Trump Is Vetting These 8 People as Possible Running Mates

Donald Trump appears to be zeroing in on a running mate. The presumptive Republican presidential nominee's campaign has requested vetting documents from eight people, sources tell the Washington Post: GOP Sens. Marco Rubio, JD Vance, Tom Cotton, and Tim Scott; North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum; Republican Reps. Elise Stefanik and Byron Donalds; and a member of his own former cabinet, Ben Carson, who served as secretary of housing and urban development. Coverage:

• Axios has a rundown on what Trump likes about some of the candidates, noting that the No. 1 thing the former president is looking for in a VP candidate is loyalty.
• NPR runs down the "pros and cons" of the top contenders.

• USA Today reports on recent comments from Donalds, who is Black, suggesting there was an upside to the Jim Crow era in America. "You see, during Jim Crow, the Black family was together. During Jim Crow, more Black people were not just conservative—Black people have always been conservative-minded—but more Black people voted conservatively," the congressman said during a Trump campaign event Tuesday. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries had a blunt response to that: "We were not better off when people could be systematically lynched without consequence."
• CNN reports that Scott, who is also Black, has launched a multimillion-dollar outreach effort aimed at getting more Black and Latino voters to back Republicans at the polls.
• Interested in what the casting director for the West Wing would do, if this were all a TV show? Well, the Daily Beast spoke to him, and he put Vance and Cotton at the top of his list. They're "both standard, unimaginative, low-risk choices. That's not my style of casting, but I think it might be appropriate casting in this environment."

(More Donald Trump 2024 stories.)