Welcome back to The Best & The Brightest, I’m Peter Hamby.

In tonight’s edition, I take a look at Donald Trump’s search for a running mate, which is beginning earlier than usual this cycle thanks to his dominance in the Republican primaries. A lot of Republican names are being thrown around for the V.P. slot, and the auditions are already underway. And Trump’s eventual pick will say a lot about how he sees his path to victory against Joe Biden.

But first, Abby Livingston has the latest dish from the Capitol…

• In the Senate, the border negotiating trifecta of James Lankford, Chris Murphy, and Kyrsten Sinema represents an earnest throwback to an era when Congress took big swings and passed big bills. Over the weekend, Lankford made the Sunday show rounds; they’re all former House members familiar with how each chamber works; and they’re slow-rolling their deal in the hopes of gradually building enough support to get it to passage. But even in other, more stable eras, border security has long been a graveyard of legislative ambitions.

  Moreover, the Senate is aiming to attach Ukraine funding to a border deal—with both issues nonstarters for the right wing in the House. And behind the scenes, the Senate Republican conference is as divided as it’s been in years.

• On the House side, Republicans are addressing border security this week by preparing to impeach U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Since House Republicans took control a year ago, incessant talk of impeaching Joe Biden and his top officials has diluted the gravity of the impeachment process: In its history, Congress has only impeached 21 times, mostly over bribes and other forms of corruption, and only once has the House impeached a Cabinet official, and that was almost 150 years ago. House Republicans are reaching for the heaviest cudgel they can wield against the Biden administration, but it will be a futile exercise—there are no signs that Mayorkas will be expelled based on the current Senate makeup.

• This is all happening in the run-up to the Feb. 13 special election to replace George Santos, where immigration will likely play an outsize role. In the past, immigration rarely surfaced as an issue outside Republican primary campaigns (especially in Long Island), but it will likely be the centerpiece of the G.O.P.’s case against the Democrats this fall.

  Republicans are obviously encouraged by what they’re hearing about border security from their focus groups and surveys, and there’s a sense of optimism within the G.O.P. that they’ve finally found a way to counter Democrats’ powerful abortion messaging. But boy, Democrats seemed elated on Friday when Speaker Mike Johnson called the rumored Senate plan “dead on arrival.” In the Democrats’ reading, this is a major opening to hammer Republicans for their intransigence.

The chatter around the vice presidential search, obsessed over by the press every four years, is often derided as an overhyped and silly guessing game, the product of bored reporters and TV personalities paying way too much attention to a closely-held decision that ultimately won’t have very much influence on the outcome of the election anyway. Even Trump is downplaying the importance of a vice presidential pick, which suggests to me that he’ll ultimately select someone competent and boring—you know, the Mike Pence type. “It’s never really had that much of an effect on an election, which is an amazing thing, both election and primary,” Trump told Baier. “It’s never really had much of an effect. … It won’t have any impact at all.”

He’s mostly right. With the possible exception of Sarah Palin’s chaotic turn on John McCain’s ticket, running mates usually don’t have a measurable impact on elections. It’s something that generates rare consensus among political operatives and political scientists: The choice on the ballot is really just the one between the two nominees. At best, a good running mate does no harm. His or her job is to convey the nominee’s values, survive a single semi-important TV debate, help raise money, and maybe energize the party’s political base without offending too many swing voters in the process.

So, is that person Tim Scott? J.D. Vance? Kristi Noem? I’m at least convinced it’s not Nikki Haley or Ron DeSantis, two names that should be eliminated from the V.P. conversation. Sure, primary rivals in the past have gone on to mend fences as running mates—see Kamala Harris—but both DeSantis and Haley have failed the all-important loyalty test with Trump. DeSantis is a bargain-bin version of the Big Guy without the charisma—he doesn’t excite or appeal to any slice of the electorate that Trump doesn’t already own.

As for Haley, her negatives with core Republican voters have been climbing in recent months, and her ramped-up attacks on Trump since losing in New Hampshire have made her pretty much irredeemable in Mar-a-Lago. Over the weekend, after Haley sided with the jurors who awarded E. Jean Carroll $83 million in damages from her defamation lawsuit against the former president, Trump adviser Jason Miller tweeted that “Haley just torpedoed her political future. There is no point of return. Haley is politically finished for ’24, ’28, forever.”

Britt and Trump already have a relationship. Trump endorsed her in her 2022 Senate primary in Alabama, and Trump thinks it’s cool that she’s married to former NFL offensive lineman and Alabama Crimson Tide standout Wesley Britt. Britt, the thinking goes, could give suburbanites permission to vote for Trump, in the same way friendly dad Glenn Youngkin was able to win back some Biden voters in the Virginia suburbs during the 2021 governor’s race. And in an election starring two aging and disliked nominees with 100 percent Name ID, she could lend some excitement to the ticket as a fresh face.

Stefanik’s recent interrogation of university presidents on the subject of antisemitism elevated her profile and scored her big points on the culture war right. Importantly, Trump just likes her. One vulnerability for Stefanik: Her change of heart on the January 6 Capitol Hill insurrection. She once called the violence “anti-American” and “tragic,” but has since defended the rioters as “hostages,” backing Trump at every turn. With the Biden campaign planning to make much of the campaign about protecting democracy, they’ll surely use her past statements against her.

Importantly, he was an early endorser of Trump’s reelection, a big early blow to the presidential campaign of his home state governor, DeSantis. He’s chummy in Mar-a-Lago and has repeatedly denied that Joe Biden is a legitimate president, which has endeared him to Trump. Just as Scott might, Donalds could help Trump pick off some Black voters in certain corners of the country. But he’s got a more combative and conspiratorial edge than Scott. The Republican base would love him. Swing voters? I have my doubts.

One complexifier: Vance’s longtime financial patron Peter Thiel has been openly critical of Trump in recent years, and there’s no love lost between the two men these days. Trump might not want to give Thiel the satisfaction of picking Vance. Another issue: While Ohio’s governor would likely replace Vance in the Senate with a Republican placeholder, state law also calls for a special election to ultimately fill the seat. Ohio leans red these days, but it’s no guarantee that a Republican wins that race—especially with Trump in the White House, firing up Democratic voters once again.

Noem checks multiple boxes on the culture war front. Given her flyover country roots and her love of hunting, she’ll draw inevitable comparisons to Sarah Palin. But unlike Palin, Noem is a canny politician with Washington experience. She was a loud and early crusader against Covid restrictions and mask mandates. She has been a vocal opponent of trans rights and signed legislation restricting trans girls from participating in youth sports. Noem would bring a Yellowstone vibe—God, guns, freedom, Carhartt—to the G.O.P. ticket.

She’s also been a regular Trump surrogate on Fox and other conservative networks, scoring points in Trump world with her early attacks on DeSantis after he launched his rival presidential bid. Noem has just been around Trump and his team for years now, and is now a known and well-liked figure in his orbit. This pick wouldn’t be a surprise in my book. In reality, she’s probably been on Trump running mate shortlist since the day he left Washington in 2021.