Good morning. Visa is winning the decadeslong battle for control over how U.S. consumers pay for everything. It got here in part by paying for competition to go away and by using fees as weapons to make partners bend to its wishes.

• Beating out the competition. One by one—as e-commerce exploded and Americans moved away from using cash—Visa has come up with strategies to keep financial and tech companies, including JPMorgan Chase, Apple, PayPal Holdings, Square and others from encroaching on its turf. All the while, it has steadily raked in a cut of many transactions done in this country—an arrangement that merchants and lawmakers have criticized for years.
   
• Jusice Department intervenes. Last month, after more than three years investigating, the Justice Department filed an antitrust lawsuit against Visa that alleges it illegally monopolized the market for debit-card payments. Visa’s actions, the suit said, created higher fees for merchants that are passed on to consumers and set the U.S. payments system years behind the rest of the world. In a number of other countries, consumers often pay merchants directly from their bank accounts.
   
• How Visa grew its power. Visa’s approach wasn’t just for its debit-card operations; it also pushed to expand and protect its credit-card business, Wall Street Journal reporting shows. Its approach has shaped credit cards, fueling credit-card rewards as U.S. consumers know them.

Lawmakers call for probe of McKinsey over China work.

A group of Republican lawmakers called for a federal investigation of McKinsey, saying the firm worked on sensitive U.S. national security matters while failing to disclose it was doing consulting work for China, Risk & Compliance Journal's Richard Vanderford reports.

In letters to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, the lawmakers called for the Justice Department to investigate whether McKinsey’s work for the Defense Department complied with U.S. law and asked the Defense Department to examine whether McKinsey should be eligible for future contracts.

Walmart reaches settlement over opioid-related lawsuits.

Walmart has reached a proposed settlement agreement in connection with three shareholder lawsuits regarding its distribution of prescription opioids, adding to a years-long saga of opioid-crisis lawsuits.

The settlement doesn’t include any admission of liability and is subject to court approval, the retailer said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing Friday.

Under its terms, insurance carriers would pay the $123 million in cash, minus any fees awarded to plaintiffs’ counsel and litigation expenses, to an escrow account. Also as part of the agreement, the company would maintain certain corporate governance practices for at least five years.

• Federal auto-safety regulators are investigating Tesla’s automated-driving software after the system was linked to several crashes, the latest probe into the safety of the electric-vehicle maker’s technology.
   
• The Justice Department indicted the chief executive of a data-center company Wednesday over an allegedly fake data-center audit used to win business with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
   
• The Canadian units of several international tobacco groups are close to paying about $23.55 billion to settle a decades-old litigation as part of a plan proposed by a court-appointed mediator.
   
• The U.S. is investigating the leak of top-secret American documents that show Israel military preparations for an expected strike on Iran, U.S. officials said Sunday.

How investors are betting on the election, from utility stocks to DJT.

Investors are ramping up their bets on the U.S. presidential election.

Financial advisers caution against making any major investment decisions related to an election—and history shows that the market consequences of a certain candidate’s or party’s victory are unpredictable.

“When Trump was elected, expectations were that technology would underperform and financials and energy would outperform,” said Nancy Tengler, chief executive of Laffer Tengler Investments. “The exact opposite was true.”

That isn’t stopping investors from trying to get an edge. Here are some of the ways they are trying to profit from—or hedge against—the outcome.

• Related: A Mystery $30 Million Wave of Pro-Trump Bets Has Moved a Popular Prediction Market

Boeing’s CEO shrinks the company to stop its crisis from spiraling.

Boeing’s new CEO, Kelly Ortberg, has hammered out a labor deal to end a damaging strike. But even if the deal is ratified on Wednesday and union members go back to work, the company remains in a perilous financial position. Industry insiders and analysts have begun to ponder something previously unthinkable: whether a breakup or bankruptcy is in Boeing’s future if it remains on its current trajectory.

Boeing is exploring asset sales that could bring in much-needed cash while shedding noncore or underperforming units, according to people familiar with the discussions.

• Related: Crises at Boeing and Intel Are a National Emergency

• China’s commercial lenders cut their benchmark lending rates on Monday, a highly anticipated move as policymakers intensify their efforts to boost the ailing economy.

• The Israeli military launched airstrikes on branches of a bank in Lebanon that the U.S. and Israel have linked to Hezbollah, escalating its military campaign to strike institutions that are part of the group’s far-reaching network of economic and social influence.
   
• Artificial-intelligence search company Perplexity has begun fundraising talks in which it is looking to more than double its valuation to $8 billion or more, as startups try to ride the coattails of OpenAI’s recent big investment.
   
• Instead of relying on a few large air bases, the U.S. is dispersing its warplanes to make them less vulnerable to China’s enormous arsenal of missiles, part of a sweeping shift in how America’s military would respond to a possible conflict in Asia.
   
• Four years of baseless allegations of election fraud have created an atmosphere of fear and intimidation among election officials from Atlanta to rural Washington state, transforming the way workers in many parts of the country are approaching the most fundamental of civic duties.

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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