After a blitz Democratic veepstakes, Vice President Kamala Harris picked Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz to be her running mate. The pair held their first joint rally in Philadelphia last night.

Walz wasn’t widely known outside of his state until a couple of weeks ago, when he went viral for calling Donald Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, “weird.” The Harris campaign quickly embraced the attack line and it became the North Star of anti-MAGA online discourse.

After Walz was announced as Harris’s VP pick, Trump’s campaign fired back, calling him a “dangerously liberal extremist,” with Republicans accusing him of mishandling the civil unrest in Minnesota that followed George Floyd’s murder in 2020.

Meanwhile, supporters hope that the 60-year-old military vet and former teacher’s avuncular folksiness and rural Midwestern background could appeal to voters outside Harris’s traditional base.

Who’s Walz?

The first person on a Democratic presidential ticket since Jimmy Carter who hasn’t attended law school, Walz has an everyman biography unusual for a national politician.

In addition to serving in the Army National Guard for 24 years, he worked as a geography teacher and a high-school football coach, before becoming a representative in the House, where he developed a reputation for being moderate.

Since becoming governor in 2019, Walz has signed many progressive bills. Under his watch:

• Minnesota passed universal free school meals, tightened gun control, codified the right to abortion, and became a refuge state for gender-affirming care for minors.
• He allocated state funds for public infrastructure, clean energy, affordable housing construction, and pro sports venues.
• He also signed a bill granting family and medical leave, and his administration banned non-compete clauses in the state.

Shortly after he was officially tapped for the Harris ticket, labor endorsements trickled in, including one from United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain.

At the same time…Walz can tout that Minnesota has maintained its business-friendly reputation under his governorship, ranking No. 6 in CNBC’s 2024 best states for business list.—SK

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A lot of you bought the dip. One day after the S&P 500’s worst session since 2022, stocks got off the schneid and partially rebounded, putting fears of a recession on hold. Tuesday started well, with Japan’s Nikkei—which had cratered on Monday—logging its best day since 2008, giving US investors some positive mojo. From there, US stocks, including Magnificent Seven stalwarts like Microsoft and Nvidia, and both major cryptocurrencies, moved up. “Get used to the volatility,” one Bank of America analyst told Bloomberg. The S&P 500 is still up over 10% this year despite this week’s turbulence.

Tropical Storm Debby is making its way up the East Coast. The storm, which made landfall in Florida as a Category 1 hurricane earlier this week before hitting Georgia and the Carolinas yesterday, has killed at least five people and flooded parts of the Southeast. More than 110,000 Floridians were still without power as of Tuesday, the Washington Post reported. Debby is now expected to crawl north, putting major cities like New York and Philadelphia on watch for potential flash flooding.

Elon Musk declared “war” on advertisers. In a lawsuit against an ad industry group and its members, which include CVS Health and Unilever, X alleged that it’s the victim of a “massive advertiser boycott” that unfairly deprived the social media platform of billions of dollars in revenue. Musk, the owner of X who famously told advertisers to “go f*ck yourself” when they cut ties with the company following his antisemitic ramblings, wrote in a post on the platform, “We tried being nice for 2 years and got nothing but empty words. Now, it is war.” In an open letter, X CEO Linda Yaccarino claimed the brand boycott is “illegal.” X is on track to generate $2 billion in ad revenue this year, Axios reported, down from $4.5 billion in its last full year as a public company in 2021.

After bearing the brunt of jokes for years, DuckDuckGo might soon get its time to shine. A federal judge ruled Monday that Google has a monopoly over the search engine business, creating the potential for curbs to its power that could change how you look up people you just met online.

Bing, there it is. Judge Amit Mehta is now tasked with deciding what to do with Google, a process likely to take months, if not years. There’s been no indication what move Mehta will make, but some potential solutions include:

• Prohibiting Google from paying billions of dollars to be the default search engine on a device.
• Forcing Google to divest the search engine part of the company.
• Forcing Google to share its trove of data with other companies, enabling the possibility of a true rival search engine. Some analysts have speculated that Apple could make its own.

The answer could also be as simple as requiring that devices prompt users to select their default search engines the first time they go online.

Zoom out: Google said it will appeal the ruling, but that’s just on one front. It faces another lawsuit questioning whether it abused its monopoly on online advertising technology.—CC

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The man famous for upstaging everyone from Ne-Yo to Christina Aguilera on a party anthem will now have his name emblazoned across a stadium. Florida International University (FIU) approved a deal yesterday giving naming rights to Pitbull for $1.2 million per year for the next five years.

Besides the stadium’s new name, the $6 million deal also includes a Pitbull-produced anthem for the school and 12 social posts per year from Mr. 305 himself. Meanwhile, Pitbull will get to use the stadium 10 days every year, and his vodka company, Voli 305, will be the stadium’s preferred distributor.

Taylor Swift doesn’t even have a practice field. Pitbull Stadium will be the first college athletics building named after a musician. But FIU is not the first school to hawk naming rights (or at least to be open to the idea) for some extra cash. The University of Kentucky, USC, and the University of Washington have all opted to sell naming-rights deals for their stadiums or fields over the last decade.

Get used to branding. The NCAA approved a change in June that allows schools to sell corporate advertisements on football fields for regular-season games. The update comes as athletic departments scramble to prepare for the impending athlete revenue-sharing program.—MM

This officially makes up for trying to ban big sodas. Billionaire businessman and former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg is donating a record $600 million to four historically black medical schools to reduce racial inequalities in American medicine. That’s on top of the $100 million Bloomy gave to the schools in 2020. In an op-ed for the news outlet that bears his name, Bloomberg argued that increasing the number of black doctors will reduce racial wealth inequality and improve health outcomes for Black Americans. Last month, Bloomberg also gave $1 billion to the med school at his alma mater, Johns Hopkins, to make tuition free for most students.