With the Democratic Party protesting the crimes of the Elon Musk–Donald Trump administration with the skill and preparedness of a high school chess club that’s suddenly been told they’re starting the big football game, most liberals have pinned their hopes for real opposition on the courts. Lawsuits have been pouring down on the Trump administration like rain. To keep up, I check the helpful litigation tracker published and updated by Just Security. As of this writing, the website is following 35 separate lawsuits filed against Trump’s executive orders.

Many of Trump’s orders are illegal, and unconstitutional, and brazenly so. Most good-faith lawyers can see that, but “good faith” does not describe the current state of the federal judiciary. Trump and MAGA have captured and corrupted the courts: They have seeded the lower courts with federal judges more loyal to Trump and his white-supremacist movement than they are to the law. They have stacked the Supreme Court with justices hostile to civil rights and equality. This doesn’t mean that cases brought by the ACLU, AFL-CIO, or Democratic state attorneys general are destined to fail. Their cases are righteous (and, legally speaking, right) and must be brought. Some might even succeed.

But the courts will not “save” us. They will not be the backstop protecting us from the Trump-Musk takeover, and any person who tells you otherwise, especially if that person is an elected Democrat in Congress, is selling you an excuse for inaction and complacency. Trump and Musk are barbarians at the gate; calling in the lawyers to tell them they’re trespassing isn’t going to halt their advance. Courts are not known for their harm prevention—they’re best used when trying to hold someone accountable for the harm they already caused.

The most obvious reason for this is that the courts move slowly. They are designed to move slowly. A court has to wait for a bad thing to happen (a “case or controversy”), then gather evidence on the bad thing that happened (a “trial”), then listen to one side argue that the bad thing wasn’t actually that bad (the “adversarial system”), then enter a judgement that can be appealed, and appealed again (to the Circuit Court and the Supreme Court, respectively). If we’re very lucky, in a year or two we’ll get final rulings on whether Trump is allowed to do the bad things he started doing two weeks ago.

The quickest tools the courts have at their disposal is the “temporary restraining order” (aka “TRO”) and the “nationwide injunction.” You’ve likely heard these terms before. These are temporary orders issued by a court that purportedly prevent the implementation of new laws or policies pending a full trial (or hearing) and ruling on the “merits” of a legal challenge. Often, these temporary orders themselves are appealed all the way to the Supreme Court (which potentially delays the timeliness of these emergency actions), with the administration trying to lift the temporary stops so it can implement its policies while the courts sort out whether the policy is legal.

The Trump administration has already been hit with TROs over a number of its illegal and insane executive orders —including its unconstitutional revision of the 14th Amendment to end birthright citizenship, its illegal funding freeze on money already appropriated by Congress, and its immoral and dangerous prisoner transfer of trans-women to male prisons.

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In theory, these orders should be effective stopgaps. The problem is that the court has no enforcement mechanism. It has no army, no police force, no power to impose its will. Instead, the executive—in this case the president—is supposed to enforce the court’s orders. But what if Trump doesn’t? There is little reason to believe that Trump will enforce an adverse court ruling against himself. There is no reason to believe he’ll enforce one against Musk. He’s clearly not interested in enforcing the court order (and, you know, the entire piece of legislation passed by Congress and signed by his predecessor) against TikTok.

Consider the constitutional crisis unfolding right now. Musk has reportedly seized access to the private information of every US taxpayer, and the payroll information of every government employee. He has no right to this information but… he has it. Who’s going to undo that damage? A court order released Thursday afternoon purportedly limited Musk’s access to Treasury files to two “special employees” with “read-only” access to the data. Musk has reportedly agreed to follow those rules. Who is going to make sure he does? Who is going to lead the crack team of forensic digital investigators to make sure that Musk is in compliance with this or any future court order? My guess is “no one.” Musk currently has a stranglehold on the government, and enforcement of his limitations is going to run on the “trust me, bro” system.

Or take the funding freeze. As of right now, according to the courts, Trump is not allowed to withhold funding to any organization or institution that receives federal money appropriated by Congress. But it’s not at all clear that Trump has turned the money back on. Trump is likely in violation of the TROs suspending his funding freeze as we speak, but the Trump-aligned media refuses to talk about it that way.

TROs and nationwide injunctions worked in the past only because other presidents agreed to be restrained by them. If courts tell Trump not to do something, he’ll pretend his cell phone dropped the call and keep right on doing it.

In response to this full blown crisis, rule-of-law aficionados, feckless institutionalists, and Democratic Party leaders will counter with something like “but the courts are all we have.” They’ll wave court orders around like they’ve won the day. Meanwhile, Trump and Musk will just laugh while their sycophants will crow about how their daddies “defy Washington elites” even when that “defiance” amounts to common thievery.

I’m not even sure the people who think the courts will save us have fully considered what “saving” will look like should it come from the Republican-controlled Supreme Court. It’ll be like being dragged out of a fire by a very hungry wolf. As a person who has read these people all of my adult life, please believe me when I tell you that, if the Federalist Society judges strike down some of these Trump executive orders, you’re not going to like how they do it.

Chief Justice John Roberts and his crew of legal arsonists will be thinking of a world post-Trump. Even in ruling against him, they can ensconce principles that will make it very hard for future generations of liberal lawmakers to undo much of what MAGA and the FedSoc are putting in place now. I predict rulings from this Supreme Court that narrowly limit what Trump can do while simultaneously expanding what unelected courts can do, specifically Republican courts, to frustrate a number of democratically passed laws in the future.

Take birthright citizenship. I could be naïve, but I do not expect the Supreme Court to support Trump’s attempt to revise an entire constitutional amendment through executive order, at least not in the broad way Trump is trying to do it. But watch for the court to give credence to the so-called “invasion” argument, which holds that the children of the military forces of an invading army do not get birthright citizenship if their enemy-combatant parents happen to give birth on occupied soil. This Supreme Court could tell Trump exactly which hoops to jump through in order to classify immigrants as “invading combatants,” and if Trump doesn’t care enough to jump through those hoops, his successors might.

Or, again, look at the funding freeze. Here as well, I do not really expect the court to allow Trump to violate the separation of powers and usurp the appropriations power constitutionally granted to Congress. But in ruling that he can’t, the conservatives—in an opinion written by Neil Gorsuch, I expect—are likely to tell us a lot about “nondelegation doctrine,” which basically means that Congress cannot place any of its authority with executive agencies, and, of course, only the courts can truly know how Congress meant to use its power.

And this could be how some of the rulings come down when we “win.” There are any number of Trump orders that this Supreme Court is going to rubber-stamp, all while promoting the conservatives’ “unitary executive theory” that grants the president powers more commonly associated with those of a king. As we’ve already seen with the court’s decision to grant Trump immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts, Roberts and his co-conspirators have pre-decided that the best way to handle Trump is to ride it out, generally give him what he wants, and accrue as much power for themselves as possible. Power that they’ll be happy to redeploy once he’s gone and they are again dealing with an executive who will faithfully enforce their orders, like literally any sad-sack Democrat who ever manages to win election again.

I’m not saying that the courts do not matter. As I said, some good decisions will squeak through. Some lives might be spared. I also cover the courts, and I have to believe that such coverage still serves some purposes in our rapidly declining civilization. A ruling against Trump could help to spur public opinion against his actions. A ruling against Trump that Trump ignores could help to break the media out of its Trump-induced stupor. The lawsuits are necessary; the TROs are necessary—literally any shred of resistance against anything Trump is doing is necessary.

But the courts will not save us. Even a friendly court is not designed to save democracy from a democratically elected president, and most courts are not our friends to begin with. The American people gave Trump and Musk the power they now lord over us. (Even though I’m aware that nobody voted for Musk, everybody who voted for Trump knew or should have known that they were handing the keys to all of our data to a billionaire white South African with an apartheid complex). Only the American people can take that power away.

Trump’s approval rating is as high as it’s ever been. Musk’s is worse, but his allowing Musk to run roughshod over the very concept of government does not appear to be negatively affecting the public perception of Trump. As long as this remains the case, Trump’s Republicans will continue to lick his boots. Democrats will continue to react with timidity and fear instead of resolve and determination. As long as the public approves of what Trump is doing, he will keep doing it. He will most likely keep doing it even should the public disapprove, but that will be a different problem.

A court order cannot enforce itself. It cannot change a mind. It cannot make white folks less racist. It cannot recapture things that have been lost, or stolen. The only thing that can save us is us.