Good morning. A group of Republican lawmakers are attempting to repeal the Corporate Transparency Act, which requires companies to disclose their true ownership, proclaiming the law “a big government overreach.”

• The bills: Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R., Ala.) on Wednesday reintroduced the Repealing Big Brother Overreach Act, a bill that aims to repeal the CTA with a stated goal of protecting small-business owners. The bill has so far received support from about 21 Republican senators but no Democrats have yet signed on, according to Tuberville’s office. Congressman Warren Davidson (R., Ohio) also reintroduced companion legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday. The bill has 66 Republican co-sponsors in the House.
   
• Critical time for CTA: The efforts to repeal the Corporate Transparency Act come at a crucial time for the law, which is also facing legal challenges in federal courts. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is set to rule soon on the national injunction issued by a lower court that paused the implementation of the CTA last month.
   
• Tuberville’s second attempt: “This was poorly written, it was poorly managed, and you can’t hold the American taxpayers hostage on something that the federal government wants to do,” he said in an interview Tuesday, referring to the original legislation establishing the CTA.

Cash App owner to pay $80 million over alleged anti-money-laundering deficiencies.

Cash App parent company Block has agreed to pay $80 million in a settlement with dozens of state regulators over alleged problems with its program to counter money laundering.

The company, which is led by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey and also owns popular retail-payment provider Square, had deficiencies in its compliance program that could have allowed money laundering, terrorism financing or other illegal activity to take place, the Conference of State Bank Supervisors said Wednesday. The CSBS represents financial regulators in U.S. states and territories.

Attorney General nominee Pam Bondi walks line between Trump loyalist and nonpolitical prosecutor.

Donald Trump soured on his first two attorneys general when they wouldn’t give in to some of his most extreme demands. If Pam Bondi becomes his third, would she be able to say ‘no?’” She didn’t exactly say.

During her confirmation hearing Wednesday, Bondi sought at once to portray herself as an independent law enforcer and Trump’s ardent defender, saying “politics will not play a part” in her decisions while echoing the president-elect’s complaint that he was wrongly targeted by years of federal investigations.

She encountered skepticism throughout the hearing from Democrats worried she will help Trump wield the Justice Department as a weapon to go after his perceived enemies, as he has threatened to do.

• Cryptocurrency exchange BitMEX was fined $100 million for failing to maintain an adequate anti-money-laundering and know-your-customer program.
   
• In a steady parade of companies retreating from their diversity efforts, Costco Wholesale is standing out by holding fast.
   
• Nate Anderson, the short seller who wiped billions of dollars off the market values of companies including Nikola and Icahn Enterprises, is shutting down his firm, Hindenburg Research. He cited the toll the work took on his well-being.
   
• The rapper Drake sued Universal Music Group for defamation, arguing the label profited from Kendrick Lamar’s diss track “Not Like Us,” in which Lamar calls Drake a pedophile.
   
• The Biden administration in its final days is advancing a plan to sharply reduce the nicotine in all cigarettes sold in the U.S., though the incoming Trump administration isn’t expected to follow through on the idea.
   
• The Food and Drug Administration is banning the use of Red No. 3, an artificial dye linked to cancer in animals, from food and ingested drugs.
   
• The Biden administration will block imports from more than three dozen Chinese companies over their alleged links to forced labor in the country’s Xinjiang region, its largest-ever expansion of a ban list that took effect in 2022.
   
• GoDaddy will implement new information-security programs to settle charges that the technology platform failed to secure its website-hosting services and protect its customers from attacks, the Federal Trade Commission said Wednesday.

Israel, Hamas agree to deal to pause fighting in Gaza. 

Negotiators for Israel and Hamas agreed to a deal to pause their fighting in the Gaza Strip, Arab mediators and the U.S. said Wednesday, opening a pathway to end a 15-month war that laid waste to the enclave, sparked a wider regional war and roiled politics in the West.

The cease-fire agreement will come into effect on Sunday, Qatar’s prime minister, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, said late Wednesday. He said Qatar, alongside Egypt and the U.S.—all of whom helped mediate the agreement—will work to ensure its implementation.

• U.S. Ambassador Nicholas Burns, in a parting interview in which he expressed concern about the future of relations with Beijing, said President-elect Donald Trump’s designs on Canada and Greenland will weaken Washington’s ability to confront adversaries such as China.
   
• Germany’s economy contracted for a second year in a row in 2024, underlining the scale of the challenge that will face a new government after elections due in February, including the possibility of fresh tariffs on exports to the U.S.
   
• Markets cheered a December inflation report that suggested underlying price pressures are easing, but the Federal Reserve still isn’t likely to cut interest rates anytime soon given President-elect Donald Trump’s plans for the economy.
   
• A little-noticed rule change last year by California’s insurance regulator will likely shift a large chunk of the cost of the Los Angeles wildfires to homeowners across the state.

• The arrest of impeached South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol ends a dayslong standoff with the country’s investigators. But the move to detain him has proved deeply divisive in a country still reckoning with last month’s short-lived declaration of martial law.
   
• At least 78 people have died after authorities imposed a blockade on an illegal gold mine in South Africa, part of a monthslong standoff between prospectors and a government determined to force them to surface—often by cutting off their food and water.

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

You can reach us by replying to any newsletter, or email David at david.smagalla@wsj.com.