During his first term in office, Donald Trump loved to complain about judges on social media. Reliably, whenever his agenda was held up in court or his allies faced legal consequences, he would snipe online about “so-called judges” and a “broken and unfair” legal system. Now, in Trump’s second term, this genre of cranky presidential post has returned. A judge who blocked the administration’s mass freeze of federal-grant funding is “highly political” and an “activist,” according to the president.  

Read alongside Elon Musk’s and Vice President J. D. Vance’s apparent willingness to defy the courts, Trump’s rhetoric is a concerning sign about where this administration might be headed. But there is significance to the fact that the administration already has a hefty stack of court orders it might want to defy. Despite Trump’s effort to present himself as an agent of overwhelming force, he is encountering persistent and growing opposition, both from courts and from other pockets of civic life.

Litigants have sued the administration over the seemingly unlawful freezing of federal funds, the deferred-resignation program for civil servants, the destruction of USAID and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the handling of sensitive government data by Musk’s aides, the removal of scientific data from government websites, the attempt to write birthright citizenship out of the Constitution, the barring of transgender people from military service, the transfer of undocumented immigrants to Guantánamo Bay, and more.

[Read: The tasks of an anti-Trump coalition]

And now the court orders are coming, blocking the administration from pushing forward, or at the very least slowing its speed.

Courts have prevented Trump from dismissing a government watchdog without explanation and granted restraining orders barring the administration from slashing funds for crucial scientific research. They have prevented Musk’s team from meddling with Treasury Department systems and insisted that the government halt its transfer of an incarcerated transgender woman to a men’s prison. Four separate judges have issued orders requiring the government to stand down on its effort to dismantle birthright citizenship.

Litigation has also proved to be a valuable tool for prying loose key information from the administration, like the specifics of just what access Musk’s aides were given to the Treasury Department, and as a means of making legible to the public what Trump is trying to get away with. “It has become ever more apparent that to our president, the rule of law is but an impediment to his policy goals,” Judge John Coughenour commented when issuing an injunction against the birthright-citizenship order. But, he went on, “in this courtroom and under my watch, the rule of law is a bright beacon which I intend to follow.”

So far, there’s no indication that Trump has attempted to ignore Judge Coughenour’s injunction. In other cases, though, troubling signs have emerged of the administration’s laxity in following court orders, including multiple instances in which judges have found agencies to be in defiance of the court’s instructions and attempts by the government to find work-arounds. It’s not yet clear how much of this stems from chaos and incompetence and how much is a strategy by Trump and Musk, however clumsy, to force a confrontation with the judiciary. Either way, this approach endangers the health of the constitutional order—which may well be the point.

If the administration decides to launch an assault against the judiciary, it will be all the more important that a strong response comes not only from the courts themselves, but from Congress and the public. Trump is skilled at presenting himself as the indomitable voice of a true American majority, creating a facade of consensus aided by the startling quiescence of congressional Republicans. Dissent, both loud and quiet, can crack that facade and make an illegitimate power grab apparent for what it is.

Some of that dissent is already coming from inside the executive branch. Over the course of a bizarre three weeks, the administration encouraged federal workers who had not yet been fired to depart their posts under a “deferred resignation” program clearly modeled on the buyouts Musk offered to Twitter employees after his takeover of that company. (The program closed on Wednesday after it was briefly frozen, and then unfrozen, by a federal judge.) But if the goal was to persuade federal workers to depart on their own, the slipshod rollout and smarmy, dismissive tone—one FAQ provided by the Office of Personnel Management encouraged federal employees to find “higher productivity jobs in the private sector”—may have backfired. The Subreddit r/fednews is buzzing with government employees expressing defiance. “Before the ‘buyout’ memo, I was ready to go job hunting, but then a revelation hit,” wrote one user. “I took an oath under this position to the American people.” In reference to OPM’s description of the program as a “fork in the road,” some federal employees adopted the spoon as a symbol of their opposition. Earlier this week, federal workers rallied at a protest outside the Capitol holding signs that read Public Service is a Badge of Honor!

In Congress, the Democratic minority, which entered this second Trump era cautiously, seems to be waking up. “We’re not going to go after every single issue,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told The New York Times in an interview published on February 2. Just two days later, though, Schumer was standing outside the Treasury Department leading a rally to protest Musk’s apparent takeover of the department’s sensitive payment systems. Democrats held the Senate floor for 30 hours to drag out the confirmation of Russ Vought, the architect of many of Trump’s most aggressive schemes, to head the Office of Management and Budget, and senators such as Brian Schatz of Hawaii have hinted at plans to escalate to even more dramatic procedural measures. “The roots of democracy are still strong,” Schatz told The New Yorker recently. “It depends on not just members of the legislative branch fighting back but there being a mass movement to back us up.”

[Read: Trump says the corrupt part out loud]

This opposition movement will try to build on itself. The Democratic Party is taking more aggressive action in part because of an outraged constituency demanding that it speak up; that, in turn, may encourage Americans to push the party further. Spoon emoji, court orders, protests—all of these serve as indications that those who dissent are not alone. True, courageous leadership can emerge unexpectedly. Within the FBI, Acting Director Brian Driscoll has become a folk hero of sorts for his refusal to provide Justice Department leadership with the names of FBI agents to potentially be fired. Six Justice Department officials resigned yesterday rather than follow orders to dismiss the criminal case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams: Granting the mayor a political favor would constitute “a breathtaking and dangerous precedent,” the acting leader of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York argued in a letter to Justice Department leadership, writing, “I cannot make such arguments consistent with my duty of candor” as an attorney. During a visit by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to a U.S. military installation in Germany, an eighth grader organized a walkout at her middle school to protest Hegseth’s attacks on diversity efforts within the military.

The fact is that Trump is an unpopular president who eked out a razor-thin plurality of the popular vote and whose party holds the slimmest of majorities in the House. So far, he has been able to avoid that inconvenient reality by relying on executive orders. But March 14 is approaching, when the federal government will run out of money and House Republicans—never a compliant group at the best of times—will need to organize to pass a funding bill in order to avoid a shutdown. The limitations of Trump’s attempts to rule by decree, and the inability of his party to govern, may then become unavoidably apparent.

Almost everyone knows what it’s like to face insurmountable odds—to feel ineffective, unable to see a way out, doubtful that the struggle to prevail is even worth the fight. Sometimes a challenge is genuinely life-and-death, or involves dire consequences; other times, the obstacles in your path may be lower stakes, but still feel frustratingly immovable. As diverse as these experiences can be, they tend to share a common quality: They can become powerful stories.

As a result, literature is full of reminders that long odds can sometimes be surmounted—that David can defeat Goliath, that perseverance can pay off, and that action can lead to change. The seven books below follow people who faced extraordinary predicaments and, instead of caving in, found ways to push back. Some protagonists overcome their obstacles; others confront them on their own terms or weaken the systems they’re up against. Many of their stories are infuriating, but the unlikely achievements within are all elementally hopeful, because they might galvanize readers to fight another day.

All In: An Autobiography, by Billie Jean King with Johnette Howard and Maryanne Vollers

When King came up in tennis in the 1960s, female players were an afterthought at best. The money they received for winning tournaments was a fraction of what men received, and the sexism was constant: King was once told she’d be No. 1 someday because she was ugly. In her autobiography, King frankly recounts the opposition she faced on and off the court, and also recognizes the challenges faced by other barrier-breaking players such as Althea Gibson, Arthur Ashe, and Renée Richards. “There was this gap between what I thought I was capable of and the world as it was,” she writes. “I saw that gulf clearly. I was less sure how to breach it.” King found a way across: In addition to winning 39 Grand Slam titles, she helped create a women-only invitational that proved female players could sell tickets. In 1973, she also defeated Bobby Riggs in the Battle of the Sexes, a watershed cultural moment watched by 90 million people.  All In reads like one of King’s tennis matches: An intense volley of obstacles fly at her, and she returns them all with power and headlong determination.

The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi, by Shannon Chakraborty

In many works of fiction, pirates—even the most plundering, pillaging types—are portrayed sympathetically, as people who don’t fit into society and turn to a life on the high seas in order to be their authentic selves. The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi is one of those stories. The novel takes place in a fantastical version of the medieval Islamic world, specifically on the Indian Ocean, where the titular captain, Amina, once helmed her own ship and crew. Ten years after leaving the pirate life, she’s older, and a mother; she has the aches and pains to prove it. Unsurprisingly, given how these stories usually go, circumstances draw her back to her ship and the sea: She needs to rescue the daughter of a dead crewmate, and her journey gets her embroiled with magical forces that are literally leviathan in nature. Her specific challenges are, obviously, not of our world, but her desire to control her own life, and her refusal to be whipped around by powerful, indifferent forces, is deeply relatable. And although the themes of the story are serious, the tone is relatively light—hope and humor lash its pages, making for a swashbuckling read.

[Read: How to succeed at failure]

The Radium Girls, by Kate Moore

In the late 1910s, corporations used radium, a radioactive material found in uranium ore, to make the numbers and dials on watches glow in the dark. They hired young women to paint the substance on, and employees were encouraged to twirl the brushes between their lips to get them to a fine point. The radium accumulated in their bones, killing many of them—they glowed at night as it destroyed their bodies from the inside. Ultimately, groups of these women took two separate companies—the United States Radium Corporation and the Radium Dial Company—to court, and after years of efforts, their former employers were finally held accountable. Although financial compensation was important to cover medical bills and support their families, the women mainly wanted the truth exposed; at least 50 of them died before the trials concluded. Moore demonstrates that USRC and Radium Dial knowingly sentenced the painters to death for the sake of profit, denying that there was any risk to their health even when their own medical examinations proved otherwise. More important, she puts these workers front and center, as women who had full lives before, and after, they picked up a paintbrush.

Whalefall, by Daniel Kraus

On the surface, Whalefall spins a wild premise into a gripping tale: A young diver, Jay, is fighting to escape a sperm whale that inadvertently swallows him while hunting a giant squid. As you get deeper into the novel, however, the plot becomes more complex. Yes, it’s a thrilling story of survival—Jay’s body is shattered, beaten and ruptured in various places, and the oxygen in his tank is rapidly dwindling. But it’s also about his grief for his estranged father: Kraus flits between Jay’s Herculean efforts to stay alive inside the whale’s stomach and memories of his dad, who—ravaged by terminal cancer—ultimately chose to die in these same waters. Whalefall interweaves past and present via short, immediate prose as “Jay lived and died and lived again in the deep.”

[Read: How kids learn resilience]

Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde, by Jeff Guinn

In the early 20th century, the media and Hollywood turned Bonnie and Clyde into infamous bank robbers, inflating their often-fumbling exploits to super-gangster status. As Guinn explains in Go Down Together—a book that aims to move past the myth and paint a more accurate picture of the two—many Americans eagerly bought into the image the press created. Reality didn’t matter: The story of the couple became a touchstone for people’s frustrations. “In 1933 bankers and law enforcement officials, widely perceived to have no sympathy for decent people impoverished through no fault of their own, were considered the enemy by many Americans,” Guinn writes. “For them, Clyde and Bonnie’s criminal acts offered a vicarious sense of revenge.” In reality, Clyde—who had been serially raped by another inmate in prison—“was more interested in getting even than in getting ahead,” and Bonnie wanted a life filled with fame and adventures, and “was willing to risk arrest to have them.” What their legend truly shows is just how badly the American public wanted to crown a hero who stood up to the establishment on its behalf—an impulse that persists, dangerously, to this day.

The Half Life of Valery K, by Natasha Pulley

From its first pages, The Half Life of Valery K gets to the core of what humans facing a seemingly hopeless situation must do to carry on. “The way to not sink into self-pity and despair—the way not to die—was to look forward to things,” Valery thinks. “Anything; the tinier the better, because then you were more likely to get it.” Incarcerated in a Siberian prison, he must stave off “the terrible docility that came before you gave up.” Valery is a Soviet biochemist specializing in radiation who gets transferred to City 40, ostensibly to study the effect of a nuclear accident the government has spun as a planned “experiment” on an ecosystem. Pulley’s novel is inspired by real events: In September 1957, an explosion in the Soviet Union spread radioactive material, causing mass evacuations and contamination. The book itself has sharp edges. Pulley’s characters are not only physically wounded; they are forever scarred by their trauma. But Valery, despite his lack of power in a despotic system, is able to help others, and finds a way to not just survive his pain but also live with its lasting effects.

[Read: Schopenhauer’s advice on how to achieve great things]

A Passionate Mind in Relentless Pursuit, by Noliwe Rooks

Rooks’s history of the educator, philanthropist, and civil-rights leader Mary McLeod Bethune is more of a meditation on the effect she had on those in the Black community, including the author, than a formal biography. “I think Bethune—her image, her statues, her name—may be a kind of talisman, or maybe a light, guiding, promising, showing a path,” Rooks writes early on. Over about 200 pages, Rooks unpacks Bethune’s legacy in fighting racism, exploring her efforts to found a school and secure investors to buy land near the ocean and create Bethune Beach, the only beach in Florida’s Volusia County where Black Americans could congregate without restrictions during Jim Crow. In 2022, a statue of Bethune replaced that of a Confederate general in the U.S. Capitol’s National Statuary Hall, where she represents the state of Florida. As Rooks puts it, the activist “taught me that there is strength in numbers, always a reason to hope, and that if someone disrespects you and yours, it is in your best interest to find a way to use the metaphorical flag that professes your citizenship, rights, and humanity as a weapon, and ‘get it done.’”