President Trump emerged victorious in a D.C. courtroom when a judge shot down an attempt by the ACLU to restart a Biden-era “parole” program for unauthorized migrants.

But that was a lonely win in what has otherwise been a total legal wipeout for Mr. Trump, who has seen federal judges leap to block his aggressive agenda.

“Trump hasn’t won in court even once since taking office,” said Democracy Docket, a left-leaning legal tip sheet that cheered the president’s shortfalls.

The losses include a preliminary injunction halting his attempt to limit birthright citizenship, several restraining orders preventing him from pausing government assistance grants and contracts, a block on releasing names of FBI agents involved in pursuing cases against the Jan. 6 rioters, a freeze on plans to put on leave the entire workforce at the U.S. Agency for International development, and a stay blocking Mr. Trump from finalizing his mass-buyout plan for the federal workforce.

Mr. Trump has set the most aggressive pace of any new president, signing dozens of executive orders and directing decisions aimed at rewriting the structure and activities of government.

And it has predictably spawned massive resistance from his opponents, including Democratic officials, labor unions and people who stand to lose out on taxpayer money.

All of the cases are still in their infancy, though some have already sped to initial rulings.

And federal judges have not been kind in their assessments of the president’s actions. One said he was trying to “run roughshod” over Congress, while another said his actions were “blatantly unconstitutional.”

“It has become ever more apparent that to our president the rule of law is but an impediment to his policy goals,” said U.S. District Judge John C. Coughenour. “The rule of law is, according to him, something to navigate around or simply ignore, whether that be for political or personal gain.”

Other judges were less scolding in their rulings, characterizing them as short-term pauses to give the legal cases a chance to develop without unleashing any genies that would be tough to put back in bottles.

Experts said it is too soon to draw big conclusions about the legality of Mr. Trump’s agenda, particularly since the cases that have seen early rulings were filed in courts known for leaning leftward and were mostly heard by Democratic appointees more likely to be skeptical of Mr. Trump.

The Washington Times has sought comment from the White House for this report.

Judge Coughenour is a Reagan appointee to the bench in Washington state, and a Biden appointee in Maryland has also ruled against Mr. Trump’s birthright citizenship action.

In the Trump spending pause cases, judges picked by Presidents Barack Obama and Joseph R. Biden ruled against Mr. Trump. And a Clinton appointee was the one who iced the federal worker buyout.

The FBI names were paused by a Biden appointee, and the USAID action is being handled by a judge Mr. Trump appointed in his first term.

“It’s still early days and the challengers are selecting friendly jurisdictions in which to file their suits,” said Ilya Shapiro, director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute.

He said the birthright citizenship case, for example, is “destined for the Supreme Court.” He figured other cases will come more sharply into focus as Mr. Trump hones in on what he’s trying to accomplish, such as with his spending pause.

“But in any event, these executive actions are much better lawyered than the flying-by-the-seat-of-the-pants moves eight years ago,” Mr. Shapiro said.

Underpinning Mr. Trump’s early moves is a sense of expansive executive powers.

Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at Georgetown University, wrote in an opinion piece that Mr. Trump is following through on what’s become known as the unitary executive theory of the presidency. That view, espoused by conservatives in particular, holds that since the president is elected by voters, he has full personal authority over the operations of the executive branch.

But Mr. Vladeck said Mr. Trump has exceeded even the most far-reaching bounds of that theory, and he expects Mr. Trump’s legal losing streak to continue.

“These assertions are already faring poorly in the courts, and I suspect the Supreme Court, or at least a majority thereof, will be as skeptical as lower courts have been,” he wrote.

The one case in which Mr. Trump has prevailed involved a request by immigrant rights groups, on behalf of migrants, to restart the CBP One app. That is a Biden administration program that allowed unauthorized migrants to be “paroled” into U.S. despite lacking a legal visa, as long as they prescheduled their arrivals at the border.

Mr. Trump nixed the program and canceled all pending appointments when he took office.

Led by the American Civil Liberties Union, the immigration groups argued the cancelations left migrants stranded in Mexico, where they faced violence and potential persecution.

But Judge Rudolph Contreras, an Obama appointee to the federal district court in the District of Columbia, said courts have no power to order the government to grant parole in specific cases.

The ACLU didn’t respond to a request for comment for this report.

The ACLU had filed the parole request as part of a case it had previously brought against the Biden administration’s asylum changes.

Most of the challenges to Mr. Trump’s actions have come in new cases.

Two cases had been filed within a minute of Mr. Trump taking office, both challenging the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency.

Other cases filed so far include challenges to Trump firings, expanded deportation authority, limits on federal funding for puberty blockers and other treatments for transgender individuals, requiring passports to reflect an applicant’s gender at birth and attempts to limit civil service protections for some bureaucrats.

• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.