This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.Cory Mills’s reelection campaign was in trouble before it even began. Washington, D.C., police investigated the Florida representative early last year after a woman alleged that he’d assaulted her; later in 2025, a different woman was granted a restraining order against him. Neither woman was his wife. Mills, who has denied any wrongdoing, was never charged with anything, and the woman who alleged that he’d assaulted her walked back her claim after it became public. Still, questions lingered. Then, in February, Donald Trump endorsed him anyway, calling him an “America First Patriot and Tremendous Champion” of his district.Not everyone in Florida’s Republican establishment felt the same. Governor Ron DeSantis declined to back him, and Representatives Anna Paulina Luna and Mike Haridopolos threw their support behind his opponent. A House ethics probe is ongoing. On Tuesday, Mills lost his primary election—and despite never having rescinded his endorsement, Trump is now trying to back away from the congressman retroactively. “I told Congressman Cory Mills of Florida, a friend of mine, to get out of the Race, but he wouldn’t listen,” he posted on Truth Social yesterday morning. Mills’s opponent, Ryan Elijah—who already won the primary—now has Trump’s “Complete and Total Endorsement!”What does a presidential endorsement mean for a Republican facing a primary election in 2026? If not enduring loyalty from the White House, then at least a reliable boost in the polls. The candidates that Trump supports still tend to win big; about 96 percent of the politicians he tapped this year (more than 300 of them) won their primary, according to Ballotpedia—an impressive ratio. Trump clearly enjoys the perception that his endorsement makes or breaks a candidate. “If they don’t get the endorsement, they don’t win,” he said in 2021.For many voters, particularly in the MAGA camp, perceived loyalty to Trump remains a deciding factor. (Just ask Bill Cassidy.) But not every bet Trump makes pays off. An endorsement has never been an outright guarantee of victory, and the rare exceptions illuminate some truths about Trump and the GOP. Two of the president’s other picks lost their primary race on Tuesday: Megan Degenfelder, the head of Wyoming’s Department of Education, who was running for the state’s governorship, and the former Commerce Department adviser Catalina Lauf, who was up for an open House seat in southwest Florida. By CNN’s count, that makes 10 Trump-endorsed candidates who have so far lost their primary this year.No single, unifying theory can explain these races. Sometimes, the timing makes a difference. When Trump endorsed Degenfelder as Wyoming’s best choice for the governorship, back in January, the state’s education chief hadn’t even entered the race. Once she did, the nod gave her campaign an early lead—an advantage she held on prediction markets for about seven months, despite being outraised and outspent by her main opponent in the GOP primary. In the end, she couldn’t sustain it. Lauf got her endorsement from Trump last week, almost a full year into her campaign, and well after mail-in voting had already begun. Her primary was always more of a toss-up than Degenfelder’s, but Trump’s endorsement may have arrived too late to make a difference.The president also cares more about some races than he does about others. In Indiana, he was able to use his endorsement power to punish those who had opposed his agenda. Trump vowed that Republican state senators who were up for reelection would lose their race if they rejected a gerrymandering plan he backed—and in May, after a concerted effort and successful fundraising from the MAGA base, most of those politicians did indeed lose their primary. Compare that with what he gave Lauf: not much more than a one-off Truth Social post.Not every race is a blanket referendum on Trump’s endorsement power; the particulars always matter. The Republican strategist Doug Heye told me that “when the voters go in the voting booth, the word Trump doesn’t appear. It’s those candidates.” Mike Lindell, the Trump-endorsed MyPillow founder and MAGA stalwart, lost his bid for the Minnesota governorship earlier this month. He’d been leading in the polls, despite the fact that he was obviously unqualified—and that the state’s GOP leadership had declined to endorse him, suggesting that he’d be an “easy target” for Democrats. On Election Day, though, he lost to the experienced state House speaker Lisa Demuth. His adjacency to Trump couldn’t get him over the line.As much as Trump likes the idea that he alone can propel a candidate to victory, he also seems to try to skew the odds in his favor. As NPR points out, the president has lately been backing more incumbents than he did during the 2018 midterms (75 percent of his choices this year have been sitting politicians), which suggests a greater aversion to risk. He also tends to make endorsements much earlier than he used to, getting involved from the outset and attempting to deter competition. Recent history is full of examples of races where Trump’s endorsement did make a big difference: The Ohio Senate seat that ultimately went to J. D. Vance in 2022 was fiercely contested until the president made his pick. Often, though, the president is simply playing the odds, betting on the candidate he thinks has the best chance.That’s exactly what happened in Texas earlier this year. Ahead of the GOP primary for John Cornyn’s Senate seat, Trump was widely expected to endorse the incumbent. As my colleague Elaine Godfrey noted at the time, the senator tried to rename a highway after Trump in an effort to secure his support. But the president went with a competitor, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who’d been ahead in the polls despite being impeached a few years prior. Back in 2022, in the lead-up to Missouri’s Senate primary, Trump went with a more unusual strategy. He wrote on social media that he’d decided to endorse “ERIC”—but didn’t specify which of the three candidates named Eric he actually supported. Was it a gaffe, or a sly acknowledgment that he didn’t want to pick among them?Trump has been more involved in primaries than his predecessors were, setting a new expectation for how active presidents should be in those races. Many of his endorsements have been a boon for his favored candidates. But not every election is about Donald Trump.Related:Trump might already be a lame duck.David A. Graham on the price of Trump’s primary winsHere are three new stories from The Atlantic:Tom Nichols: Donald Trump effectively just told Iran to get a nuclear weapon.Another big difference between liberals and conservativesUkraine planned to swarm Moscow airports with AI-guided drones.Today’s NewsThe FBI searched the Washington, D.C., home of former Democratic Representative Eric Swalwell and seized his electronic devices over the weekend, according to a person familiar with the matter. The actions were part of an investigation into sexual-misconduct allegations against Swalwell, who has previously denied them.Canadian officials resumed trade talks with the United States ahead of a Saturday deadline that could trigger 50 percent tariffs on about $20 billion in Canadian exports. President Trump suspended the planned tariffs on Tuesday, saying that the two countries had reached a deal that still needed to be finalized.The USS Abraham Lincoln and its crew of about 5,000 people began its journey home to San Diego from the Middle East after a nine-month deployment that largely focused on supporting U.S. operations against Iran. The USS George Washington has arrived in the region to take its place.Evening ReadIllustration by Matteo Giuseppe Pani / The AtlanticThe Color Recession May Be PermanentBy Amogh DimriWhen Bob Buckter, a 79-year-old housepainter who also goes by “Dr. Color,” began his career, in the 1970s, the job was a lot more fun. Acid-tripping hippies in his hometown of San Francisco wanted “wild-ass color combinations” for their facades, he told me. Armed with mustard-yellow, lime-green, and vermilion paint, Buckter happily transformed drab Victorian and Edwardian homes into vivid eye candy.Today, almost no one seems to be looking to the hues of jelly beans for inspiration for their home—or car or couch or fridge or practically anything else.Read the full article.More From The AtlanticPresident Trump has a pet-project docket at the national parks.Jonathan Chait: The “resistance” won.Another pot of paint thrown in the public’s faceRadio Atlantic: Secrets of a Jeopardy championAre you sure you want a car with a giant touch screen?Kelsey Ables on the new history warsCulture BreakHauke-Christian Dittrich / DPA / GettyTake a look. Alan Taylor compiled recent images of animals released back into their natural habitat.Read. In 2023, Dan Brooks recommended nine books that will actually make you laugh.Play our daily crossword.Rafaela Jinich contributed to this newsletter.When you buy a book using a link in this newsletter, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.