WASHINGTON — Although some parts of President Donald Trump ‘s agenda are getting bogged down by litigation, Elon Musk ‘s Department of Government Efficiency is having better luck in the courtroom.

Labor unions, Democrats and federal employees have filed several lawsuits arguing that DOGE is running roughshod over privacy protections or usurping power from other branches of government.

But judges appointed by Democratic and Republican presidents haven’t always gone along with those arguments, at least so far. Most notably, DOGE critics are failing to obtain temporary restraining orders that would prevent Musk’s team from accessing sensitive government databases.

“It is not the job of the federal courts to police the security of the information systems in the executive branch,” wrote U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss in a case involving the Office of Personnel Management. Moss was appointed by President Barack Obama.

The success is striking given the other challenges that Trump has faced in the judicial system, which has blocked — at least temporarily — his efforts to limit birthright citizenship, freeze congressionally authorized foreign aid and stop some healthcare services for transgender youth.

If Musk’s opponents continue struggling to gain traction with lawsuits, he could be largely unencumbered in his crusade to downsize the federal government and workforce.

“The continued successes in the courts in favor of the Trump administration shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who has ever read our great Constitution, which clearly lays out the role of the Executive Branch, and which President Trump and his entire administration are following to a T,” Harrison Fields, the White House deputy press secretary, said in a statement. “The resistance campaign can try, but they will continue to fail in their pursuit to rewrite the Constitution and deny the people the legal authority of the President to run the Executive Branch.”

Cary Coglianese, an expert on administrative law and regulatory processes at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, said plaintiffs haven’t been successful at demonstrating there would be irreparable harm if DOGE’s plans move forward.

“This is a very fast moving train and they’re well ahead of where the judiciary is,” he said.

Skye Perryman, the leader of Democracy Forward, an advocacy group organizing lawsuits against the Trump administration, said they would continue to put legal pressure on the White House.

“We have seen no federal judge consider DOGE’s actions and endorse them,” she said.

An exception to DOGE’s legal victories has been two lawsuits regarding Treasury Department systems, which are used to distribute trillions of dollars in federal money. The databases can include sensitive information like bank accounts and Social Security numbers, and they’re traditionally maintained only by nonpartisan career officials.

A judge in Washington restricted DOGE’s access to two staff members, while another judge in New York has temporarily blocked DOGE altogether.

Norm Eisen, a lawyer who worked for House Democrats during their first impeachment of Trump, said it was too early to say that the legal efforts wouldn’t work. He noted that U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, also appointed by Obama, expressed concern about Musk’s apparent “unchecked authority” in a case involving federal data and worker layoffs.