Texas, Trillions and the Threat Beyond Ukraine: Wednesday, May 27, 2026

Texas had an extraordinary Wednesday. Ken Paxton beat a four-term senator with 27 points to spare, and ExxonMobil's shareholders voted to make the state their legal home. Micron Technology, founded in a dentist's basement in Boise, Idaho, crossed a trillion dollars in market value in 48 days. Trump declared publicly that Iran misjudged him, that it assumed he feared the war's political fallout, and that it was wrong. Europe's intelligence officials sent a message that nobody wants to hear: Putin is losing in Ukraine and that makes him more dangerous, not less. Jamie Dimon said JPMorgan is on the lookout for a $20 billion deal. And Uber raised its Delivery Hero bid, pushing the company's valuation toward €12 billion as DoorDash circles from the other side. Wednesday, May 27.

Trump and Democrats Both Got What They Wanted in Texas: Paxton Wins by 27 Points

Ken Paxton, the Texas Attorney General and one of the most polarising figures in American politics, defeated four-term Republican Senator John Cornyn in Tuesday's Senate primary runoff by more than 27 percentage points, a margin that stunned even Paxton's own supporters. The result was sealed by a last-minute endorsement from President Trump, who had initially stayed neutral while Senate Republican leadership, including Majority Leader John Thune and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, backed Cornyn. When Trump finally moved, the race moved with him. Paxton now faces Democratic state Representative James Talarico in November in what is being described as among the most consequential Senate races of the 2026 midterm cycle.

The paradox of the result is that both parties got exactly the candidate they wanted most. Trump and his base wanted Paxton, a MAGA stalwart who survived a 2023 impeachment by the Republican-led Texas House on 16 counts of alleged wrongdoing and was acquitted by the state Senate. Democrats wanted Paxton too, because Talarico, a 37-year-old moderate who raised $27 million in the first quarter of 2026 alone compared to Paxton's $2.2 million, now has a realistic path to becoming the first Democrat to win a Texas Senate seat since 1988. Republicans on Capitol Hill have privately circulated memos warning that Paxton's nomination could give Democrats a rare opportunity to flip Texas, a scenario that would almost certainly cost the GOP its 53-47 Senate majority. Paxton himself said it plainly at his victory party: if Republicans lose this state, we lose the country.

The Idaho Chip Maker That Nobody Saw Coming Just Hit $1 Trillion in 48 Days

On Tuesday, Micron Technology, the Boise, Idaho-based memory chip maker founded in 1978 in the basement of a dentist's office by four engineers who put up $10,000 each, crossed a $1 trillion market capitalisation for the first time in its history. Shares surged 19.3% on Tuesday after UBS tripled its price target from $535 to $1,625 per share, calling Micron the most undervalued name in the AI semiconductor cycle. The move made Micron the 12th US company to reach a trillion-dollar valuation, the first ever based in Idaho, and the fastest any company had ever crossed the threshold from $500 billion to $1 trillion: 48 days. Over the past 12 months, Micron stock has gained more than 860%. The company added $220 billion in market value in a single trading session on Tuesday.

Micron makes DRAM and NAND flash memory chips, the components that store and move data within AI systems, data centers, and high-performance computing clusters. For years it was viewed as a commodity business, cyclical and undifferentiated, perpetually at the mercy of pricing swings driven by oversupply. The AI era has inverted that calculus entirely. Demand for high-bandwidth memory used in Nvidia's H100 and H200 GPU systems has grown faster than any chipmaker's ability to supply it. Micron's second-quarter fiscal 2026 results, published in March, showed revenue of $23.86 billion, nearly triple the year-prior figure, and net income of $13.79 billion. Its plans include two leading-edge fabrication facilities in Idaho, supported by $6.1 billion in CHIPS Act grants, that will create more than 17,000 jobs. From a dentist's basement to a trillion dollars in 47 years. The story of Micron is also the story of the AI era.

Trump Says Iran Misjudged Him — It Thought He Feared the War's Political Fallout

President Trump offered the most revealing account yet of his decision-making on the Iran war on Wednesday, telling reporters at the White House that Iran had fundamentally misread his political situation when it chose not to engage seriously with early peace overtures. They misjudged, Trump said. They thought I was worried about the politics, that I couldn't take the heat. They were wrong. The remarks came as Iran's top negotiating team remained in Doha for talks with Qatar's prime minister, with both sides acknowledging progress while stopping short of confirming an imminent deal. Trump's framing was consistent with the account that has emerged over the past week: Iran delayed, calculated that domestic political pressure from gas prices and economic disruption would force Trump to accept unfavourable terms, and miscalculated the extent to which Trump would interpret that calculation as a reason to press harder rather than pull back.

The political reality is more complicated than Trump's account suggests. Polls released this week by CNN show that only 20% of Americans have great faith in Trump's ability to make good decisions on Iran, and a majority now want military operations ended even without a peace deal. The economic damage is real: gas averages $4.56 per gallon nationally, jet fuel has surged 60% since the conflict began, and Goldman Sachs puts recession risk at 30%. But Trump's public posture has not shifted. He told reporters the war will end very quickly and in a very nice manner, and separately warned that Iran would face far greater force if a deal falls through. Secretary of State Rubio, speaking from New Delhi, said a deal was still possible today. The Doha talks continued into Wednesday evening with no announcement, though oil markets continued to price in an increasing probability of an agreement.

Europe Is Starting to Think Putin Will Expand the War — and That the Next 12 Months Are Critical

A Wall Street Journal report published Wednesday, drawing on interviews with senior European national security officials, has crystallised a fear that has been building in European capitals for months: that Vladimir Putin, facing a military deadlock in Ukraine and mounting battlefield losses, may try to expand the conflict beyond Ukraine's borders to justify a new wave of domestic mobilisation and to test NATO's cohesion. The specific scenarios being discussed in European intelligence circles include strikes on the Baltic states, attacks on Swedish or Danish islands in the Baltic Sea, or provocations in NATO-controlled Arctic territory. Russia has already escalated hybrid operations significantly, including the GPS spoofing that redirected a Ukrainian drone into Estonian airspace last week and was shot down by a Romanian F-16. Russia has threatened to bomb decision-making centers in Latvia. Air raid sirens were sounded in Lithuania after suspected Russian drones approached its airspace.

EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas captured the central logic: there comes a point where they need to escalate in order to justify the mobilisation, and that is a very dangerous moment. Several European officials noted that the window of maximum risk is the next 12 months, as the oil crisis generated by the Iran war creates additional political turmoil in Europe, strengthening far-right parties that advocate returning to Russian energy imports and ending aid to Ukraine. Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk has warned that a Russian attack on a NATO country could come within months rather than years, and has expressed doubt about whether the US would honour its Article 5 commitment under current circumstances. NATO is preparing to reinforce Latvia and Estonia specifically, with Germany and the Netherlands agreeing to have their joint corps take responsibility for defending both countries in the event of war. Putin conducted a three-day nuclear weapons exercise involving more than 65,000 troops and 13 submarines last week. The message has been received.

Jamie Dimon Says JPMorgan Is 'On the Lookout' for a $20 Billion Acquisition

Jamie Dimon made his most explicit statement yet about JPMorgan Chase's appetite for a major acquisition, telling analysts at a New York financial conference on Wednesday that the bank could put between $10 billion and $20 billion to work buying something in the next couple of years. A deal at the upper end of that range would be the largest of Dimon's 20-year tenure leading the bank and would test regulators' appetite for consolidation among America's biggest financial institutions. Dimon was careful to frame M&A as a last resort rather than a strategic priority, delivering a characteristically blunt warning to executives who treat dealmaking as a substitute for operational performance: you sit around a lot of management meetings and the first thing they do when they're not doing well in organic growth is they start to talk about M&A. That, he said, was not what JPMorgan was doing.

Any acquisition target, Dimon said, would need to integrate cleanly into JPMorgan's existing operations, fit the bank's culture, and enhance core businesses rather than sit as a separate standalone entity. It cannot be just a pie-in-the-sky type of thing. The bank's most recent significant deal was its FDIC-assisted acquisition of First Republic Bank in 2023, a $10.6 billion transaction that expanded JPMorgan's deposit base and wealth management footprint in one move. The regulatory environment has become meaningfully more accommodating for bank M&A under the current administration, reducing one of the structural barriers that had previously constrained deal activity among the largest US lenders. JPMorgan's technology budget for 2026 stands at approximately $19.8 billion, a significant portion of which is directed at AI initiatives and blockchain. Dimon also said AI will create things JPMorgan is better at, and will create things it is going to lose at, because competitors will find ways to bite off something.

ExxonMobil Shareholders Vote to Move Corporate Domicile to Texas, Cutting Last Tie to New Jersey

ExxonMobil shareholders voted at the company's annual meeting on Wednesday to approve the board's recommendation to reincorporate in Texas, ending the company's last formal legal connection to New Jersey, where Standard Oil of New Jersey was originally incorporated in 1882. The move has been in preparation since the board unanimously recommended it in March, and was supported by Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who called it confirmation that Texas will further dominate the corporate landscape. ExxonMobil already moved its operational headquarters to Spring, Texas in 1989, and today roughly 75% of its US workforce and the entirety of its executive leadership are based in the state. The legal domicile change aligns corporate structure with operational reality.

The vote was not without controversy. Proxy advisory firm ISS recommended shareholders vote against the move, arguing it could result in a material degradation of shareholder rights under Texas law. The New York City Comptroller's office filed a public solicitation against the proposal, which ExxonMobil's board dismissed as politically motivated and a systematic misrepresentation of the proxy statement. ExxonMobil was explicit in its proxy materials that it would not adopt the optional provisions under Texas law that critics say could diminish shareholder protections, including those affecting shareholder proposals and derivative litigation. The company's stock trades at approximately $148 per share, up 40% over the past year, as energy demand driven by AI data centers, LNG exports, and the Iran war's disruption of Middle Eastern supply has kept oil company earnings elevated. For ExxonMobil, whose roots trace to John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil, the reincorporation in Texas closes a 144-year chapter in New Jersey's corporate history.

Uber Adds to Its Delivery Hero Stake as the Bidding War Pushes Valuation Toward €12 Billion

Uber Technologies has continued building its position in Delivery Hero, adding to its stake since its initial €33 per share takeover approach last Saturday that had valued the German food delivery company at approximately €10 billion. Delivery Hero's share price has now risen to the mid-€37 range, pushing its market capitalisation toward €12 billion and implying that a final deal, if reached, would need to carry a meaningful premium over Uber's opening bid. Delivery Hero's board rejected the €33 per share approach, which Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi delivered in person to supervisory board chair Kristin Skogen Lund, on the grounds that it failed to reflect the company's full strategic value. Uber is working with advisers and has been speaking to other Delivery Hero investors about raising its offer. Morgan Stanley has helped structure Uber's rapid stake accumulation using derivatives, taking it from approximately 7% to 19.5% of the company since April.

Bloomberg Intelligence analysts have suggested that Delivery Hero could fetch between $15 billion and $18 billion in a completed deal with Uber, a range that would require a substantially higher offer than the current one. DoorDash, Uber's primary US rival, has separately expressed interest in acquiring Delivery Hero's Middle Eastern operations via the Talabat platform, and has explored a full takeover, keeping the possibility of a competing bid alive. Regulatory scrutiny is a significant variable: any full acquisition by Uber would require review across the roughly 65 countries in which Delivery Hero operates, and the European Commission's recent intervention requiring Prosus to divest its Delivery Hero stake as a condition of the Just Eat Takeaway acquisition signals that Brussels is watching the food delivery sector consolidation closely. A 12 to 18 month regulatory timeline is the working assumption, but the strategic imperative on both sides, and the presence of DoorDash as a potential competing bidder, is keeping negotiations moving at speed.