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The end of the second fundraising quarter marks a new glimpse into how campaigns are faring ahead of November’s high-stakes elections.

Most of the Republican presidential hopefuls and President Biden had not yet officially declared their candidacies by the end of the first quarter in March. Campaigns had two weeks past the end of the second quarter to report their contributions to the Federal Elections Commission.

Here are the winners and losers from the second fundraising quarter of 2023:

Winners:

Joe Biden

President Biden’s fundraising numbers are more than double that of former President Trump and any other candidate, giving him a majorly successful second quarter and first few months of his reelection bid.

Biden’s reelection campaign raised $72 million in the second quarter, an impressive total for a candidate whose polls have shown voters do not want him to run for reelection. The campaign said Biden also has $77 million in cash on hand, which it said was the most “amassed by a Democrat at any comparable point in history.”

Doubts have swirled around Biden’s candidacy since before he jumped into race, with his favorability rating mostly staying in the low 40s and concerns about his age and mental acuity. But his fundraising numbers might be telling a different story among voters.

The campaign said nearly 400,000 donors made 670,000 donations across all entities, including the Democratic National Committee and joint fundraising committees. It said 30 percent of all donors did donate to Biden’s campaign in 2020.

“While Republicans are burning through resources in a divisive primary focused on who can take the most extreme MAGA positions, we are significantly outraising every single one of them — because our team’s strength is our grassroots supporters,” campaign manager Julie Chávez Rodríguez said.

Donald Trump

Former President Trump is easily the biggest GOP winner in the fundraising quarter and the primary race so far.

His campaign and super PAC raked in more than $35 million during the second quarter, significantly more overall than any other Republican candidate. That is about double what his joint fundraising committee, made up of his campaign and super PAC, raised during the first quarter.

Trump has also consistently led the pack of GOP challengers for the nomination by double digits, and his closest competitor, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, has been unable to close in on the former president.

Both of these developments come as Trump became the first former president to be criminally charged on the state and federal level.

Democrats in competitive Senate races

Many Democrats running in what are expected to be competitive Senate races brought in millions of dollars in donations this quarter.

The party is facing a steep 2024 Senate election map that gives more pickup opportunities to Republicans than Democrats as the GOP will try to retake the upper chamber.

Sens. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) are likely two of the most significant targets for the GOP, with both representing states that voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020. But Tester raised $5 million, his best second-quarter fundraising total ever in a nonelection year, and Brown brought in the same.

Other incumbent Democrats running for reelection in battleground states raised millions.

Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey received $4 million, the most in a fundraising quarter in his career, while Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin raised $3.2 million, the most in a Wisconsin Senate race in a nonelection year.

Democratic challengers trying to win a Senate seat for the first time also put up big numbers.

Rep. Colin Allred (Texas) raised nearly $6.2 million in his race to unseat Sen. Ted Cruz (R) in just the first two months of his campaign, much more than Cruz’s 2018 Democratic challenger, Beto O’Rourke, had at this time in his candidacy.

Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) is running to oust Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, who was elected in 2018 as a Democrat but became an independent. Sinema has not announced whether she will run for reelection yet, but Gallego took in $3.1 million this quarter, adding to $3.7 million from the first quarter.

Ron DeSantis

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis raised an impressive $20 million for his campaign while only formally being a candidate for six weeks before the second quarter ended. His campaign said that is the largest filing for a non-incumbent Republican candidate in the first quarter of their candidacy in more than a decade.

The super PAC supporting DeSantis, Never Back Down, also told Fox News it raised $130 million since the committee launched in March.

DeSantis is the only GOP presidential candidate whose fundraising keeps close to Trump’s, but some parts of his fundraising numbers and recent polling could give him reasons to be concerned.

Never Back Down’s fundraising total is significantly higher than that of any other GOP candidate’s super PAC, but almost two-thirds — $82.5 million — was transferred from his state political committee last month.

Donations to DeSantis surged in the first 24 hours after he announced his run, with his campaign raising $8.2 million. But that’s 40 percent of his total over the course of six weeks, and his pace of fundraising has slowed.

The governor has also struggled to make gains on the former president in the polls. Republican strategists have expressed concerns about his viability to defeat Trump.

Joe Manchin

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) has not officially decided whether he will run for a third term in the Senate, but he brought in more than either of his two potential major GOP opponents for the seat, raising $1.3 million in quarter two.

The super PAC affiliated with him as a candidate, Country Roads PAC, added on $400,000 from the past quarter. Those figures brought his cash on hand up to $10.7 million and his super PAC’s money in the bank to $2.2 million.

West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice (R) appears to be the early front-runner for the Republican nomination, but he fell short of Manchin’s total by a few hundred thousand dollars, only receiving about $935,000. Manchin significantly outpaced Rep. Alex Mooney (R), who raised $550,000.

Manchin has also refused to rule out running as a third-party candidate for president, a possibility that has concerned some Democrats who would view it as a spoiler for Biden’s reelection chances. He has signaled he will decide about running for reelection by the end of the year.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The Democratic challenger to Biden and anti-vaccine activist’s fundraising total was not close to Biden’s, but he raked in $6.3 million, a notable achievement for a candidate widely seen as a long shot to win the nomination.

That includes $3 million that the campaign raised over a three-day period to close out the second quarter from June 28-30.

The Biden campaign has thus far not directly engaged with Kennedy and is unlikely to meet for a debate with him, but Kennedy has performed better in the first few months of his candidacy than some observers might have expected.

While Democratic voters have overwhelmingly indicated that they back Biden, Kennedy has still received as much as double-digit support over a couple of months, possibly demonstrating his candidacy will not fade as quickly as Biden’s campaign may hope.

Losers:

Other 2024 GOP candidates

While Trump and DeSantis had widely successful quarters, many of the other candidates running for the GOP nomination had comparatively disappointing fundraising totals.

DeSantis has been unable to top Trump in the polls, but no candidate has been able to surpass DeSantis for second place, either. They also were unable to pass his position as the second-highest GOP fundraiser this quarter.

Former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, who has been among the higher-performing candidates in polls, raised $7.3 million for her campaign, much lower than Trump and DeSantis. Her super PAC brought in $18.7 million, and super PACs are not subject to limits on contributions from individuals and companies.

Sen. Tim Scott’s (R-S.C.) campaign brought in less, $6.1 million. The super PAC supporting him brought in $19.28 million.

Haley and Scott both highlighted that they reached the fundraising requirements needed to qualify for the first GOP primary debate next month, as did former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

Former Vice President Mike Pence brought in a modest $1.2 million for his campaign in its first three weeks, while the super PAC supporting him raised $2.6 million.

North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, who has polled near the bottom of the pack, raised $11.7 million in the three weeks of his campaign before the end of the second quarter, but more than $10 million of that was a loan from his own money.

Marianne Williamson

While Kennedy has outperformed expectations in his primary challenge to Biden, the other notable Democratic challenger has struggled for months to gain traction and experienced internal chaos in her campaign.

Politico reported Thursday that Williamson told campaign volunteers in a Zoom call she does not have the funds she needs to continue the campaign at its current trend and desperately needs additional financial support.

“I have put my own money in, and I don’t have the money to continue putting it in at the level I have,” she said. “Cause remember, I’m not making a living while I’m doing this.”

The outlet reported she blamed media outlets’ focus on her campaign’s reshuffling and her political opponents trying to sabotage her campaign.

Through four months of campaigning, Williamson has lost two campaign managers and appointed her third at the end of last month. Her campaign has experienced multiple rounds of staffers exiting, most recently last week.

A spokesperson for the campaign told The Hill at the time that it was “restructuring” the campaign.

George Santos

Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) has been the subject of intense controversy throughout his time in Congress over the false statements he made about himself during his candidacy and the local and federal criminal allegations against him.

The embattled congressman, who has said he is running for reelection despite the charges he is facing, raised $133,000 during the second quarter, adding on to the roughly $25,000 he had at the start of the quarter.

But he will not be able to use much of that on his reelection campaign — $85,000 of his funds went to repaying him for loans he made to previous campaigns he ran.

That left him with just about $55,000 cash on hand at the end of the quarter. The Democratic and Republican challengers running for Santos’s seat, meanwhile, put up donation figures in the six digits.

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A federal judge has ruled Oregon’s voter-approved gun control measure – one of the toughest in the nation – is constitutional.

U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut ruled that banning large capacity magazines and requiring a permit to purchase a gun falls in line with “the nation’s history and tradition of regulating uniquely dangerous features of weapons and firearms to protect public safety," Oregon Public Broadcasting reported.

The decision comes after a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision on the Second Amendment that has upended gun laws across the country, dividing judges and sowing confusion over what firearm restrictions can remain on the books. It changed the test that lower courts had long used for evaluating challenges to firearm restrictions, telling judges that gun laws must be consistent with the “historical tradition of firearm regulation.”

Oregon voters in November narrowly passed Measure 114, which requires residents to undergo safety training and a background check to obtain a permit to buy a gun.

The legislation also bans the sale, transfer or import of gun magazines with more than 10 rounds unless they are owned by law enforcement or a military member or were owned before the measure’s passage. Those who already own high-capacity magazines can only possess them at home or use them at a firing range, in shooting competitions or for hunting as allowed by state law after the measure takes effect.

Large capacity magazines “are not commonly used for self-defense, and are therefore not protected by the Second Amendment,” Immergut wrote. “The Second Amendment also allows governments to ensure that only law-abiding, responsible citizens keep and bear arms.”

The latest ruling in U.S. District Court is likely to be appealed, potentially moving all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Oregon measure’s fate has been carefully watched as one of the first new gun restrictions passed since the Supreme Court ruling last June.

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The Florida governor has struggled to break into Trump’s lead and his campaign has been burning through money.

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Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign has fired roughly a dozen staffers — and more are expected in the coming weeks as he shakes up his big-money political operations after less than two months on the campaign trail.

Those who were let go were described to NBC News by a source familiar as mid-level staffers across several departments whose departures were related to cutting costs. The exits come after the departures of David Abrams and Tucker Obenshain, veterans of DeSantis’ political orbit, which were first reported by Politico.

Sources involved with the DeSantis campaign say there is an internal assessment among some that they hired too many staffers too early, and despite bringing in $20 million during its first six weeks, it was becoming clear their costs needed to be brought down.

Some in DeSantis’ political orbit are laying the early blame at the feet of campaign manager Generra Peck, who also led DeSantis’ 2022 midterm reelection bid and is in the hot seat right now.

“She should be,” one DeSantis donor said.

“They never should have brought so many people on, the burn rate was way too high,” said one Republican source familiar with the campaign’s thought process. “People warned the campaign manager but she wanted to hear none of it.”

“DeSantis stock isn’t rising,” the donor added. “Twenty percent is not what people signed up for.”

The person noted that DeSantis has a penchant for switching out staff, which means that he has no core team that has worked together before. DeSantis had three different campaign teams for each of his three runs for Congress, and notably had a huge campaign shakeup during his first run for governor in 2018.

"Americans are rallying behind Ron DeSantis and his plan to reverse Joe Biden’s failures and restore sanity to our nation, and his momentum will only continue as voters see more of him in-person, especially in Iowa. Defeating Joe Biden and the $72 million behind him will require a nimble and candidate driven campaign, and we are building a movement to go the distance," DeSantis campaign spokesman Andrew Romeo told NBC News.

DeSantis’ campaign had 92 people listed as being on the payroll for at least some period of time during its first fundraising period, according to campaign finance reports filed Saturday with the Federal Election Commission. It is by far the most of any Republican presidential candidate, and it has left his campaign with huge payroll expenses and, the new filings show, fewer resources than originally thought.

DeSantis has $12 million in the bank, but of that $3 million can be used only during the general election. And about $14 million of his second quarter haul came from donors who gave the maximum legal amount. In other words, roughly two-thirds of his early donors will not be able to give directly to his campaign for the duration of the race.

Never Back Down, the pro-DeSantis super PAC, has said it will spend up to $200 million to boost the governor's White House bid and has a significantly larger staff than the official campaign.

The moment of potential reset comes ahead of a national finance committee meeting for DeSantis' campaign Sunday in Tallahassee, which will bring the campaign’s brain trust together as they try to figure out how to chip into Trump’s massive GOP primary lead.

The event will include a briefing at the campaign’s Tallahassee headquarters followed by a barbecue at the governor’s mansion, according to an invite reviewed by NBC News.

DeSantis has been unable to make up ground against Trump after nearly two months as an official candidate. That stagnation is starting to frustrate some supporters, who want a shakeup of the campaign, which is led day-to-day by Peck and Ryan Tyson, a longtime Republican Florida pollster.

“Yeah, there are people grumbling about it, no doubt,” one DeSantis donor said. “There is an overall sense, including with me, that he just has not ignited the way we thought he would.”

The person said that they think DeSantis’ inner circle underestimated just how hard — and expensive — it would be to break the grip on the Republican base held by Trump, who has a commanding lead and is seen as the overwhelming frontrunner. Even in Florida, a state that re-elected DeSantis by nearly 20 percentage-points just seven months ago, Trump now has his own 20-point lead on DeSantis, according to a Florida Atlantic University poll released last week.

The shake-up could include the reemergence of Phil Cox, the veteran Republican operative who helped run DeSantis' 2022 re-election campaign and served as an adviser to Never Back Down before stepping away from that role in late May.

Cox is in Tallahassee for the national finance meeting, but he does not have a formal role with the campaign, a source familiar told NBC News.

DeSantis has signaled that he is aware his campaign did not start the way he wanted, but her has largely blamed media coverage and other outside factors.

To try and re-center, his campaign is doubling down on the early states, especially Iowa, whose first-in-the-nation nominating contest is now seen as a crucial marker. If DeSantis wins, the field will get smaller and he will get closer to the one-on-one matchup with Trump that he wants. But losing the key state would likely cement Trump's status as the unbeatable frontrunner even further.

That assessment was outlined in a confidential internal memo NBC News obtained Friday outlining the campaign’s strategy to regain its footing. The memo indicated that there would be a heavy focus on early states where, DeSantis advisers think, Trump’s supporters can be won over.

“Early state voters are only softly committed to the candidates they select on a ballot question this far out -- including many Trump supporters,” read the memo. “Our focus group participants in the early states even say they do not plan on making up their mind until they meet the candidates or watch them debate.”

Never Back Down is bolstering those efforts, focusing both on early states and a handful of Super Tuesday states — most notably California — where the group is expected to hire roughly 80 organizers in the near future.

For some supporters, though, there are now three keys to DeSantis remaining viable: Iowa, Iowa, Iowa.

“They need to treat it like it’s all that matters right now,” the DeSantis donor said. “If Trump wins it it is over. It means he needs to be there a lot. He needs to do all the retail politics he can.”

The person said DeSantis’ wife, Casey, is a great asset when doing the sort of retail politicking needed to win Iowa, but DeSantis himself needs to improve.

“He needs to find that gear,” the person said. “He needs to find it fast.”

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Most of DeSantis' money came from donors who “maxed out” and can’t give again, as small donations have been a struggle for Trump's GOP challengers.

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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis tapped out top donors and burned through $7.9 million in his first six weeks as a presidential candidate, according to an NBC News analysis of his new campaign finance disclosure.

The numbers suggest, for the first time, that solvency could be a threat to DeSantis’ campaign, which has touted its fundraising ability as a key measure of viability. They reflect the broader reality that DeSantis stalled after his launch: polling ahead of the Republican primary pack but far behind former President Donald Trump.

The irony for DeSantis is that he raised a total of $20.1 million between mid-May and the end of June, easily ahead of other Republican candidates — with the possible exception of Trump, who has yet to reveal how much money his campaign raised in the second quarter.

But more than two-thirds of DeSantis’ money — nearly $14 million — came from donors who gave the legal maximum and cannot donate again, NBC’s analysis shows. Some of those donors gave the $3,300 limit for both the primary and general elections, boosting DeSantis’ totals with cash that can’t be used to try to defeat Trump.

DeSantis finished June with more than $12.2 million in the bank, but his filing indicates that $3 million of that can only be used in the general election.

At the same time, DeSantis spent about 40 percent of what he raised, in part by paying salaries to 92 people. That gives him by far the biggest staff footprint of any of Trump’s Republican challengers, but also leaves him with the question of how he can sustain his payroll — or anything close to it — without finding new sources of revenue. Already, he is struggling to keep high-profile supporters on board.

DeSantis does have a financial edge no one else can match in the form of his super PAC, which can accept donations of unlimited size and already took in $130 million. But keeping a campaign humming on smaller donations can be a different matter entirely.

More broadly, Saturday’s second-quarter campaign finance filing deadline showed the challenge that each of Trump’s rivals has in trying to wrest the nomination from him at a time when about half of GOP primary voters say he is their top choice.

No other Republican raised more than $6 million from donors into their campaign account, with North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy exceeding that number only by tapping their own personal wealth.

South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott’s campaign raised almost $5.9 million, while former Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley’s campaign raised $5.3 million. And two candidates who waited until June to jump in posted lower numbers: former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie raised $1.7 million and former Vice President Mike Pence raised $1.2 million.

Their reports show a presidential field largely reluctant to invest in staffing and other major campaign costs, candidates having trouble tapping small-dollar donors for big returns, and a handful of candidates already in danger of missing the Republican National Committee’s first debate. Here’s what else we saw in the second-quarter finances.

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Small campaign staffs stand out in the early going

DeSantis stands out among those who have filed their reports in having the largest campaign staff — by a mile. His 92 staffers on payroll are more than double the next-largest campaign so far.

Scott reported 54 campaign staffers while Ramaswamy reported 27 and Haley had 22 staffers. Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson had six people on staff.

Other campaigns were operating on a shoestring budget. Conservative talk radio host Larry Elder had one campaign staffer, while former Vice President Mike Pence, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, former Texas GOP Rep. Will Hurd and Miami Mayor Francis Suarez did not list anyone on their payroll as of June 30.

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Debate qualification already looking tricky for some

The reports also show how difficult it may be for many of the lower-polling candidates to hit the Republican National Committee’s 40,000-donor threshold to qualify for the party’s first debate in August — let alone the polling threshold too.

Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who raised just $580,000, said in a statement that his campaign had just 3,928 unique donors in the second quarter, as well as another 2,516 in the first 13 days of July. He needs six times that many to hit the threshold.

Miami Mayor Francis Suarez’s reports names just 352 unique donors, and he raised less than $29,000 from unitemized donors who gave less than $200. Even if every single unitemized dollar was raised from a different unique donor (which is unlikely), Suarez still wouldn’t have hit the debate threshold through June.

And former Texas Rep. Will Hurd’s report names just 193 unique donors, along with another $54,000 from unitemized donations.

Small dollar donor struggles
One of Trump’s campaign strengths has long been his appeal to small-dollar donors. The flip side of that: His challengers are not getting much small-donor help themselves right now.

DeSantis, who raised the most of Trump’s challengers in the second quarter, only saw about 14% of his total fundraising haul coming from small-dollar donors, for about $2.9 million.

Haley and Scott, who spent millions building up small-donor fundraising infrastructure before launching presidential campaigns, raised only 16% ($870,000) and 21% ($1.2 million) of their second-quarter totals from small donors, too.

Among the field of Trump challengers, former Gov. Chris Christie took in the biggest share of his total from small donors: just below 35%. But that still worked out to only about $571,000 of his $1.6 million haul.

“Financial penalties, as well as conduct changes, are important to make sure that JPMorgan Chase knows the cost of putting its own profits ahead of public safety,” said U.S. Virgin Islands attorney general.

Musk said early Saturday that cash flow at Twitter remains negative because of a nearly 50% drop in advertising revenue coupled with "heavy debt."

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Kennedy said “COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and black people,” but not “Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.” He later denied saying that, despite video evidence.

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At an off-the-rails event Tuesday in New York City, notable anti-vaxxer and longshot 2024 Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. parroted what has been characterized as a white supremacist COVID-19 conspiracy theory.

“In fact, COVID-19, there’s an argument that it is ethnically targeted,” Kennedy told a room full of press in a video obtained by the New York Post. “COVID-19 is targeted to attack caucasians and Black people. The people that are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.”

The Anti-Defamation League and other organizations have previously identified those claims as one iteration of a baseless anti-semitic and sinophobic conspiracy theory voiced by white nationalists.

Jewish advocacy groups on both the right and left have torn into the Kennedy family scion for his unhinged remarks. The ADL said in a statement that Kennedy’s claim “feeds into sinophobic and anti-semitic conspiracy theories about COVID-19 that we have seen evolve over the last three years.”

The Post also quoted an infectious disease expert, who said, “I don’t see any evidence that there was any design or bioterrorism that anyone tried to design something to knock off certain groups.”

In a Twitter post on Saturday, RFK Jr. insisted—despite video evidence—that he “never, ever suggested that the COVID-19 virus was targeted to spare Jews.” Rather, he argued that he was simply pointing out that COVID-19 is “least compatible with ethnic Chinese, Finns, and Ashkenazi Jews,” during a conversation about how “the U.S. and other governments are developing ethnically targeted bioweapons.”

“In that sense, it serves as a kind of proof of concept for ethnically targeted bioweapons,” Kennedy wrote. “I do not believe and never implied that the ethnic effect was deliberately engineered.”

Kennedy was also peeved that the Post exposed what he called an off-the-record conversation.

Squeezed between other attendees at a packed dinner table, Kennedy went on to expound on other outlandish theories that have helped form the basis of his conspiracy-fueled bid for the Democratic nomination.

“We do know that the Chinese are spending hundreds of millions of dollars developing ethnic bioweapons and we are developing ethnic bioweapons,” Kennedy said. “They’re collecting Chinese DNA so we can target people by race.”

Just any psychological biases/effects/conditions/disorders/syndromes or other phenomena that you find interesting.

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On the other side of the Capitol, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer introduced a measure that would declassify some records related to unexplained aerial phenomena.

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The House Oversight Committee will soon hold a hearing on UFOs, a Republican member of the panel told NBC News on Friday.

Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee said the GOP-led committee is not ready to publicly announce a hearing date, but added that he expected it to take place “towards the end of the month.”

The lawmaker's comments came hours after Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., introduced an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that would create a review board charged with declassifying UFO-related records.

While UFOs are often synonymous with aliens in popular culture, an initial Pentagon report issued in 2021 found no evidence linking the unidentified objects to extraterrestrial life. The Defense Department has received at least 366 new reports of UFOs since March 2021, and about half of them appear to be balloons or drones, according to a 2022 report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

About half of the new cases could not be explained and “appear to have demonstrated unusual flight characteristics or performance capabilities, and require further analysis,” the initial Pentagon assessment found.

A classified version of the report was submitted to lawmakers, as mandated by a defense spending bill passed by the last Congress.

Debates over potential sightings of unidentified aerial phenomena, often called UAPs or UFOs, have garnered increased attention in recent years, particularly on Capitol Hill.

Burchett said he has spoken with Navy pilots "who have had their careers threatened" after reporting UFO sightings, and said the committee's hearing will aim to create the conditions for transparency.

"I just want transparency. I just want the truth," he said.

A spokesperson for the Pentagon declined to comment.

A NASA panel tasked with studying reports of UFOs said at a hearing in May that the stigma associated with reporting UFO sightings — as well as the harassment of people who work to investigate them — may be hindering efforts to determine their origins.

The panel, which was formed last year, presented preliminary findings in May and is expected to publish a final report this summer. Panel members highlighted the need for more high-quality data to properly investigate unusual sightings.

Daniel Evans, the assistant deputy associate administrator for research in NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said there has been no convincing evidence that reports of UFOs have anything to do with aliens. While extraterrestrial origins are not being ruled out, the independent group was convened to address broader national security concerns, he said in a May news briefing.

“There could potentially be very serious risks to U.S. airspace as a result of us not necessarily knowing what is in our skies at a given time,” Evans said.

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Donald Trump declared to his supporters earlier this year that "I am your retribution" and his base's appetite for that promised vengeance hasn't waned

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Donald Trump has told supporters not to just see him as a candidate but as "your retribution."

In his comeback bid for the White House, the former president -- twice impeached but twice acquitted and now twice indicted -- has vowed that if reelected, he will wield his power to personally remake parts of the federal government to a degree that historian Mark Updegrove said was unprecedented. Trump has promised to hamstring perceived enemies, including in the Department of Justice, which is currently investigating him, and target Republican bogeymen like President Joe Biden.

He swore in June to appoint a special prosecutor to "go after" the Bidens and that he would "totally obliterate the deep state," referring to a conspiratorial view of how the government operates.

"This is the final battle. ... Either they win or we win," he said in March.

Among Trump's policy proposals is reviving an executive order from the final months of his presidency, revoked by Biden, that observers say would let him essentially turn broad swaths of federal workers into at-will employees whom he could fire and replace -- rather than terminating them only for cause, such as bad performance, and after satisfying certain employment protections.

Shortly after being indicted in New York in April on felony charges of falsifying business records, which he denies, related to money paid to an adult film actress during his 2016 campaign, Trump exhorted Congressional Republicans via social media to "DEFUND THE DOJ AND FBI UNTIL THEY COME TO THEIR SENSES."

He's also directed ire at longtime nonpartisan institutions, deriding national security and intelligence workers as "corrupt," and he's crassly attacked both the special counsel who is investigating his alleged mishandling of government secrets -- and the prosecutor's family.

Experts says all of this is stretching -- maybe snapping -- the boundaries of how past presidential candidates have criticized the very government they hope to lead.

"Time and time again, we have seen Donald Trump attempt to remake our government in his image, not based on our country’s ideals and traditions, but based on a personal agenda," said Updegrove, a presidential historian and ABC News contributor.

But conversations with GOP insiders and attendees at recent Trump campaign events confirm the base's appetite hasn't waned for the revenge he promises. According to FiveThirtyEight, early polls show Trump is the clear front-runner for his party's nomination, with his support not stifled by either of his two historic indictments, to which he has pleaded not guilty.

"It makes me more supportive and more prone to help him in any way I can," Larry Miller from Merrimack, New Hampshire, told ABC News earlier this month at an event Trump held in New Hampshire.

Another attendee at that event, Krisia Santiago, said she was a two-time Trump voter who was sticking with him. She spoke bluntly: "They're scared because he can finish this war. … If you believe in him, you're gonna be a supporter no matter what."

Many of Trump's attacks against the FBI and DOJ at best stretch the truth -- with no evidence suggesting wrongdoing by the current president or by special counsel Jack Smith in bringing the recent federal indictment against Trump over his handling of classified information while out of office. Attorney General Merrick Garland and Smith have defended their work.

"This indictment was voted by a grand jury of citizens in the Southern District of Florida, and I invite everyone to read it in full to understand the scope and the gravity of the crimes charged," Smith said last month.

The support from Trump loyalists for a complete overhaul of parts of the government has set off a chicken-or-the-egg debate over whether he has convinced his voters to turn against bodies like the FBI -- or if he's exacerbating a sentiment they already feel, given the myriad legal troubles and investigations Trump has faced.

"He has persuaded people that the FBI and the DOJ are at least enemies of Donald Trump" asserted veteran GOP pollster Whit Ayres.

"He gets the people who care about him to care about people who are standing in his way. And the agencies of law enforcement ... he's declared war on them, and his followers will believe what he says," Ayres continued.

A Fox News poll released last month showed that 40% of registered voters have a lack of confidence in the FBI. And even intraparty critics of the former president concede how much his suspicions of law enforcement and his anti-government messaging have seeped into the broader GOP.

"The deep distrust and dislike that these people have and feel about these institutions just comes through so strong when you talk to these voters. Trump's message is in line with how the voters are thinking about these institutions. They don't trust them at all," said Gunner Ramer, the political director of the Republican Accountability PAC, which conducts focus groups with GOP voters.

"I think that this is very much about what Donald Trump has been able to really activate within the Republican Party base," Ramer said. "When you ask these Republican primary voters, 'How do you feel about Trump's campaign promise of investigating the Bidens?' It's near unanimous support for that."

Trump has so far survived a slew of legal problems since launching his political career, including a probe of his 2016 campaign's alleged links to Russia and two subsequent impeachments while he was in office. (While the Senate acquitted him in both cases, with fewer than two-thirds of the chamber voting against Trump, a bipartisan group of senators did vote to convict in both trials. )

Now, facing the indictments over hush money payments to a porn star and his handling of classified information after leaving office, Trump and his allies have turned their ire toward the president's son Hunter Biden, who recently reached a plea deal on tax and gun charges that will likely see him avoid prison time.

There's no evidence that Hunter Biden received preferential treatment in his deal, and the White House says it is actually proof of accountability -- but Republicans insist otherwise, claiming it as the latest evidence of what New Hampshire Trump voter Larry Miller called a "two-tiered justice system" that treats people differently according to politics.

The Hunter Biden investigation was conducted by U.S. Attorney David Weiss, who was appointed by Trump, remained in his position under President Biden and has said he was never "denied the authority to bring charges in any jurisdiction."

"For many voters, both base Republicans and independents who see very clearly what's going on, this has been something that they've been following for years," claimed one Trump adviser, who like some others in this story asked not to be quoted by name in order to speak candidly.

"Whenever he speaks to himself as a victim, he is providing focus and color to the picture that they already recognize," added a former campaign official who remains in touch with the president's current team.

The ceaseless attacks from Trump have raised speculation over how far he would go if elected to a second term -- including if he would indeed launch investigations into Hunter Biden or others, like Hillary Clinton.

He has backed off of past promises of prison for his rivals, including Clinton. "She went through a lot and suffered greatly in many different ways, and I am not looking to hurt them at all," he told The New York Times in 2016, weeks after beating her in the presidential election, when he often rallied voters with chants of "lock her up!"

"I would not be surprised that if any Republican takes over -- not just Trump, any Republican -- that you would see a further politicization-slash-weaponization of the Justice Department and less of the courtesy that they used to give former elected officials," one former Trump adviser who's still in contact with his campaign said.

"Everything's on the table," this person said, adding, "I think everybody needs to be put on notice ... I don't think that courtesy that Trump gave Hillary would exist the second time around."

A Trump campaign spokesman did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

Marc Lotter, the director of strategic communications on Trump's 2020 bid and now with the America First Policy Institute, said the 2024 strategy builds off of Trump's 2016 pitch, when he channeled voter frustration over trade and Barack Obama's presidency into a surprise win.

"He captured this feeling of people who are tired of being lied to, tired of being lied to by politicians and officeholders of both political parties," Lotter said. "And they were sick and tired of another poll-tested Washington creation politician. ... I think he taps into that, and he has been able to keep that going."

To be sure, Trump vowed broad changes to the government when he first ran in 2016, epitomized by his "drain the swamp" slogan that left critics, even other Republicans like current primary challenger Ron DeSantis, saying he didn't follow through.

Samara Klar, a professor at the University of Arizona who studies political attitudes and behavior, said that she "optimistically" thinks "our institutions will remain strong" in the face of Trump's attacks on the government. However, she conceded her belief is not universally held among her colleagues, some of whom she said think Trump could pose a more existential risk.

Democracy experts have previously spoken to ABC News about how they worried Trump was corroding crucial institutional trust.

"For the election system to work, our entire democracy to work, depends on trust in the election system. That is the reason why there is and has always been a peaceful transition of power after elections in the United States," Wendy Weiser, who directs the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, said last year.

According to the GOP operatives and outside experts who spoke to ABC News for this story, Trump's continued assault on the federal government's legitimacy will likely be a mainstay of his 2024 campaign and return him to comfortable and controversial territory -- urging supporters to embrace him even if it means rejecting everyone else.

"There are very few Americans -- and frankly, probably very few people worldwide at this point -- who don't have a pretty crystallized attitude about Donald Trump. I don't think he can appeal to uncertain voters," Klar said. "At this point, his best strategy is to garner as much enthusiasm among the people that already like him."

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The Department of Education on Friday will forgive the debts of 804,000 people, an effort to fix what it calls "administrative failures" that denied student loan borrowers relief they were eligible for under their repayment plans.

Those 804,000 borrowers are people who have been paying their loans back through income-driven repayment plans, which allow debts to be forgiven once they've been paid for 20 or 25 years, depending on the plan.

But because of errors in tracking payments, officials said, many borrowers have been left paying well beyond their payment end-dates.

"For far too long, borrowers fell through the cracks of a broken system that failed to keep accurate track of their progress towards forgiveness," Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said in a statement Friday.

"By fixing past administrative failures, we are ensuring everyone gets the forgiveness they deserve, just as we have done for public servants, students who were cheated by their colleges, and borrowers with permanent disabilities, including veterans," Cardona said.

Though there are multiple types of income-driven repayment plans offered by the Department of Education, they all have the same goal: set a borrower's monthly payment based on their income and cancel any remaining loans after 20 to 25 years of payments.

Friday's debt relief for over 800,000 people acknowledges that the second part of the plan -- cancellation -- often isn't happening, an issue that has also been well-documented by government watchdogs.

In 2022, the Government Accountability Office wrote that "the Department of Education has had trouble tracking borrowers' payments and hasn't done enough to ensure that all eligible borrowers receive the forgiveness to which they are entitled."

"We found thousands of borrowers still in repayment who could be eligible for forgiveness now," the GAO, a nonpartisan watchdog, wrote in its report.

In total, the fixes to the income-driven repayment plans being made by the Department of Education on Friday will result in $39 billion of automatic debt relief.

Borrowers will be notified on Friday by the Department of Education and relief will begin 30 days later, the department said.

If borrowers don't want their debts discharged, they can contact their loan servicers, the department advised. Servicers will be in charge of notifying borrowers once their debt is relieved.

"At the start of this Administration, millions of borrowers had earned loan forgiveness but never received it. That's unacceptable," Department of Education Under Secretary James Kvaal said in a statement on Friday.

"Today we are holding up the bargain we offered borrowers who have completed decades of repayment."

The debt relief announced Friday is part of a wave of fixes to programs that weren't holding up their end of the deal. That includes $45 billion to people enrolled in Public Service Loan Forgiveness who weren't getting the debt relief they were promised, and $22 billion to borrowers who were defrauded by for-profit colleges.

The fixes addressed Friday for people in income-driven repayment plans bring the total debt relief to $116.6 billion, the department said. The relief has reached more than 3.4 million borrowers.

The efforts to fix errors in the Department of Education's loan system come as President Joe Biden's program to cancel debt relief on a massive scale was rejected by the Supreme Court in June.

That program, a Biden campaign promise, would have canceled between $10,00 and $20,000 in loans for people making below a certain income, but it was ruled as beyond the scope of the president's power.

Since then, the White House has announced a new income-driven repayment plan that will lower monthly payments to 5% of a person's discretionary income, down from 10%, and decrease the timeline for forgiveness down to 10 years of payments, from 20 or 25, if the initial loan was less than $12,000.

The Department of Education is also in the rulemaking process to attempt debt forgiveness again through a different law, the Higher Education Act, though it's likely to face legal challenges.

Eighteen months after Facebook banned communities and users connected with the “Boogaloo” anti-government movement, the group’s extremist ideas were back and flourishing on the social media platform, new research found.

The paper, from George Washington University and Jigsaw, a unit inside Google that explores threats to open societies — including hate and toxicity, violent extremism and censorship — found that after Facebook’s June 2020 ban of the Boogaloo militia movement, the content “boomeranged,” first declining and then bouncing back to nearly its original volume.

“What this study says is, you can’t play whack-a-mole once and walk away,” said Beth Goldberg, Jigsaw’s head of research and development. “You need sustained content moderation — adaptive, sophisticated, content moderation, because these groups are adaptive and sophisticated.”