy over the next half-decade.
   
• China’s spectacular economic growth has left trillions of dollars worth of hidden debt, threatening its future.
   
• Overproduction keeps rare-earth prices low, challenging Western efforts to reduce their reliance on Chinese supplies.
   
• Surprisingly weak sales at Kura Sushi USA show that consumers are growing more wary of high prices, especially in California, where restaurants raised prices after the fast-food minimum wage was lifted, the finance chief of the small but fast-growing restaurant chain said.
   
• Israel’s military was assessing on Sunday whether it successfully killed Hamas’s top commander Mohammed Deif in an airstrike in southern Gaza a day earlier, military officials said.

• Former President Donald Trump said Sunday that God "prevented the unthinkable from happening," the day after he survived a shooting at a campaign rally, The attempted assassination of Donald Trump at a Pennsylvania rally marks the biggest security crisis for the Secret Service in decades, prompting a torrent of questions about how the shocking shooting could happen.
   
• The man who authorities say tried to assassinate former President Donald Trump was a quiet student who took advanced classes and a sometimes-bullied loner who wasn’t vocal about his political views, classmates said on Sunday.
   
• More women than ever have entered the American workforce. But it’s not time for a victory lap just yet.
   
• U.S. workers paid more than $1 trillion into Social Security last year. Younger ones doubt they will get a dime when they retire.
   
• Google parent Alphabet is in advanced talks to acquire cybersecurity startup Wiz for roughly $23 billion, according to people familiar with the matter, in what would be its largest acquisition ever.

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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