Vice President Pence is spending considerable time cultivating big-money Republican donors at small, private events, including hedge fund managers and executives from brokerage houses, chemical giants and defense contractors, Kenneth P. Vogel reports at the New York Times. Many of these events, whose participants are kept secret from the media and are omitted from Pence's public schedule, have been taking place at the vice-presidential residence at the Naval Observatory, as well as other nongovernment venues.

While cultivating support from deep-pocketed business interests is nothing new in GOP politics, Pence's activities raise the question of whether he is doing this for Trump-Pence 2020 — or for himself. As Vogel's piece points out, Pence's intimate confabs with wealthy donors and conservative power brokers "have fueled speculation among Republican insiders that he is laying the foundation for his own political future, independent from Mr. Trump."