As President Donald Trump makes good on his campaign promise to use the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to cut wasteful federal government spending, Democrats are claiming it’s antithetical to democracy and pushing back in the courts.

DOGE released its first savings report on Tuesday, highlighting an estimate of $55 billion in savings due to its efforts on reducing federal government spending.

Trump has campaigned since 2015 on “draining the swamp,” and is working towards making good on that promise by cutting back on the size of the federal government and its spending habits. However, despite being elected on that premise, obstructionist Democrats have claimed that his efforts to downsize the government are anti-democratic, resulting in their use of politically-appointed federal judges to block the president’s executive actions.

Some of DOGE’s savings may be returned to taxpayers

The department, led by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, has in recent weeks torn through the records of federal agencies to identify waste, fraud, error, and redundancies to save money. The tally also includes "fraud detection/deletion, contract/lease cancellations, contract/lease renegotiations, asset sales, grant cancellations, workforce reductions, programmatic changes, and regulatory savings."

DOGE’s cutting back on government spending has included cutting contracts, subscriptions, and leases. Trump told the FII PRIORITY Summit in Miami on Wednesday that some of DOGE’s savings may be returned to U.S. citizens.

"There is even under consideration a new concept where we give 20% of the DOGE savings to American citizens, and 20% goes to paying down debt," Trump said.

However, congressional Democrats have decried DOGE’s cuts on wasteful spending. During a protest at the Treasury Department on Feb. 3, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said, "Whatever DOGE is doing is not democracy."

Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, said at the same rally, "We are not going to sit around while you go and desecrate our constitution. We are gonna be in your face, we are gonna be on your asses, and we are going to make sure you understand what democracy looks like, and this ain’t it."

Americans in favor of DOGE by 70%

While Democrats protest, the majority of Americans are in favor of Trump’s actions since retaking the White House.

In a CBS News/YouGov survey conducted between Feb. 5-7, a total of 70% of U.S. adults said that Trump is doing what he promised during his campaign, and he received a 53% job approval rating. The poll was of 2,175 U.S. adults and has a margin of error of ±2.5 points.

DOGE has worked through multiple federal agencies, but several Democratic state attorneys general have attempted to block DOGE's access to some of the other departments by filing lawsuits in federal courts.

The Colorado attorney general was joined earlier this month by the attorneys general of Arizona, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Nevada, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont in a lawsuit against DOGE to prevent access to the Treasury Department’s federal payment systems that include private personal information.

“This level of access for unauthorized individuals is unlawful, unprecedented and unacceptable,” the attorneys general said in a statement. “DOGE has no authority to access this information, which they explicitly sought in order to block critical payments that millions of Americans rely on – payments that support health care, childcare and other essential programs. In defense of our Constitution, our right to privacy, and the essential funding that individuals and communities nationwide are counting on, we will be filing a lawsuit to stop this injustice.”

Lawfare: the last line of defense

On Feb. 8th, Manhattan-based U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer blocked DOGE from accessing Treasury Department payment records for at least one week. U.S. District Judge Jeannette Vargas on Friday extended the temporary restraining order until she rules on the preliminary injunction.

On Feb. 11th, Trump posted on Truth Social regarding judges blocking his executive actions. "Billions of Dollars of FRAUD, WASTE, AND ABUSE, has already been found in the investigation of our incompetently run Government," Trump wrote. "Now certain activists and highly political judges want us to slow down, or stop. Losing this momentum will be very detrimental to finding the TRUTH, which is turning out to be a disaster for those involved in running our Government. Much left to find. No Excuses!!!"

Following Engelmayer’s order, Rep. Eli Crane, R-Ariz., drafted impeachment articles for the judge. “Partisan judges abusing their positions is a threat to democracy,” Crane posted on X on Feb. 11th. “The left has done ‘irreparable harm’ to this country. President Trump and his team at [DOGE] are trying to fix it.”

“This is obviously judicial overreach,” Crane wrote in a reply post regarding Engelmayer’s order. “Judge Engelmayer is attempting to stop White House employees from accessing the very systems they oversee. Where in the constitution does it say a President and his team cannot root out obvious waste, fraud and abuse?”

Crane told the “Just the News, No Noise” TV show on Monday, “The American people understood that Elon Musk was running with President Trump, and one of the big through lines of President Trump's two terms now, has been to rid the swamp – drain the swamp – and that is exactly what they're doing. They're well within their constitutional authorities to do it.”

Rep. Derrick Van Orden, R-Wis., on Tuesday filed articles of impeachment against Engelmayer.

Trump doing what he told American voters he's going to do

Mike Davis, Article III Project founder, said on the same episode of “Just the News, No Noise” that Trump was elected to fulfill the promises he made on the campaign trail.

“President Trump campaigned on the fact that he's going to bring bold reforms to the executive branch. He's going to hire Elon Musk and set up DOGE and go after waste, fraud and abuse. And the American people like what they heard from President Trump, and they gave him a broad electoral mandate on November 5th: 312 electoral votes, all seven swing states, and President Trump is doing exactly what he told American voters he's going to do,” Davis said.

“And you have these activist judges, because Democrats didn't win the House, they didn't win the Senate, they didn't win the White House, so their last line of defense are these activist judges who think they are going to sabotage the President's Article II executive power under the Constitution,” he continued.

Davis also claimed that Engelmayer is overreaching with his judicial power while Trump is correctly exercising his executive power. “The president is not stealing legislative power from Congress, he's not stealing judicial power from the courts, he is exercising core executive branch power to look at, for example, Treasury payments to make sure that there's not waste, fraud and abuse. An activist judge told him he couldn't do that,” Davis said.

“He is using his core executive power to bring home USAID Foreign Service officers serving overseas. You had an activist judge tell him he cannot do this. This is a radical assault by these activist judges. This is sabotage on the presidency, and the Supreme Court of the United States needs to step up on the emergency docket and end this immediately. Because if these courts lose their legitimacy, they're going to lose their jurisdiction, and they're going to lose their funding,” he added.