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.If you’re old enough, you’ve seen this movie: An eccentric billionaire, full of bile and nursing grudges against the incumbent Republican president, wants to create a third major political party and shake up the system.In 1992, the billionaire was H. Ross Perot, and his vehicle for attacking the incumbent president, George H. W. Bush, was something called the Reform Party. Perot had a few good ideas; he wanted to balance the federal budget, for example, which is never a bad thing. But mostly, he was something of a rich crank who had a vendetta against the Bush family: In one of many strange moments, Perot claimed that his abrupt exit from the race in the summer of 1992 was because Bush had been plotting a smear campaign against his daughter, something for which he never offered proof.It wasn’t a very good movie, and it certainly didn’t need a reboot, but we might be getting one anyway. Elon Musk has announced the formation of the “America Party,” a new political organization whose main idea is … well, the goal isn’t clear. Musk hasn’t said much about it, other than that it would be dedicated to stopping wasteful government spending. But mostly, his announcement seems dedicated to aggravating President Donald Trump, with whom Musk has had a very public falling out. And Trump is plenty aggravated. “I am saddened to watch Elon Musk go completely ‘off the rails,’ essentially becoming a TRAIN WRECK over the past five weeks,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social site on Sunday, adding that the “one thing Third Parties are good for is the creation of Complete and Total DISRUPTION & CHAOS.”Trump’s trademark punctuation aside, the president has a point, at least about the possible disruption of the GOP. Even if Musk is serious—and one never knows with planet Earth’s richest jumping jester—the odds of this new party coming into existence are low: Third parties don’t get much traction in the U.S. political system. The chances that it will become a force in American politics are even lower. But if that’s the case, why is Trump so angry? A few days later, perhaps realizing how panicky his initial reaction sounded, Trump changed his tune. “It’ll help us,” he said of Musk’s new party.And here, Trump is wrong: If Musk creates a new party to appeal to disaffected members of the now-defunct coalition that he, Trump, and some of the MAGA movement all cohabited, such a party—if it has any impact at all—is likely to hurt Republicans more than Democrats. Musk is a deeply unpopular figure in American politics, but what public support he enjoys comes heavily from the GOP itself. For now, he seems to be taking Perot’s approach, rooting the America Party in anger about the bloated and irresponsible One Big Beautiful Bill that Trump and the Republicans squeaked through Congress.But who’s the audience for this appeal? It’s not big business or economic conservatives; Musk’s record as a business leader has taken a major hit, and those groups have already thrown in their lot with Trump and the GOP. It’s not the national-security Republicans, who know that Musk is no better than the fringiest and most isolationist Trumpers when it comes to foreign affairs. It’s certainly not the Never Trumpers, who, if Musk even wanted their support in the first place, would never forget his sycophantic embrace of Trump.The real worry for Republicans is that Musk will peel off small numbers of people in two groups, both of them important to Trump’s grip on Capitol Hill. One group consists of swing voters who don’t much like Trump but who have stayed with him for various reasons; Musk might be able to get them pumped up about another celebrity movement. They could be swayed by Musk’s supposed anger about budgets the same way some of them bought into arguments about egg prices and inflation, allowing Musk’s candidates to shave away a few points here and there from the GOP.But more worrisome to the Republicans is that Musk will corner the crackpot vote.When Musk first broke with Trump, he claimed on X that the president was named in files relating to Jeffrey Epstein, the pedophile who committed suicide in prison and with whom Trump had a long friendship. Some of Trump’s supporters, including FBI Director Kash Patel, had earlier teased the possibility of great revelations from “the Epstein files.” Then they gained power and perhaps realized that some of these files either didn’t exist or didn’t contain anything explosive.Musk might sense that he should avoid openly courting this part of the Trump coalition, but it’s too late: The MAGA fringe will likely see a natural ally in Musk anyway, not least because Musk engaged in various forms of conspiracism even before he tried to play the Epstein card against Trump. If a number of people in MAGA world think the “deep state” is even Deeper and Stater now that it’s ostensibly captured administration officials who were once trusted by Trump supporters, such as Attorney General Pam Bondi, they are going to look for a new vehicle for their beliefs. Musk and his party could fit that bill.But the actual damage to any party is likely to be small. Even if Musk could present himself as the face of fiscal conservatism, that’s not enough to sustain a party in the age of reality-TV politics. Musk can form a party, but he can’t run for president as its head, preventing him from taking the Green Party gadfly Jill Stein’s role as the spoiler in American elections. Even Perot at the height of his influence won only 19 percent of the popular vote in the 1992 election; he didn’t gain a single electoral vote, and his Reform Party exists now mostly as memorabilia that people have stashed in attics for some 30 years. (He tried again in 1996. He got 8 percent of the popular vote.)In the end, this whole project is likely to go nowhere, and I will admit that this suits me fine as an American who likes the two-party system and distrusts third parties in general—even if I am no longer a member of either major party. When I used to teach political science, I would remind students that large parties are meant to serve a useful purpose of aggregating interests, rather than dividing them. Big parties in a winner-take-all system (where the person who gets the most votes wins the seat outright) force people with differing agendas to get along with one another and accept compromises in order to elect candidates who might not be acceptable to any one of them but who overall represent their general desires. Independent and swing voters can make similar judgments, joining or leaving coalitions in various elections.The party system in America has problems: Too many people don’t vote—especially in primaries—and many of those who do vote don’t comprehend even the rudiments of the issues before them. A fair number of voters have also embraced cruelty and ignorance as virtues. But these are social problems, not constitutional or structural issues. If Musk throws billions of dollars into creating a party that siphons off voters who think the name DOGE was a clever acronym and who worry about chemtrails, thus weakening Trump’s power in the short term, so be it. But another party headed by another billionaire who doesn’t understand the Constitution, the U.S. government, or democracy itself is not the path to a healthier nation.Related: Elon Musk goes nuclear. Elon Musk’s Grok is calling for a new Holocaust.Here are three new stories from The Atlantic:The “Russia hoax,” revisitedHe spent his life trying to prove that he was a loyal U.S. citizen. It wasn’t enough.The David Frum Show: The courts won’t save democracy from Trump.Today’s NewsAt least 119 people are dead after the flash flood in central Texas; 161 people are still missing from one county alone, according to officials.President Donald Trump sent letters to seven more countries threatening tariffs as high as 30 percent.Russia launched its largest drone attack on Ukraine last night, with 728 drones and 13 missiles, according to Ukraine’s air force and its president.Evening ReadIllustration by Sophia DengThe Work of Caring for My Daughter Will Never Be “Efficient”By Julie KimAfter Izzy was diagnosed, in 2018, I wrote about my grief over not knowing if she would ever talk, walk, or recognize me as her mother. I still grieve those milestones. Yet I also marvel at Izzy’s many accomplishments: how she has mastered navigating the busy menus on her “talker,” an augmentative communication device provided by the New York City Department of Education; her stamina during physical-therapy sessions, wedged into breaks between classes; how during social studies, her least-favorite subject, she has figured out that pointing at her diaper and then the exit sign will promptly get her out of class.I am confident that she knows and loves me, even if she might not fully grasp that I’m the one who birthed her. At the same time—and here I think of her orbit of loving teachers, therapists, and other caregivers, particularly those at her school—I would not be surprised if Izzy believes, deep down, that she has many mothers, of which I am but one.Read the full article.More From The AtlanticThe race-science blogger cited by The New York TimesRFK Jr.’s autism time machineThe lesson of Israel’s success in the airHow the West can ensure Iran never gets the bombThe Court comes to the administration’s rescue, again.Culture BreakKeystone Press / AlamyWatch. My Mom Jayne (streaming on HBO Max) is a documentary about Jayne Mansfield directed by her daughter Mariska Hargitay. It’s also a reminder that the star was more than the next Marilyn Monroe.Enjoy the show. When Hulk Hogan turned heel, pro wrestling—and America?—was never the same, James Parker writes.Play our daily crossword.Stephanie Bai contributed to this newsletter.Explore all of our newsletters here.When you buy a book using a link in this newsletter, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.