There is also excessive praise for Gov UK design system that takes up half of the vertical space with cookie banner, flash messages, and navigation bar. It has so much useless negative space.
I would give it 5 marks out of 10. It’s decent but not a bastion of good design.
While I haven't experienced USWDS deeply, that's kind of a problem in itself. A good design that doesn't get deployed is just that - a design. Gov.UK might not be pretty but it's consistent across different ministries, departments and instrumentalities which helps tremendously, but US government websites, even if restricted to the federal level, is a mess that I would prefer to hold my tongue at the inconsistency. What is GAO's plans to deploy them at least at a federal level? Is there even a plan? By the way, it's not solely Gov.UK which has this level of consistency (Singapore comes to my mind) so it's not a unique property.
jQuery isn't a framework though (that's half of why I like(d) it). Or are you talking about the number of lunatics on both sides of the argument crowding out everybody else?