Authorities are investigating another potential assassination attempt against Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump after a man pointed a rifle toward a Florida golf course where the former president was playing Sunday. Trump was not harmed, and a suspect is in custody. The White House said President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris had been briefed about the incident. Harris said Sunday night that she was “thankful that former President Trump is safe.” Here’s what to know:

The facts

• The FBI is investigating the incident as a potential assassination attempt.
• A Secret Service agent was securing the area ahead of where Trump was playing around 1:30 p.m. when the agent noticed a rifle muzzle poking through the tree-lined chain-link fence surrounding the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, according to Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw.
• The agent opened fire, and a man fled the scene in a black Nissan, leaving a rifle, two bags and a camera behind. A suspect, Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, was taken into custody Sunday, according to law enforcement officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to confirm his identity. (Authorities have not publicly released the suspect’s name.)
• There was no immediate evidence that the man fired any shots or whether the only shots were fired by the Secret Service, but the FBI said it is investigating.
• Local authorities said they recovered an “AK-47-style rifle” at the scene, but a firearms expert told The Washington Post the gun more closely resembled an SKS-type rifle.
• It was the second time in as many months that a man had a high-powered rifle within range of Trump. The former president was injured after Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, opened fire at a campaign rally in Butler, Pa., on July 13. Crooks was killed.
• Palm Beach County officials said the golf course was not fully cordoned off because Trump receives less security as a former president and candidate than he did as a sitting president. If he was in office, “we would have had the entire golf course surrounded,” Bradshaw said. “Because he’s not, security is limited to the areas that the Secret Service deems possible.”
• Law enforcement officials also credited a witness for helping locate the potential gunman. The witness took a photograph of the vehicle in which the man fled that included the license plate, making it easier to find, Bradshaw said. The vehicle was pulled over, and the suspect was detained by the Martin County Sheriff’s Office.

The suspect

No motive has been determined for Sunday’s incident.

Routh, the suspect, appears to have led a life in search of a purpose, The Washington Post reported.

In recent years, he traveled to Ukraine and once aspired to recruit an army of international volunteers to aid Kyiv. He seems to have grown disillusioned, apparently writing a book about Ukraine’s “unwinnable war” and the “fatal flaw of democracy.”

Public records show he lived most recently in Kaaawa, on the island of Oahu in Hawaii. No one answered when a Washington Post reporter called a number associated with the address Sunday.

Public records viewed by The Post also show that Routh, originally from North Carolina, faced criminal charges for two separate incidents in 2002 for possession of a weapon of mass destruction.

Reactions

Trump said in a fundraising email Sunday, “I AM SAFE AND WELL! Nothing will slow me down. I will NEVER SURRENDER!”

Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), Trump’s running mate, wrote on X that he spoke with the former president before the news became public and that “he was, amazingly, in good spirits.”

“Still much we don’t know, but I’ll be hugging my kids extra tight tonight and saying a prayer of gratitude,” Vance wrote.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said on social media that he and his wife spent several hours with Trump at his nearby Mar-a-Lago resort after the incident. “No leader in American history has endured more attacks and remained so strong and resilient. He is unstoppable,” Johnson wrote on X.

Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee locked in a tight race with Trump, said in a statement Sunday that she was “deeply disturbed by the possible assassination attempt.”

“As we gather the facts, I will be clear: I condemn political violence. We all must do our part to ensure that this incident does not lead to more violence,” she said.

Her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, wrote on X that he and his wife are glad Trump is safe. “Violence has no place in our country. It’s not who we are as a nation,” Walz said.

What’s next?

Protecting Trump has long proved a challenge for the Secret Service.

He routinely holds large campaign rallies and socializes with scores of people at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla., and other resorts. Golf courses are especially fraught because they are often open to the public.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said on X that his state “will be conducting its own investigation regarding the attempted assassination.”

Last month, the Secret Service approved the use of bulletproof glass to shield the Republican nominee at outdoor rallies, a security measure usually provided only for presidents and vice presidents.

Trump plans to meet with the acting director of the Secret Service on Monday, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss his schedule. Trump met with the former director, Kimberly Cheatle, for a similar briefing after the July assassination attempt at his Butler, Pa. rally. Cheatle later resigned under intense pressure from Republicans and Democrats.

In a statement Sunday night, Biden said he “directed my team to continue to ensure that Secret Service has every resource, capability and protective measure necessary to ensure the former President’s continued safety.”

“As I have said many times, there is no place for political violence or for any violence ever in our country,” he said.

“Four years ago, in this alley, rioters threw a brick at my face and knocked out my teeth. Why? Because I was a police officer. And what did Kamala Harris do? While America’s cities were burning, Kamala was defending peaceful protests. She raised millions to help bail rioters out of jail. And supported defunding our police, making us all less safe. Kamala Harris is dangerous.”

— Scott Creighton, retired Minneapolis police officer, in an ad released by the pro-Trump group Preserve America PAC on Sept. 12

Preserve America PAC, a pro-Trump group, appears to specialize in first-person accounts by people allegedly wronged by Vice President Kamala Harris.

We previously looked at an ad featuring a woman whose son was killed by an undocumented immigrant in Texas — when Harris was district attorney for San Francisco. The new ad features a former police officer who says he was injured in the riots that erupted after Minneapolis police killed George Floyd. A similar ad, which features a police officer identified only as “Paul,” attacks her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, for his handling of the situation.

These types of ads can be effective because personal testimony seems authentic. But, as the ad with the grieving mother does, Creighton makes misleading claims about Harris. The ad also does not mention that he was the first defense witness to testify for police officer Derek Chauvin, who was convicted of murdering Floyd and sentenced to 22½ years in prison.

The Facts

George Floyd was a Black man who was murdered on May 25, 2020, by Chauvin after he was arrested on suspicion of counterfeiting. Chauvin, in a scene recorded on video, knelt on Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes, asphyxiating him. Protests — and riots — erupted across the United States. In Minneapolis, a police station was burned to the ground, and Walz, the governor then as now, called in the National Guard on May 29 to restore order.

Vandals caused property damage to more than 1,500 locations, with fires set at nearly 150 buildings, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Hundreds of officers left the force, and a number filed disability claims, including Creighton. He received $190,000 in worker compensation, according to WCCO, the local CBS News station.

But police misconduct during the riots also was costly to the city. One man received a $2.4 million settlement after being hit with a rubber bullet during a protest. Videos, captured by police body cameras, documented officers speaking derisively about the demonstrators, the news media and Mayor Jacob Frey.

Creighton was called by Chauvin’s defense team because in 2019, not quite a year before Floyd’s death, he had initiated a traffic stop and arrested Floyd, who had been in the passenger seat, for drug possession. “The passenger was unresponsive and uncompliant to my demands,” Creighton testified. “I then had to physically reach in because I wanted to see his hands.”

Creighton said he drew a gun on Floyd as he approached the vehicle and Floyd failed to place his hands on the dashboard. Another officer brandished a stun gun. But Creighton’s testimony was undercut by his body-cam footage, which shows Creighton and another officer cursing and shouting at Floyd as they order him to show officers his hands. “Don’t shoot me, man!” Floyd says to Creighton, who then pulls him from the car and handcuffs him.

Asked why Creighton was chosen for this message, a Preserve America representative pointed to his statement that he was hit by a brick during the 2020 melee. Preserve America did not respond to a request to make Creighton available for an interview, and he could not be reached.

Now let’s look at his claims.

“What did Kamala Harris do? While America’s cities were burning, Kamala was defending peaceful protests.”

This tells half the story. Creighton ignores that Harris condemned the riots, even as she said people had a right to peacefully protest.

“It’s no wonder people are taking to the streets, and I support them. We must always defend peaceful protest and peaceful protesters,” Harris said after looting erupted in Kenosha, Wis., in August 2020. “We should not confuse them with those looting and committing acts of violence, including the shooter who was arrested for murder. And make no mistake, we will not let these vigilantes and extremists derail the path to justice.” (She was referring to Kyle Rittenhouse, who fatally shot two people. He was acquitted of all charges after a trial in 2021.)

Similarly, when riots erupted in Portland, Ore., in late August that year, Harris tweeted to a post by Joe Biden condemning the violence: “I join @JoeBiden in condemning this violence. This cannot — and must not — be who we are. Americans deserve a president who will heal our country and bring people together — not fan the flames of hate and division.”

Robert O’Brien, Donald Trump’s national security adviser at the time, told CNN that Trump supported peaceful demonstrations, even as he pledged a crackdown on violence.

We couldn’t find a specific statement by Harris on the violence in Minneapolis, or even the protests, but she did have one tweet that is referenced in Creighton’s next statement.

“She raised millions to help bail rioters out of jail.”

This cannot be verified.

Creighton is referring to a tweet, from then-Sen. Harris, on June 2, 2020, just weeks before Biden selected her as his running mate: “If you’re able to, chip in now to the @MNFreedomFund to help post bail for those protesting on the ground in Minnesota.” As of this week, the post had been retweeted 23,000 times.

As we’ve reported before, until Floyd’s murder, the Minnesota Freedom Fund (MFF) was a relatively small vehicle for assisting people who needed cash for bail. The MFF’s 2018 tax filing shows it raised only about $100,000 that year. Just weeks after Floyd’s death, it raised $35 million — in part because of tweets such as the one by Harris. The fund initially had only about $10,000 set aside to help out protesters, MFF said in a tweet.

Harris herself never personally bailed out anyone or had any interaction with the fund, the fund’s interim director told the Sacramento Bee in 2021. Internet personalities such as Nikita Dragun and James Charles tweeted images of donations of $3,000 and $1,000, respectively, around the same time. Justin Timberlake also tweeted his support. There’s no way to know how much money was raised because of Harris’s tweet. The Preserve America source noted that her ActBlue fundraising page for the MFF remains live.

In the end, few people involved in the protests needed the MFF’s help to get out of jail. According to an accounting by the American Bail Coalition, verified by The Fact Checker with a review of Hennepin County jail records, all but three of the 170 people arrested during the protests between May 26 and June 2 were released from jail within a week. Of the 167 released, only 10 had to put up a monetary bond; in most cases, the amounts were nominal, such as $78 or $100. In fact, 92 percent of those arrested had to pay no bail — and 29 percent of those arrested did not face charges.

“And supported defunding our police, making us all less safe.”

This is mostly false. Harris, a former prosecutor, never supported the “defund the police” movement, though she called for “reimagining public safety” in the United States. The ad cites an article in the New York Post reporting that Harris told ABC’s “Good Morning America” that the movement posed legitimate questions about police budgets, but the Post acknowledged Harris “stopped short” of backing defunding.

“Defund the police” was often misunderstood. It did not call for the outright elimination of police departments. Proponents by and large wanted to redirect some funds now spent on police forces to items such as education, public health, housing and youth services. The idea was that low-income communities would become stronger — and less in need of policing tactics — if root problems were addressed.

Under this concept, some police officers would be replaced with trained social workers or specialized response teams in an effort to let police focus on violent crime, not drug overdoses or homelessness. The theory is that police would be better positioned to deal with rapes and murders if they were not required to deal with other social ills that sometimes lead to community confrontations with police.

In several interviews in June 2020, Harris demurred when directly asked whether she supported “defund the police.” But she also straddled the issue with her rhetoric on taking a fresh look at public safety.

“We need to reimagine how we are achieving public safety in America,” she said when Meghan McCain of “The View” asked whether she supported the movement. “To have cities where one-third of their entire budget is going to policing, but yet there is a dire need in those same cities for mental health resources, for resources going into public schools, for resources going into job training and job creation — come on. We have to be honest about this.”

Appearing on MSNBC on June 8, 2020, to discuss a bill she co-sponsored that aimed to improve police practices and hold police accountable for egregious conduct, Harris was also asked about “defund the police.” (The bill did not call for reducing police budgets.) Again, she offered similar rhetoric that fell short of supporting the movement.

“We don’t want police officers to be dealing with the homeless issue,” she said. “We don’t want police officers to be dealing with substance abuse and mental health. No — we should be putting those resources into our public health systems; we should be looking at our budgets and asking, ‘Are we getting the best return on our investment as taxpayers?’”

The Pinocchio Test

Creighton certainly is an interesting choice to be a spokesman about the violent aftermath that resulted from Floyd’s murder. His message is also flawed.

He says she defended peaceful protests — which are protected by law — but fails to mention she condemned the violence. He makes an unverified claim that she raised millions to bail rioters out of jail. It’s unclear how much of the money that was raised could be attributed to her — and in any case, few people arrested needed to put up money. Finally, he says she supported the “defund the police” movement. She never embraced it, instead saying the movement raised good questions about how public safety could be best achieved.

Overall, the ad earns Three Pinocchios.

Three Pinocchios

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House Republicans have been in power for nearly two years — and they’re still unable to solve fiscal problems within their ranks.

The belligerent nature of the conference, coupled with a historically narrow majority, has made it almost impossible for any GOP leader to appease each corner of their constituency when nearly every Republican vote is necessary to pass bills along party lines.

Now House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is once again in the middle of the tensions that almost a year ago saw his predecessor ousted in part for refusing to fund the government the way a small group of far-right members demanded. But Johnson still worked through the weekend to rally support for his already-once-delayed proposal to avert an Oct. 1 government shutdown on terms friendly to the GOP, which he hopes to put to a vote this week.

“I believe we can fund the government responsibly, and I believe we can do right by the American people and ensure the security of our elections. I defy anybody to give me any logical argument why we shouldn’t do that. That’s why I’m so resolute about this,” Johnson told reporters last week.

Johnson’s measure would extend government funding into March — longer than Democrats and even some Republicans prefer — and tacks on provisions requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote that election officials say are unnecessary and Democrats say they can’t accept.

Many House Republicans consider the effort futile, since a solid block of GOP opponents remain unpersuaded to vote for any temporary funding extension and the Democratic-led Senate and White House have already rejected the plan. If all lawmakers are present and voting, Republicans can only lose four votes from their conference to pass a bill.

It all but sets up another fight between Republicans who want to prove to voters they can govern ahead of Election Day and others who would rather see Johnson fight aggressively for conservative policies — even if it means shutting the government down and risking their majority. The internal standoff could once again tarnish Republican efforts to send Johnson into bipartisan negotiations with the credibility to seek concessions ahead of the looming deadline.

“Let’s just be honest: Republican lack of unity has often sent us into negotiations with less leverage than we should have,” Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.) said. “That is a fact of being in a conference that values rugged individualism over collective action.”

In talks over the summer, Johnson and his leadership team sensed that a majority of Republicans would support extending current funding levels — known as a continuing resolution, or CR — until March 28, 2025, and attaching a voter ID bill that passed along mostly party lines in July.

But the proposal was quickly met with continued skepticism from Republicans’ pragmatic flank, and rage from some on the far right. A staunch block of hard-liners who have never supported a CR forced Johnson to delay a vote from Wednesday into this week. And many of those roughly dozen Republicans are not budging, as calls from across the conference for Johnson to “get serious” in negotiations grow louder.

Senior members of the Appropriations Committee, which drafts full-year spending bills, agree with Democrats’ preferred approach to extend current funding levels until December so lawmakers can pass new spending bills and clear the slate for the next president, whoever wins. The House has passed five of the 12 full-year spending bills, some with steep cuts; the Senate has passed none, but all 12 are also through the appropriations panel there.

Appropriators were willing to back Johnson’s measure for the sake of projected unity and to help him enter bicameral negotiations with leverage.

“The speaker tried to deliver,” Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said. “And he didn’t lose because of people on my committee and people who wanted a shorter CR. He lost because of a disparate group of people who said, ‘I don’t like the long CR, I want this, I want that.’ Come on.”

Johnson has remained adamant about twisting arms for his current plan, showing little willingness to renegotiate it. A year ago, then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) spent weeks gathering Republicans in conference rooms to cobble together short-term plans — once using a whiteboard — that were continuously rejected by members of the archconservative House Freedom Caucus, who wanted more spending cuts and border security. Eventually, he had to rely on House Democrats to pass a clean funding extension and avert a shutdown, a decision that contributed to his removal.

But that style of just-for-show politicking is considered old-school by a new crop of Republicans who demand all-or-nothing fights, particularly on reducing government spending. Republicans have seen leaders such as McCarthy, Paul D. Ryan (Wis.), and John A. Boehner (Ohio) before him, go through the motions of passing a GOP plan to appease the far right, only to return from negotiations in divided government with a bipartisan deal.

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who has voted against CRs, said Johnson’s current plan is a “fake fight” and GOP leaders “would cave at the end.” Republicans from across the ideological spectrum have peppered Johnson with questions about the “final” funding plan, which have largely gone unanswered, as House Democrats and the Senate are waiting to negotiate after the House passes something.

“If they were serious about what they intend to do, then pass the bill themselves. But they’ve been unable to do that on their own,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said at his weekly news conference. “We are simply asking traditional Republicans to partner with House Democrats in a bipartisan way.”

Even Senate Republicans are growing antsy. Sen. John Boozman (R-Ark.), who sits on the Senate Appropriations Committee, said the lower chamber had until the beginning of this week to show signs of progress or the Senate would need to craft its own bill — probably without any of the conservative policies that House Republicans demand.

“I think the speaker is doing a very, very good job. You’re just in a situation where you’ve got virtually no majority and you’re struggling with people who are just not going to vote for a spending bill in the House,” he said.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who led a failed motion to oust Johnson as speaker earlier this year, said that Johnson should just start negotiating with Democrats rather than twist GOP arms — including hers — to support his plan.

Republicans who oppose short-term spending extensions say such moves only add to the deficit, which the party has promised to reduce. Johnson often notes that governing on spending and other conservative priorities could become easier if Republicans control Congress and the White House again, but many of his far-right colleagues are tired of waiting.

Unified GOP control is no guarantee of spending cuts, either: The debt grew from 102 percent of the United States’ total economic output to 104 percent during the two-year span when Republicans last controlled both chambers of Congress and Donald Trump was president, according to the Office of Management and Budget. And the discretionary spending that Congress considers as part of the appropriations process is a fraction of annual government spending, which is dominated by programs such as Social Security and Medicare.

Some far-right Republicans could support Johnson’s plan if they knew he would be willing to shut down the government when the Senate rejects the bill. But both McCarthy and Johnson have broken with past Republican speakers by choosing to avert shutdowns, arguing that they did little to extract concessions from Democrats and earned Republicans the blame.

But hard-liners believe that Johnson’s reliance on Democrats for must-pass bills has already hurt his negotiating position.

“When your enemy knows what you’re willing to do and not do, it makes it very difficult to negotiate. So because Schumer knows [leaders are] not willing to shut down the government, they’re going to, just like they have for the last two years, jam us,” Rep. Greg Steube (R-Fla.) said.

Pragmatic Republicans are growing frustrated at Johnson for still trying to keep the far-right coalition together for his current plan. But others are giving the speaker credit for trying to find consensus even if it is meant to send a message to the Senate.

“We’re in the majority and you have to at least engage with your colleagues,” said Rep. Michael Lawler (R-N.Y.), who represents a swing district that President Joe Biden won in 2020. “Yes, there’s going to be people that don’t vote for the final product, and if they’re unwilling to pass an initial offering toward a negotiation, then you move on without them.”

Just about every part of Sen. JD Vance’s efforts on Sunday to defend his relentless fearmongering about Haitian immigrants was dishonest.

To hear Vance (R-Ohio) tell it — as he told CNN’s Dana Bash and NBC’s Kristen Welker in separate news show appearances — the senator and running mate to Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump was simply highlighting long-standing concerns that had been ignored by the media. But those concerns hadn’t been ignored, and his focus on the Ohio city of Springfield and its population that came from Haiti was demonstrably a function of the presidential campaign. Which, Vance admitted to Bash, was the point.

“If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people,” Vance said, “then that’s what I’m going to do, Dana, because you guys are completely letting Kamala Harris coast.”

Bash noted that Vance had just admitted that he “created” these stories, ones asserting (without reliable evidence) that the immigrants were eating people’s pets in an echo of long-standing racist, anti-immigrant rhetoric.

“I say that we’re creating a story, meaning we’re creating the American media focusing on it,” Vance insisted. But, again, that’s not true.

Over and over, to both Bash and Welker, Vance insisted that it was necessary for him to talk about Springfield because no one else was. Two weeks ago, though, the New York Times ran a front-page story about Springfield and the challenges posed by the increase in population from Haitian immigrants. The story noted that Vance had mentioned housing shortages in Springfield during a July Senate hearing, a complaint prompted by a letter the city manager sent to his senators.

Less than a week later, a right-wing social media account shared a screenshot of a post to a Springfield-based Facebook group from a woman who alleged that her neighbor’s daughter’s friend lost a cat, and that immigrants from Haiti had been preparing to eat it. It was paired with a photo of a man in Columbus carrying a goose on a city street and, later, purportedly bolstered by other dubious or unrelated stories of alleged animal-eating.

The story caught fire on pro-Trump social media platforms, with various images generated by artificial intelligence showing Trump saving cats and ducks from people with dark skin. By the time Vance first weighed in, the story was already rampant.

His social media post noted that he’d mentioned Springfield at that hearing, coupling the claim with the update that “[r]eports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country.” Vance had not mentioned Springfield on X (formerly Twitter) before his post piggybacking on the pet-eating claim.

The woman and her neighbor who drove that initial frenzy subsequently admitted that they had no evidence that the story was true. Based on the evolution of the story since the first flurry of claims, it seems clear that rumors about pet-eating — again, a long-standing bit of anti-immigrant rhetoric — were just rumors, ones circulating throughout the small city.

“Why have I talked about some of the things that I have been talking about?” Vance told Bash. “Let me just say this. My constituents have brought approximately a dozen separate concerns to me. Ten of them are verifiable and confirmable” — though, of course, he never mentioned them until his allies focused on making stolen pets a vehicle for casting immigrants as dangerous.

He didn’t articulate what the 10 verifiable (though not verified) stories were, instead pointing to other stories that were circulating in the right-wing media bubble, including one from conservative activist Chris Rufo. As with the initial stories of pets being taken in Springfield, Rufo’s story, which allegedly occurred in a different city, was flatly rejected by law enforcement.

Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson articulated the value of these false claims succinctly during recent comments.

“First of all,” Carlson said, “it makes all the right people mad.” Later, he added a second positive effect: “Now we’re talking about eating pets.”

This is precisely Vance’s approach. When his initial comments about Springfield were met with pushback, he insisted that his allies “keep the cat memes flowing” — rejecting the “crybabies” in the media who insisted on pointing out that his elevation of the stories was dishonest and baseless, if not dangerous.

The danger caused by the stories soon manifested. Bomb threats were made against city facilities and schools in Springfield. The Proud Boys showed up, though somewhat belatedly; neo-Nazis had shown up in the city and made baseless claims about pets back in August. On Monday, the city announced that it was canceling an annual festival out of concern over the onslaught of threats.

“Donald Trump is the only person who brought Springfield to national attention,” Vance insisted to Welker, “and he’s the only president who’s going to fight for the residents, not just their right to live safely in their communities, but for their right to complain about what’s going on in their own community.”

Trump, who once disparaged Haiti with an expletive during a meeting with legislators, and Vance are apparently not concerned about all residents of Springfield living safely in the community. They are, however, very concerned that anyone interested in complaining about immigrants should have those complaints heard loudly, however valid they happen to be.

Particularly when, to Carlson’s point, it drowns out other topics of conversation during the campaign. If the media is “letting Harris coast,” in Vance’s estimation, he’ll need to “create a story” for them to talk about instead.

Better to have the nation debating whether Black immigrants are or are not semi-human killers than to have it focusing on areas where Harris might have an advantage. So keep those “cat memes” flowing, Trump supporters, whatever the cost to those immigrants and to a community that Vance represents.

The Kamala Harris campaign sent a signal to deep-pocketed donors Monday by blessing the work of 13 independent groups that could help elect the vice president over the final 50 days through advertising, registration or other voter mobilization efforts.

The announcement comes as the Harris campaign remains flush with late-summer cash after raising $615 million in the first six weeks after taking over President Joe Biden’s campaign.

But the ecosystem of supportive nonprofits and super PACs that were set up to support her campaign are in many cases still recovering from a tumultuous summer that disrupted fundraising, particularly among wealthy donors who can write large checks.

Harris campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon said in a statement Monday that the 13 groups, including several that do not disclose their donors, were important for the vice president’s campaign.

“These groups’ efforts to register voters and mobilize our broad and diverse coalition will play a critical role in winning this November,” she said.

The list includes operations that the Biden campaign previously embraced, including the principal advertising super PAC, Future Forward, along with American Bridge 21st Century, which is advertising in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, and Priorities USA, which has been doing digital spots to support the Democratic ticket.

The list also included six groups that focus on persuading and turning out specific constituencies that Harris has identified as crucial for November, including several that have partnered with Future Forward on advertising campaigns.

They include BlackPAC, which targets African American voters; Somos Votantes, which targets Latinos; AAPI Victory, which targets Asian voters; Galvanize, which targets White women in battleground states; Won’t PAC Down, which focuses on Millennial and Generation X voters; and Emily’s List, a group focused on electing Democratic women that has been advertising on abortion rights this year.

Other favored groups include Clear Choice, a recently formed super-PAC focused on discouraging potential Harris voters from voting third party, and the Democratic Data Exchange, or DDX, a company that allows for voter information to be exchanged between independent groups on the left and Democratic campaigns like Harris.

Two major liberal donor networks round out the list: America Votes, a hub for coordinating field efforts in battleground states, and Strategic Victory Fund, a spinoff of the Democracy Alliance that focuses on elevating liberal voices in battleground states.

Federal candidates like Harris and their advisers are allowed to encourage independent groups that can collect checks of unlimited value, even if those groups later spend that money to help their campaigns. But candidates and their agents are not allowed to direct spending by the groups or specifically ask for large contributions from donors.

In practice, that means campaign surrogates or candidates will appear at events for groups they support without making a specific donation requests. Since Harris took over the Biden campaign, one of her campaign co-chairs, former New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu, appeared at an event for American Bridge. Doug Emhoff, the vice president’s husband, is scheduled to attend a separate American Bridge event in the coming days.

The Harris campaign is expected to deploy more surrogates in the coming weeks to help the chosen 13 groups raise money, even as they continue to warn donors that the campaign needs more funding despite raising nearly three times as much as Republican candidate Donald Trump in August.

O’Malley Dillon sent a Sept. 7 memo to major donors called “A Fierce Spending Battle This Fall” that highlighted the deep pockets of independent groups supporting Trump.

“We’re running against an entire army of MAGA-aligned super PACs and outside groups,” O’Malley Dillon said in the memo. “Already, new, billionaire-funded soft money groups are springing up at a rapid pace, trying to make up for his lack of grassroots support by raising hundreds of millions from high-dollar donors — and they are using it to attack Vice President Harris.”

Trump has publicly praised some of the groups supporting him in social media posts, showering public praise on major donors like Tesla chief executive Elon Musk, who is funding a field operation to help Trump’s campaign.

“Preserve America has been doing a great job with ads and all other efforts on behalf of MAGA,” Musk wrote on Truth Social earlier this month, before naming out the group’s primary donor, the heir to a casino fortune. “Thank you Miriam Adelson!”