With the start of the Republican Party’s presidential nominating convention less than six weeks away, former President Donald Trump’s campaign is picking up the pace in vetting the potential running mates.The process has started in earnest with documents being requested from several prospective contenders for the 2024 GOP vice presidential nomination, sources on Wednesday confirmed to Fox News.

Florida and Kansas officials are accusing two petition circulators of forging voter signatures during campaigns to put an abortion rights measure to a vote in Florida and allow the No Labels party to put candidates on the Kansas ballot.Jamie Johnson, 47, and George Andrews III, 30, both from Dade City, Florida, in the Tampa area, were in jail Wednesday, each on $150,000 bail. Johnson was being held in Sarpy County, Nebraska, south of Omaha, and Andrews in the Tampa area.

A North Dakota school boards organization has returned over $140,000 to the state and ended its role in a teacher exchange program months after an indictment was unsealed against a former state lawmaker, who traveled to Europe on the state funds and later was accused of traveling to Prague with the intent of paying for sex with a minor.

Voters in three small South Dakota counties on Tuesday rejected initiated measures to require hand-counting of ballots in future elections.The votes in Gregory, Haakon and Tripp counties were an unusual step even as other places in the U.S. have considered moving to hand-counting in the wake of former President Donald Trump’s claims of 2020 election fraud.

Attorney General Merrick Garland is on the clock.Two House committees have voted to hold Garland in contempt of Congress. House Republicans aren’t pleased with Garland failing to cough up an audiotape of the transcribed interview Special Counsel Robert Hur conducted with President Biden in the classified documents case. Garland released a transcript of the interview.