President Donald Trump has elevated DOGE to the center of his domestic agenda, channeling significant political capital into defending it, and its architect Elon Musk, from critics in Congress — and his own Cabinet.

But ahead of his joint address to Congress on Tuesday, a dozen of the president’s allies, Trump-aligned GOP strategists and former administration officials are warning that Trump going all-in on the Muskian effort is a risky gamble that threatens to overshadow his more popular, and politically crucial, economic and legislative priorities.

While polling shows bipartisan support for cutting federal spending, some Trump allies are quietly skeptical about whether the Department of Government Efficiency will succeed, and are privately wincing at what they view as a callous and inhumane approach that Musk is taking to slashing government workers’ jobs. They also fear that too much emphasis on DOGE and not enough on the economy, or even immigration, stands to reenergize Democrats ahead of the midterms and sideline more moderate Trump voters. And they worry it is distracting from the president’s plan to pass a tax and immigration bill using Congress’ budget reconciliation process, which they see as a political make-or-break moment and key to Trump’s legacy.

“If you’re Trump, one of the strategic questions is: ‘DOGE is getting all the attention. I’m doing all this important work on other issues, is that OK?’ Or do you want to see the other issues get more attention?” said Scott Jennings, a GOP strategist who has been a vocal Trump defender on CNN and who was at one point considered for Trump’s press secretary post.

In public, Trump has spent far more time defending DOGE — a concept that didn’t even exist until mid-November — than he has weighing in on reconciliation, which he has largely left to Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune. During his first Cabinet meeting last week, which was televised, Trump cajoled his secretaries into giving Musk a round of applause. It was a far more public, and proactive gesture to ensure his top lieutenants are on Team DOGE than his last-minute, behind-the-scenes efforts to bring several Republican holdouts on Team Big Beautiful Bill, the strategy the House is using to try to pass the president’s legislative agenda.