Some key DOGE figures have left government entirely, while others have relocated to other executive departments.

This has led many to declare this the death of DOGE and label the project an abject failure. Some proponents have pushed back against this characterization, arguing that the work of DOGE is continuing and that a transition from a temporary centralized federal entity to a series of independent internal teams within various federal agencies was always the intended end-state for Musk's project.

But even if that's true, it's hard to define where the effort to cut the federal bureaucracy stands today as anything other than a disappointment. And the blame for that rests squarely on the shoulders of Republican politicians.

Republicans abandoning campaign promises to cut spending is nothing new. Virtually every single Republican who has run for any federal office in the last fifty or so years is guilty of this. But the beginning of Trump's second term did feel different. Because there was genuine, palpable, bottom-up excitement for spending cuts.