Welcome to From the Politics Desk, a daily newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team’s latest reporting and analysis from the White House, Capitol Hill and the campaign trail.
Ahead of tonight’s primary runoffs in Alabama and Georgia, Steve Kornacki spotlights the key areas that could swing the outcomes. Plus, Yuliya Talmazan explores how President Donald Trump is starting to turn his attention back to the Russia-Ukraine war.
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— Adam Wollner
The power of President Donald Trump’s endorsement will be put to the test in three high-profile Republican primary runoffs today.
In the Georgia Senate race, the president threw his support behind Rep. Mike Collins, who finished first in the May 19 primary with 41%, over the weekend. He is facing off against former football coach Derek Dooley, who came in second with 30%.
Collins is the clear favorite. In the initial primary, he demonstrated a geographic breadth of support that Dooley didn’t match, winning a majority of the states’ 159 counties and finishing second everywhere else.
Critically, this includes the Savannah-based 1st Congressional District, where a third candidate — Rep. Buddy Carter, the local congressman — posted blowout margins. Collins finished second in the district, while Dooley struggled to break single digits there. This should position Collins to make inroads with the newly up-for-grabs Carter voters who loom large in the runoff.
Dooley’s support, meanwhile, was much more concentrated in the primary. He fared best in the Atlanta metro area, home to a professional-class voter base that has proven willing to defy Trump in past primaries. Dooley won only 13 counties, but they were generally large counties that together accounted for 25% of all votes cast statewide. To have any chance of pulling an upset, Dooley will need landslide margins around the Atlanta area and lower turnout in the state’s rural areas.
Georgia’s GOP gubernatorial primary runoff looks much closer. Trump is backing Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, who finished first with 38% in the May 19 primary. He is facing off against Rick Jackson, a self-funding businessman who came in second with 33%.
A major late development came over the weekend when Gov. Brian Kemp endorsed Jones. That could be significant because Kemp’s strongest backers inside the Republican Party are from the (somewhat) Trump-skeptical Atlanta metro area.
In the initial primary, a third candidate, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, posted his strongest numbers in this area. Raffensperger had earned Trump’s ire after refusing to go along with his unfounded claims about Georgia’s 2020 presidential election result being illegitimate. Kemp’s seal of approval for Jones could make the lieutenant governor more palatable to these voters.
Notably, the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., took to social media to praise Jackson yesterday and to argue that “no matter who wins tomorrow, it’s a victory for MAGA” — a seemingly clear sign of the contest’s volatility.
Across the border in Alabama, Trump is backing Rep. Barry Moore in the GOP Senate primary runoff. Moore finished first in the May primary, besting former Navy SEAL Jared Hudson 39% to 26%. But the limited available polling since then has shown a tight race. Trump has stood by his endorsement, but he has not attacked Hudson, who has portrayed himself as a strong ally of the president.
There were some clear geographic divisions in the initial primary. Moore cleaned up in southern Alabama, where his congressional district is based, while Hudson scored impressively in and around Birmingham. That makes northern Alabama, where Attorney General Steve Marshall, the other major candidate in the primary was from, critical tonight. Madison County, home of fast-growing Huntsville — which recently supplanted Birmingham as the state’s largest city — will be worth paying particular attention to.
🗳️What else to watch tonight: Beyond Alabama and Georgia, Oklahoma and Washington, D.C., are holding primaries, while voters in California’s 14th District will weigh in on a replacement for former Rep. Eric Swalwell. Read more →
🎥 Tune in to the Kornacki Cam at 7 p.m. ET to watch Steve break down all the results.
Vice President JD Vance, carrying out a high-profile assignment from President Donald Trump, packs his message with statistics and stories, including one about Lamborghini owners and food stamps.
🤖 More for subscribers: Inside the Trump administration scramble that forced Anthropic’s most powerful AI model offline, by Jared Perlo, Julie Tsirkin and David Ingram
The Iran war is not exactly done and dusted, but President Donald Trump has already turned his sights to ending another conflict.
Trump had what he called a “very good meeting” with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on the sidelines of the G7 summit in France today and indicated he wants to focus on resolving Russia’s war now that he’s advanced an agreement with Tehran.
Iran will soon be “in the rearview mirror,” Trump said, despite uncertainty over the details of the framework deal and doubts about whether it will hold.
In comments to reporters, Trump said he would do “whatever I can” on Ukraine, urging Russia to make a deal and saying that he was going to meet with Zelenskyy again. He signaled the same shift in focus a night earlier.
“Now that this is finished, we’re going to be focusing on that,” Trump said during a bilateral meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron.
This would be music to the ears of European leaders after months trying to convince Trump to not forget about the Ukraine war, which has now been raging on the continent for more than four years.
It comes as Kyiv has shown it can inflict real pain on the Kremlin, using drones and missiles to strike deeper inside Russia and shift the narrative of the war. For its part, Moscow has vowed “systematic” attacks on Kyiv, unleashing deadly strikes early Monday that set ablaze a historic monastery.
🌍 For subscribers: The playbook world leaders use to manage Trump at the G7 summit, by Peter Nicholas and Garrett Haake
That’s all From the Politics Desk for now. Today’s newsletter was compiled by Adam Wollner and Annelise Hanson.
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