Axios AM

March 30, 2026
๐ Good Monday morning! Smart Brevityโข count: 1,493 words ... 5ยฝ mins. Thanks to Noah Bressner for orchestrating. Edited by Andrew Pantazi and Bill Kole.
๐ช Today is Day 31 of the war. While peace talks slowly start, President Trump is still talking boots on the ground:
- He told the Financial Times' Ed Luce: "Maybe we take Kharg Island, maybe we don't. โฆ It would also mean we had to be there [in Kharg Island] for a while." He said his "preference would be to take the oil."
โ๏ธ Trump is considering a military operation to take 1,000 pounds of uranium from Iran, a complex and risky mission that could put U.S. forces inside the country "for days or longer," The Wall Street Journal reports.
1 big thing: Musk's monster IPO
SpaceX is preparing to launch the largest IPO of all time โ with expectations that it could raise more than all U.S. listings in 2024 and 2025 combined, Axios Pro Rata author Dan Primack writes.
- Why it matters: Wall Street is understandably giddy. But what it's about to pitch investors is unprecedented, and could impact how (or if) other AI giants go public later this year.
Here are four ways this IPO is different from all others:
๐ 1. Size: SpaceX reportedly wants to raise around $75 billion at a $1.75 trillion valuation.
- For context, the entire U.S. IPO market only raised more money in two of the past 10 years.
- It'll also seek to become the first company to ever go public at a valuation of $1 trillion or more, with hopes of immediately being worth more than Walmart, Exxon Mobil or Meta.
- Finally, Musk is said to be reserving up to 30% of the offering for individual investors โ three times the norm.
โ 2. Big unknowns: SpaceX has been around for decades, but the version going public is a newly formed conglomerate.
- Elon Musk recently merged xAI into SpaceX, after having previously merged X into xAI (whose 11 cofounders have all left).
- No one really knows if the combinations will work, and it's too early for there to be much evidence in either direction. Let alone if SpaceX's plan for 1 million orbital data centers โ which seems to be Musk's grand vision โ is viable.
๐ 3. X factor: Elon Musk himself. And not just the part about him seeking to simultaneously run two of the world's most valuable companies.
- Musk hasn't been part of an IPO since Tesla in 2010. At the time, he was fairly quiet on social media. In fact, his first-ever tweet was just a couple of weeks earlier.
- Today's Musk may struggle to comply with rules about what company insiders can and can't say once the IPO process begins.
- On the other hand, the current Securities & Exchange Commission is lax when it comes to enforcement, and Musk is (usually) friendly with the boss's boss.
๐ฐ 4. Red ink: We don't yet know SpaceX's overall financials, and its initial IPO filing is likely to be confidential.
- What we're fairly certain of, however, is that its xAI unit is hemorrhaging money โ just like other large foundation models that are scaling by spending on GPUs.
- Investors may not care, believing all things AI are up and to the right. But this would be the first major market test.
Share this story ... Get Axios Pro Rata, Primack's daily dealmaker newsletter.
2. ๐๏ธ Health cuts may help fund war
Republicans are considering reductions in federal health spending to help pay for a budget bill containing as much as $200 billion to fund the Iran war and immigration enforcement, Axios' Peter Sullivan reports.
- Why it matters: New efforts to rein in health programs open the GOP up to election-year attacks that they're cutting health care to pay for an unpopular war.
Top House Republicans are looking at health care offsets addressing fraud in federal programs, as they did during last year's debate over the budget law that made deep cuts to federal Medicaid spending and imposed first-time work requirements.
- House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) tells Axios: "There's other items we're looking at right now, especially in the areas of fraud and waste and abuse that we're working through with our members."
- Scalise noted the need to be able to find the votes, saying "Obviously we need to put the vote coalition together."
House Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) is reviving an idea, considered last year, to fund Affordable Care Act payments known as cost-sharing reductions.
- The Congressional Budget Office previously found the move would lower overall benchmark ACA premiums by 11%, but result in 300,000 more uninsured people.
๐ฎ What we're watching: Arrington said he wants something passed into law in "60 to 90 days," which is a speedy timeline.
3. ๐ Democratic hit list
If Dems win the House in midterms (likely), expect them to target moguls and major corporations for subpoenas, Axios CEO Jim VandeHei writes in his new newsletter for CEOs.
- The target list includes monopolies, AI and social media.
- ๐ C-suite only: Request beta peek at Jim's newsletter.
The reality: Dems know the White House will blow off subpoenas, same as during President Trump's first term.
The strategy: Businesses and billionaires have to answer subpoenas. So paint them as villains to undermine Trump.
Look for the subpoena list to include:
- Law firms that signed deals with President Trump.
- Media giants that settled.
- Donors to the White House ballroom.
- Top execs who negotiated to give the government a stake in their companies.
- Profit-enablers of Trump relatives or families of Cabinet members.
4. ๐ฐ Market's twin movers


Forget earnings reports or other corporate announcements. The stock market really has just two main catalysts this year: AI anxiety and President Trump, Axios Markets author Emily Peck writes.
- Why it matters: It's like a pinball machine where the flippers are Truth Social and Anthropic blog posts.
Before the war, fears that AI would reshape a range of industries were dragging stocks down โ a concern that hasn't gone away.
- Last week, cybersecurity stocks fell on a report that Anthropic's new model Mythos poses "unprecedented cybersecurity risks."
- Trump's social posts have amplified the markets' war-driven volatility.
5. ๐๏ธ Bunker beneath ballroom

President Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One last night that the military "is building a massive complex under the ballroom" that's under construction: "The ballroom actually becomes a shed for what's being built" underneath by the military.
- Trump said the ballroom โ with "drone-proof roofs" and "extremely thick โฆ bulletproof" windows โ is weeks "ahead of schedule and under budget," with "not one dime of government money going into the ballroom."

Trump showed off renderings of the columns, which'll be "hand-carved and they're beautiful. Top of the line โ they'll be Corinthian, which is considered the best, most beautiful by far."
- A closed porch will have views of the Washington Monument, Jefferson Memorial and Lincoln Memorial.
"I'm so busy that I don't have time to do this," Trump said. "I'm fighting wars and other things. But this is very important, because this is gonna be with us for a long time โฆ I think it'll be the greatest ballroom anywhere in the world โ highest level."
The bottom line: "Just like we're ahead of schedule on the ballroom, in a much bigger way, we're ahead of schedule with Iran," Trump said.
6. โก Exclusive: Wind projects hit Pentagon wall
More than two dozen wind farms across the U.S. are being delayed as the Trump administration sits on military reviews that were once considered routine, Axios' Amy Harder writes.
- Why it matters: The delays are dragging down a race led by tech companies โ and backed by President Trump โ to build power-hungry data centers to lead the global AI race.
At least 30 onshore wind farm projects are affected by the Pentagon paperwork logjam, according to Jason Grumet, head of the American Clean Power Association.
- At roughly 200 to 300 megawatts each, that's about 7.5 gigawatts of stalled capacity.
- Even accounting for the variability of wind, those farms could produce enough electricity to power several cities โ or multiple large data centers.
The reviews are necessary to make sure the wind farms' turbines won't interfere with military radar or aviation systems.
7. ๐จ Montage du jour

"The first quarter of 2026 has been one hell of a decade," Bruce Mehlman, author of Age of Disruption on Substack, wrote in his always-worthy Six-Chart Sunday post.
- Pause, and behold above.
Why it matters: "The global, political and technological disruptions defining the decade are accelerating," Mehlman tells me. "Trump is going bigger, bolder, faster, rather than playing it safe."
8. ๐ 1 hoop thing: March Madness stunner

Above: UConn's Braylon Mullins celebrates after hitting a game-winning three-pointer with 0.4 seconds left to stun top-ranked Duke and send the Huskies to the Final Four.
- The shot โย an instant March Madness classic โย completed a 19-point comeback at Capital One Arena in D.C.
The Men's Final Four: UConn vs. Illinois (6:09 p.m. ET Saturday, CBS) โฆ Michigan vs. Arizona (8:54 p.m. ET Saturday, CBS) in Indianapolis.

Above: The scene yesterday during the Duke-UConn game at Capital One Arena in Washington.
๐ฌ Thanks for reading! Please invite your friends to join AM.
Sign up for Axios AM





