If the leader of a government issues an order that men and women below him cannot, in good conscience, enact, what are they to do?

In July, 2008, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, of California, who had stunned the political establishment by leveraging his celebrity and outsider status to reach disaffected voters, was in an embarrassing political predicament. The Governor had brandished a broom at rallies, promising to “sweep out the bureaucracy” and defeat “girlie men” lawmakers who stood in his way. Now the Democratic-led legislature was unable to agree on a budget. So Schwarzenegger adopted a radical tactic: he ordered the state to reduce the pay of nearly two hundred thousand state employees to the federal minimum wage, of $6.55 an hour, until the legislature met his demands.

The order reached the desk of a bureaucrat named John Chiang, a former tax-law specialist who was the state controller. In that job, Chiang, a forty-six-year-old Democrat, was responsible for issuing paychecks and monitoring cash flow. Born in New York, to immigrants from Taiwan, he had grown up in the Chicago suburbs, in one of the first Asian families in the neighborhood. It was an uneasy mix. On the Chiangs’ garage, people spray-painted “Go home, gook,” “Go home, Jap,”and “Go home, Chink.”

After studying finance, and earning a law degree from Georgetown, Chiang started his career at the Internal Revenue Service in Los Angeles. In 1999, his younger sister, Joyce, a lawyer for the Immigration and Naturalization Service in Washington, went missing. Three months later, her remains were found on the banks of the Potomac. The death was ruled a homicide, but no one was charged. It altered her brother’s life. “I will return to dust,” he said later. “You just want to use this life to do some good.” In 2006, Chiang ran for controller, upset a Democratic favorite in the primary, and won.

When he received Schwarzenegger’s order to reduce the pay of state workers, Chiang was surprised. Under Schwarzenegger’s plan, the workers would receive their full salaries once a budget was approved. But California had enough cash in its accounts, and, in Chiang’s view, the Governor’s move could violate the Fair Labor Standards Act. Moreover, he thought, it was cruel. It was the height of the financial crisis, and mortgage defaults were up more than a hundred per cent over the previous year.

“I wanted Governor Schwarzenegger to help lead California through this fiscal crisis,” Chiang told me last week. “Here’s a man who worked hard, he’s been blessed, but, more important, he’s been entrusted by the voters of California to lead in good and bad times. And to think that you take action that would endanger thousands of public servants just struck me as beyond the pale.”

Chiang refused to implement the Governor’s executive order. In a statement at the time, he said that the order was “nothing more than a poorly devised strategy to put pressure on the Legislature.” At a rally of state workers, Chiang called them “innocent victims of a political struggle.”

Schwarzenegger sued Chiang’s office. In court papers, Chiang replied that, even if he wanted to comply, he would need ten months to reconfigure the state’s computer system. As the case wound through the judicial system, Chiang became, to some, an unlikely hero. The Sacramento Bee, adapting the iconic image of a protester at Tiananmen Square, published a cartoon that depicted Chiang as a lone resister before a line of Hummers, with “Arnold” stencilled on the bumper of the lead vehicle. The Liberal O.C., a progressive blog, nicknamed him “the Controllernator.” Chiang’s resistance became a case study in how a bureaucracy stymies the requests of an executive who offends its professionalism and sense of mission. When General Dwight D. Eisenhower was preparing to take office, Harry Truman predicted, “Poor Ike—it won’t be a bit like the Army. He’ll find it very frustrating.”

Professor Eric Posner, of the University of Chicago Law School, is the co-author of “The Executive Unbound,” a chronicle of the expanding power of the U.S. Presidency. Last week, after Donald Trump won the election, Posner told me that, with both houses of Congress in Republican control, the greatest obstacle to the President’s use of power would be not the separation of powers but, more likely, the isolated actions of individuals in government. “Sometimes they won’t actually do what the President tells them to do, or they drag their feet, or they’ll leak to the press to try to embarrass him,” Posner told me. “That’s pretty unusual, because when that happens the employees risk losing their job, or even going to jail if they leak confidential information.”

Because Chiang held an independently elected office, his latitude to resist was far greater than it is for most government employees. The consequences of resistance can be dire. In 1981, nearly thirteen thousand air-traffic controllers challenged the new President, Ronald Reagan, by staging an illegal strike. Reagan fired them and broke their union.

Schwarzenegger’s attempts to impose his will eventually foundered. As a candidate, he reached beyond usual Republicans by vowing to create “fantastic” jobs and by thrilling audiences, at his rallies, with a soundtrack that featured Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It” (a song that Trump used at his rallies). But Schwarzenegger, who had never held public office, proved incapable of reorganizing government, defeating labor unions, capping state spending, or weakening teacher tenure. His relationship with the G.O.P. soured. In 2011, he left office with his public approval rating at near-historic lows. The lawsuit against Chiang remained officially unresolved until Schwarzenegger’s successor, Jerry Brown, dropped the suit. (Chiang permitted himself a modest celebration: “I am pleased and thankful that Governor Brown saw this litigation as a frivolous waste of hard-earned tax dollars.”)

In 2015, Chiang became California’s Treasurer, and he will be a candidate for governor in 2018. When I asked him what lesson he takes from his refusal to obey the orders of the executive, he said, “I think, always, you look deep into your conscience and then you move from there. People have a sense of why they serve.” He added, “At times, we will prevail; at times, we will fail. But to stand and watch idly and do nothing—I think people will regret if things go along and they didn’t offer up their very best.” ♦

This article appears as part of a larger feature, “Aftermath: Sixteen Writers on Trump’s America,” in the November 21, 2016, issue.