Good morning. Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai on Wednesday urged a judge to reject the “extraordinary” measures proposed by the Justice Department to curtail its dominance in online search. 

The Justice Department proposed to force a sale of Google’s Chrome browser and require that Google provide user data like search histories with rivals.

• The background: The testimony came during a trial before U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta in Washington, who ruled last year that Google has an illegal monopoly over online search. The judge is now hearing arguments and testimony over what remedy he should impose to restore competition. Pichai was the first witness called by Google’s lawyers in the proceeding, known as a remedies trial, which began last week. Mehta has said he plans to rule by August.
   
• DOJ's allegations: The Justice Department alleges Google’s dominant position in search is the result of anticompetitive agreements that block rivals from gaining market share. Google facilitates about 90% of all online searches, giving it an unrivaled view into the internet browsing behavior of billions of people. Its search engine supports an advertising business that brought in about $200 billion last year.
   
• Google's response: Pichai told the court that the Justice Department’s data-sharing proposal in particular would allow rivals to reverse engineer Google’s search engine, which the company has made a focus of its research and development. He said the Justice Department’s proposal would also jeopardize the privacy of Google’s users.

At the WSJ CCO Council Summit in London on May 7 attendees will hear about the most significant policy changes under the Trump administration from Jonathan Kewley, who co-chairs the global tech group at law firm Clifford Chance and is a recognized expert in AI, cybersecurity and data.

They will also hear from John Smith, co-head of law firm Morrison & Foerster’s national security practice and a former director of the Office of Foreign Assets Control, the primary U.S. sanctions enforcement body.

GOP weighs more taxes on companies for top executives’ pay.

House Republicans are seriously considering proposals to further limit tax deductions that companies can take for their highest-paid workers’ compensation, expanding restrictions that now apply only to a handful of current or former executives making more than $1 million, according to people familiar with the discussions.

110-hour workweeks drove young bankers at a boutique firm to the brink.

On the industrials team at Robert W. Baird, a Midwestern bank founded more than a century ago, working more than 110 hours a week wasn’t unusual, former employees said, and managers would regularly get exemptions for the firm’s required Saturdays off. Even at a smaller bank far from Wall Street that prides itself on its “No A—hole Rule,” the former employees said conditions could prove untenable.

Wall Street has been reckoning with its culture of long hours and failure of workplace guardrails since the death of two young bankers in the past year. Many junior bankers have said that their complaints are ignored and that senior bankers routinely break rules to slog through deals. Some of the country’s biggest banks have responded by stepping up policies to protect young employees, including capping workweeks at around 80 hours.

• Republican lawmakers advanced legislation that would eliminate the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, the independent watchdog for firms that audit publicly traded companies, and move those responsibilities under the Securities and Exchange Commission.
   
• When President Trump signed an executive order last month to try to reduce drug prices, the pharmaceutical industry scored a big win. Within 90 days, the order said, Trump’s staff should put together a report “re-evaluating the role of middlemen,” who have been the target of one of the most sweeping and expensive lobbying campaigns in recent years.
   
• The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged three Texas men with fraud and securities law violations in connection with an alleged Ponzi scheme that raised $91 million from more than 200 investors, according to Barron’s. 
   
• A federal judge hammered Apple for violating an antitrust ruling related to App Store restrictions and took the extraordinary step of referring the matter to federal prosecutors for a criminal contempt investigation.
   
• Spain’s competition watchdog cleared Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria’s acquisition of Banco Sabadell, putting the final decision on the year-long takeover battle in the hands of the government.

U.S. economy shrank in first quarter as imports surged ahead of tariffs.

The U.S. economy contracted in the first three months of 2025, as businesses rushed to stock up on imports ahead of the Trump administration’s tariffs and consumer spending slowed.

The Commerce Department said U.S. gross domestic product—the value of all goods and services produced across the economy—fell at a seasonally and inflation adjusted 0.3% annual rate in the first quarter. That was the first contraction since the first quarter of 2022.

• The Rush to Beat Tariffs Is Distorting the Economy. There’s More to Come.
• Forget GDP. It’s the Jobs Report That Matters.
• Volkswagen Warns Tariffs, Other Challenges Could Weigh on Guidance
• Caterpillar Expects Tariffs to Cost Up to $350 Million This Quarter
• Stanley Black & Decker Raising Prices to Offset Tariff Costs

Trump ally Lindsey Graham pushes Russia crackdown.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, a close ally of President Trump, is forging ahead on a plan to impose new sanctions on Russia and steep tariffs on countries that buy Russian oil, gas and uranium, as Trump struggles to fulfill his campaign promise to end the war in Ukraine.

The South Carolina Republican said in an interview that support for his bill crossed the critical threshold of 60 co-sponsors on Wednesday, meaning it has enough votes to overcome a Senate filibuster. By the end of the week, Graham predicted, the bill will have at least 67 co-sponsors, enough to override a potential presidential veto.

• The Trump administration reached a deal Wednesday with Ukraine giving the U.S. access to its mineral wealth, overcoming last-minute haggling that had held up an agreement President Trump had sought to compensate the U.S. for helping Ukraine fight off Russia’s invasion.
   
• Hiring in the U.S. private sector slowed markedly amid growing policy uncertainty. Just 62,000 jobs were created this month, down from 147,000 in March, according to the ADP National Employment report released Wednesday. Economists polled by The Wall Street Journal had expected hiring to slow less sharply to 120,000 extra positions on the month.
   
• The Bank of Japan halved its growth forecast for the Japanese economy as U.S. tariffs begin to bite, highlighting how President Trump’s efforts to rewire U.S. trade are hitting economies around the world.
   
• The eurozone economy grew at a faster pace than the U.S. for the first time in almost three years, aided by American businesses building up stocks of imported goods in anticipation of higher tariffs.

• Since the first charter school opened 33 years ago in St. Paul, Minn., the movement for independently run but publicly financed and supervised education has exploded, now serving nearly four million students. And every one of the nation’s 8,000 charter schools is nonsectarian, because state and federal law has required it. That appeared likely to change after Supreme Court arguments Wednesday, where conservative justices suggested it was discriminatory to exclude schools that teach religious doctrine from Oklahoma’s public charter school program.
   
• U.S. lawmakers are launching the biggest push in decades to revitalize American shipbuilding.
   
• The U.S. Army is embarking on its largest overhaul since the end of the Cold War, with plans to equip each of its combat divisions with around 1,000 drones and to shed outmoded weapons and other equipment.

Follow us on X at @WSJRisk. Send tips to our reporters Mengqi Sun at mengqi.sun@wsj.com and Richard Vanderford at richard.vanderford@wsj.com.

You can also reach us by replying to any newsletter, or by emailing our editor David Smagalla at david.smagalla@wsj.com.