Primary Night Surprises, Colombia's Earthquake, and Eclipse Day

MayaMorning, everybody. Welcome back to "The Morning Rundown."

DavidGood to be here. Coffee's hot, news is hotter.

MayaSo Minnesota Republicans just handed Mike Lindell a rough morning.

DavidYeah. Lisa Demuth pulled off the upset over Trump's pick. We'll get into what that means for the party.

MayaMm-hmm. And a federal judge just froze Trump's mail-in voting rules nationwide, coast to coast.

DavidMeanwhile, overseas, Colombia's digging out from that earthquake. Over two hundred dead-

MayaWow.

DavidAnd rescuers still can't reach the epicenter.

MayaUgh, and Congo's Ebola outbreak just crossed a grim milestone we need to sit with.

DavidHeavier stuff, no doubt, but we'll lighten things up too.

MayaOh, the eclipse. Totality hits Greenland, Iceland, and northern Spain tomorrow.

DavidAnd Jensen Huang is betting five hundred billion on AI chips as collateral. You've got questions about that one.

MayaOh, so many. All right, let's start in Minnesota. Mike Lindell lost in Minnesota to the sitting House Speaker.

DavidLisa Demuth won the Republican nomination for governor, and Trump had endorsed Lindell.

MayaWait, and Trump's endorsement didn't matter here. Amy Klobuchar's now facing Demuth in November.

DavidAlexandra Marquez covered this for NBC News. Klobuchar won her own primary easily. No drama there.

MayaThe drama was all on the Republican side. Lindell's got the name recognition, the MyPillow money.

DavidAnd Republican primary voters looked at him and said, "No, thanks."

MayaI think that's the story. Voters pick the person they think can actually beat Klobuchar in a statewide race.

DavidWhich is a pretty pragmatic move for a primary electorate. Usually, the base rewards loyalty over electability.

MayaUsually, yeah. This time they went with the speaker who's actually run the State House.

DavidSo what does that tell us about 2026 more broadly?

MayaHonestly, maybe Republican voters are done with candidates who can't close.

DavidHmm. I'd wanna see it repeat somewhere else before I call it a trend.

MayaFair, but it wasn't the only interesting result last night.

DavidWisconsin and South Carolina both had primaries too. Reuters framed the whole night as a test of progressive energy.

MayaAnd?

DavidMixed bag, honestly. Some progressive candidates did fine in Wisconsin, but South Carolina was a different story. That Senate seat.

MayaLindsey Graham's old seat.

DavidRight. CNN had live coverage on that one. Bloomberg projected Darline Graham was advancing on the Republican side.

MayaSo turnout wasn't some progressive wave washing over everything.

DavidNo, it was patchy, which tells me the online energy doesn't always show up at the actual ballot box.

MayaThat tracks with what we saw in Minnesota too, honestly. Base voters, when they show up, vote with their head sometimes, not just their gut.

DavidWhich is the more interesting story than either party wants to admit.

MayaOkay, switch gears. Explain the mail-in voting thing to me, because I saw the headline and got confused.

DavidSo a federal judge blocked Trump's mail-in voting restrictions nationwide. Axios reported the ruling freezes his whole overhaul.

MayaWait, one judge did that for the entire country?

DavidOne district judge, yeah. That's the part that should bug people regardless of which side you're on.

MayaHow does that even work?

DavidIt's called a nationwide injunction. A single judge in a single district issues a ruling that applies everywhere-

MayaWow.

DavidNot just the parties in the case.

MayaThat seems like a lot of power for one person.

DavidIt is, and it happens on both sides. Liberal judges block conservative policy. Conservative judges block liberal policy. Either way, it skips the normal process.

MayaSo who actually wins from this ruling in the short term?

DavidWhoever benefits from the status quo mail-in rules staying in place through the midterms. That's the practical effect, regardless of the legal reasoning.

MayaAnd this ends up at the Supreme Court eventually.

DavidAlmost certainly. The bigger fight isn't even about mail ballots anymore. It's about whether any one judge should have that kind of reach.

MayaInstitutions deciding who gets to decide. That's a theme tonight.

DavidSpeaking of institutions being tested, Colombia's brand new president just got the worst possible welcome.

MayaOh, no. What happened? Colombia's the story right now. Over two hundred confirmed dead, per CNN's live coverage today, and rescuers still can't reach the epicenter.

DavidWhich tells you something on its own. AP's Astrid Suárez reported the hardest hit province, Chocó, barely has roads in on a normal day.

MayaThousands are still missing. President De Espriella said Tuesday at least one hundred and eighty-one confirmed dead across Cali, Pereira, Chocó, and Manizales. And CNN's number keeps climbing past that.

DavidSeven-point-four magnitude. Over a thousand buildings destroyed according to that AP report.

MayaMm-hmm.

DavidFive minutes into the job, and he's got a disaster this size?

MayaFamilies standing outside collapsed buildings, waiting for a name to come out of the rubble.

DavidThe real test isn't the quake itself. It's whether the government can get soldiers and rescue teams into places with no infrastructure fast enough to matter.

MayaShifting to Congo, Ebola's passed two thousand deaths. CNN says it's the fastest growing outbreak on a record.

DavidThat number should scare people more than it does because outbreaks like this usually get caught early. This one didn't.

MayaWhy not?

DavidCNN and The Washington Post both point to the same three problems: no functioning roads to move health workers, armed groups blocking access in the conflict zones, and funding that lands months after the fact instead of before.

MayaSo the response is chasing the outbreak instead of getting ahead of it.

DavidRight. WHO officials, per The Post, think it actually started months before it was even declared.

MayaWow.

DavidWhich means everyone's working off a clock that was already wrong.

MayaI don't, I don't know what you even do with that.

DavidThere's no clean fix. Money doesn't rebuild roads overnight, and roads alone don't stop armed groups from turning away clinics.

MayaOne more, and it's a hard turn. The Washington Post reported nearly three hundred civilians killed or wounded in US strikes in Yemen last year.

DavidAnd the detail that got me, that was the first operation after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth dismantled the office tracking civilian casualties.

MayaWait They pulled the oversight before the strikes happened?

DavidThat's the order The Post lays out. The security case, going after threats to shipping and the group's leadership, that's real. Nobody's disputing the threat existed.

MayaBut take away the thing counting the cost, and it's harder to know what you actually did.

DavidYeah. You can support the mission and still want someone check on the numbers on the way out.

MayaOkay, that was a heavy stretch. Three stories all dealing with something way outside their control.

DavidYeah.

MayaWhich oddly gets me to something lighter. There's a total solar eclipse happening today. Costs nothing to walk outside and look up.

DavidI like that turn. Speaking of betting on things outside your control, wait till you hear what Jensen Huang's doing with half a trillion dollars.

MayaOh, no.

DavidYeah. Nvidia, and a lot of exposure to China.

MayaOkay, completely different topic. Today's the day, the total solar eclipse.

DavidThe one eclipse of the whole year, right?

MayaMm-hmm. Right. CBS News says it crosses the Northern Hemisphere on Wednesday, August twelfth. Full totality only hits Greenland, Iceland, and Northern Spain.

DavidSo for us, nothing?

MayaNot nothing. AP reports North America still gets a partial eclipse. Anchorage, Detroit, up into the Northeast, the moon just nibbles a corner of the sun.

DavidNibbles, sure.

MayaGlasses on, step outside around midday-

DavidMm-hmm

Maya... look up for a few minutes. That's the whole ask.

DavidAnd if it's cloudy where you are.

MayaNBC News says the Perseids peak that same night. Clear skies after dark, you still get a meteor shower.

DavidTwo shows one day, not bad.

MayaFree astronomy.

DavidSpeaking of expensive things, Jensen Huang wants $500 billion, and CNBC's got the pitch.

MayaWait, $500 billion? For what?

DavidAI financing. CNBC reports Huang is pitching Nvidia's own GPUs as the collateral. The chips themselves back the loan.

MayaHa. Betting a half trillion on hardware.

DavidAnd CNBC's real question is how fast that hardware actually depreciates.

MayaTech ages fast.

DavidThere's a second problem too: China.

MayaHmm.

DavidBeijing restricts what gets sold in. Washington tightens what goes out. Either way, that collateral value moves.

MayaSo the whole plan rests on two governments staying in a good mood.

DavidDarty, with $500 billion riding on Beijing's mood and Washington's mood, what could go wrong?

MayaWhen you put it that way.

DavidI mean, come on, somebody eats that loss if either side flinches.

MayaInvestors probably.

DavidFollow the money. It lands on whoever signed last.

MayaAll right. Go outside today and actually look up. Glasses on, though.

DavidSee you out there.

MayaOkay, so today Lindell losing to his own state's House Speaker.

DavidDespite Trump's endorsement.

MayaWow.

DavidThat one's gonna stick with me.

MayaRight? And then Congo's Ebola numbers just kept climbing because of the roads, the conflict, the funding gaps.

DavidStructural stuff, not just bad luck.

MayaIf there's one thing worth sitting with, it's that institutions, courts, health systems are getting tested everywhere right now.

DavidHit subscribe, leave us a review, tell a friend.

MayaSeriously, it helps a ton.

DavidWe'll be back tomorrow with more.

MayaThanks for hanging out with us.

DavidSee you then.