Donald Trump promised Americans a “Golden Age” when he returned to the White House in January 2025. Since then, his administration has slashed government spending through DOGE, ramped up mass deportations, expanded ICE operations and pursued an aggressive crackdown on DEI programmes and transgender rights. But how much has he actually achieved, and at what cost?
Vedika Bahl examines Trump's domestic agenda since returning to office. When Donald Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, he promised Americans a “Golden Age”, pledging to restore safety, sovereignty and law and order. Since then, his administration has pursued a sweeping domestic agenda, targeting government spending, immigration, diversity programmes and transgender rights.
On his first day back in office, Trump signed a series of executive orders, including withdrawing the United States from the Paris climate agreement and reversing nearly 80 Biden-era policies. One of his biggest promises was to slash government spending. To lead the effort, he appointed billionaire Elon Musk to head the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which initially set an ambitious target of saving $2 trillion in federal spending.
DOGE went on to oversee widespread cuts across federal agencies, including the closure of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and thousands of job losses. But Musk stepped away in May 2025, after around four months, and the initiative subsequently lost momentum. By November, a senior government official told that DOGE "no longer existed as a centralised entity".
The department claimed to have saved $215 billion, but those figures have been challenged. In August, the US Government Accountability Office found that some entries on DOGE's publicly available “Wall of Receipts” were incorrect or lacked supporting evidence.The watchdog also criticised the lack of transparency surrounding DOGE's methodology, finding that the department had taken credit for some savings involving leases that were already being phased out before its creation. As a result, there is no reliable, independently verified total of how much DOGE actually saved.
DOGE formally ended on July 4, 2026, with Trump hailing its goal of creating a smaller, more efficient government. Trump described the creation of a smaller, more efficient government as the perfect gift for America's 250th birthday. Whether DOGE delivered on its ambitious promises, however, remains a matter of debate.
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