Across 2025, the balance of power in U.S. Republican and executive‑branch foreign policy clearly shifted toward the JD Vance / “America First” restraint camp and away from the traditional pro‑Ukraine, pro‑intervention neoconservatives, with multiple concrete setbacks for the neocon position.

Concrete policy/legislative setbacks for the neocon line

• JD Vance became vice president and a central architect of foreign policy, explicitly skeptical of continued Ukraine aid and favoring economic deals over long‑term security guarantees, which is at odds with neocon priorities of robust, alliance‑based military support. (reuters.com)
• The Trump–Vance administration first paused and then effectively ended U.S. funding for Ukraine’s war effort, pressuring Kyiv toward a negotiated settlement; this is a direct defeat for the neocon goal of sustained, large‑scale U.S. military assistance to Ukraine. (cnbc.com)
• Trump’s Executive Order 14169 imposed a sweeping 90‑day pause on most foreign development aid, and the Rescissions Act of 2025 cut nearly $8 billion from international assistance programs. Traditional neoconservatives have generally supported foreign aid as a tool of American influence, so these moves represent material reversals of that agenda. (en.wikipedia.org)
• On Ukraine diplomacy, an Army secretary seen as a proxy for JD Vance has led a controversial peace initiative closely aligned with Vance’s more accommodationist vision, sidelining more hawkish voices; reporting emphasizes this as evidence of Vance’s “significant influence” over policy. (theguardian.com)
• Prominent neocon figures like Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol publicly describe themselves as out of power and explicitly frame JD Vance’s rise as a repudiation of their interventionist approach inside the GOP, underscoring their loss of intra‑party influence. (breitbart.com)

Countervailing evidence and why the prediction still holds The Trump–Vance administration has pursued very hawkish actions in some theaters—major arms sales and maximalist proposals on Gaza, airstrikes in Yemen, and expanded strikes against alleged traffickers around Venezuela—showing that “America First” is not pure pacifism. (en.wikipedia.org) But these operations are framed in transactional or narrowly defined security terms, not in the neocon vocabulary of democracy promotion and open‑ended commitments, and they coexist with a decisive rollback of the flagship neocon project of this era: arming and financing Ukraine at scale.

Given (1) the elevation and clear policy impact of JD Vance and like‑minded figures, (2) the termination of Ukraine war funding and cuts/pauses to foreign aid, and (3) the explicit marginalization acknowledged by leading neocon voices, the specific prediction—that the pro‑war neocon faction would lose influence relative to a Vance‑aligned restraint camp, with concrete setbacks for their agenda in 2025—has been borne out.