Good morning. A top banking regulator Wednesday said it had found early evidence that nine of the biggest U.S. banks, including JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America, had improperly refused to do business with a range of politically hot-button industries from oil and gas to firearms manufacturers.

• Report’s origins: The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency report stems from an investigation seeking to substantiate claims by President Trump that the largest banks in the country engaged in what the administration has termed “politicized or unlawful debanking activities.”
   
• OCC’s view: “It is unfortunate that the nation’s largest banks thought these harmful debanking policies were an appropriate use of their government-granted charter and market power,” Comptroller of the Currency Jonathan Gould, a Trump appointee, said in a statement.
   
• What’s next: The report said the investigation continues and that the OCC could ultimately refer its findings to the Attorney General.
   
• Industry response: Banks have said they don’t close accounts for religious or political reasons. They have said decisions to avoid certain industries or clients are in accord with laws that make banks watchdogs for criminal activity and money laundering or are in response to other regulatory pressures meant to safeguard the banks.

Treasury’s bank regulation takeover has a new goal: Anti-money-laundering rules.

The Trump administration is preparing a shake-up of anti-money-laundering rules, in an effort to overhaul a system for catching illicit transactions by drug traffickers, terrorists and other criminals that banks complain is costly and ineffective.

In a draft term sheet circulated to the nation’s banking regulators, the Treasury Department has proposed taking a more central role in the enforcement of anti-money-laundering rules.

What’s the issue? The current system provides law-enforcement officials with some insight into the murky world of illicit finance, but it isn’t necessarily effective at stopping money laundering before it happens. The Wall Street Journal earlier this year reported how one money-laundering group in Los Angeles County was able to launder more than $50 million for the Sinaloa cartel, including by making six-figure deposits at JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America branches.

U.S. hits crypto platform Paxful with $4 million criminal fine.

The U.S. will impose a $4 million criminal fine on Paxful in connection with anti-money-laundering law violations, reports Risk Journal’s Richard Vanderford, with prosecutors saying the now-shuttered cryptocurrency exchange facilitated a host of illegal transactions.

The charges: Paxful pleaded guilty to conspiring to violate the Bank Secrecy Act, the chief U.S. anti-money-laundering law, and two related criminal counts over its weak—and at times non-existent—anti-money-laundering and know-your-customer efforts, the U.S. Justice Department said Wednesday.

• A former commodities trader was sentenced to 15 months in prison for bribing officials at Brazil’s state oil company, reports Risk Journal’s Max Fillion. 
   
• The White House has been weighing language in an executive order to target states with artificial intelligence laws deemed to be onerous through a legal task force convened by the Justice Department and by withholding federal funding. That approach could put the administration in direct conflict with Republican states.
   
• President Trump is planning to start his final round of interviews in the coming days with candidates to be the next Federal Reserve chair.
   
• The new U.S. National Security Strategy, a foreign-policy declaration that shocked European leaders with its harsh language about the continent, echoed complaints from American executives about what they see as the European Union’s oppressive business regulations.
   
• The European Union’s second-highest court reduced an antitrust fine by about 140 million euros ($162.8 million) that EU officials had levied on Intel over what it alleged was abuse of dominance in the market for microprocessors.
   
• President Donald Trump said Monday he would allow shipments of Nvidia’s H200 chip to China. Chinese authorities are yet to confirm, however, if they will permit domestic companies to purchase the processors.
   
• Gemini Space Station, a cryptocurrency company founded by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, said Wednesday that its affiliate Gemini Titan has received a designated contract market license. The license from the Commodities Futures Trading Commission allows Gemini to offer prediction markets to U.S. customers.

U.S. blueprint to rewire economies of Russia, Ukraine sets off clash with Europe.

The Trump administration in recent weeks has handed its European counterparts a series of documents, each a single page, laying out its vision for the reconstruction of Ukraine and the return of Russia to the global economy.

Details of the plan: The U.S. blueprint has been spelled out in appendices to current peace proposals that aren’t public but were described to The Wall Street Journal by U.S. and European officials. The documents detail plans for U.S. financial firms and other businesses to tap roughly $200 billion of frozen Russian assets for projects in Ukraine—including a massive new data center to be powered by a nuclear plant currently occupied by Russian troops.

• Using Russian Assets to Help Ukraine Is Looking Like Europe’s Least-Bad Option
• U.S. Says Russia-Backed Hacks Targeted Critical Infrastructure

U.S. seizes oil tanker off Venezuela in escalation of pressure on Maduro regime.

The U.S. seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, President Trump said Wednesday, marking a major escalation in the administration’s pressure campaign against the country’s leader Nicolás Maduro.

Context: The move came just hours after the U.S. sneaked Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado out of the country on a boat, an escape that potentially gave the Trump administration an opening to take more aggressive action against the Maduro regime.

• Federal Reserve officials cut interest rates at their third consecutive meeting, but signaled a move to the sidelines amid unusual internal divisions over whether inflation or the job market should be their bigger worry.
   
• The Supreme Court could render a decision, possibly Thursday, on the legality of tariffs at the center of President Donald Trump’s economic agenda, potentially opening a new can of worms about trade policy, refunds, and the fiscal deficit.
   
• Coupang Corp. Chief Executive Park Dae-jun has resigned over what is viewed as the worst data-breach case in South Korea.
   
• President Trump’s barrage of tariff increases threatened to chill global trade flows, but commercial exchanges continued to increase as most of the international commerce system functions as it did before the onslaught.
   
• Asia’s economies have fared better than expected in a year dominated by U.S. tariff threats but growth will slow next year, the Asian Development Bank said.
   
• The head of the International Monetary Fund warned China that its dominance over manufacturing risks exacerbating global trade tensions, urging Beijing to take far greater action to shift its economy toward domestic consumption.
   
• Russian and Chinese bombers flew near Japan and South Korea in a joint patrol Tuesday that Tokyo described as a show of force, adding further strain to the worst diplomatic crisis in years between Tokyo and Beijing.
   
• Gabbro is an unremarkable rock, so cheap and abundant it is used for gravel and building roads. It may also be part of how America breaks its dependence on China’s critical minerals.
   
• Israel’s aggressive posture toward the new government in Syria has emerged as a rare point of disagreement with Washington, where President Trump wants a quick resolution to the two countries’ decades-old tensions.

• President Trump said the ownership of CNN should change regardless of which company buys Warner Bros. Discovery, as discussions over the future of the media company take center stage in Washington.
   
• U.S. investors are plowing money into Chinese companies involved in artificial intelligence, despite growing competition between Washington and Beijing over the technology.
   
• Kyiv’s plan to smuggle more than 100 drones into enemy territory required meticulous planning, high-tech gadgets—and luck.
   
• Australia has implemented a new law requiring 10 popular social-media platforms to ban users under 16 years old, effective Wednesday.
   
• Chief executives are bullish on the broad economic impact of artificial intelligence, but do expect it to weaken the job market, according to a new survey.