Benjamin Franklin, the oldest and perhaps wisest of the Founding Fathers, knew that the Constitution he helped draft was, in the end, just a few pieces of paper. Our democracy won’t survive, he said, unless its citizens breathe life into it. “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom,” he wrote.

Uh-oh. My liberal friends, and some conservatives, are in a state of shock and horror these days, and I get that. President Trump meant it when he promised retribution, and his pardons and purges are right out of the authoritarian playbook. Franklin’s warnings were prophetic. If he’s watching us now, he must be on the edge of his seat.

But I sleep at night because I’m guessing we’ll pass this test, and that Trump won’t get his way. Americans don’t like to be pushed around, as King George III learned. And in the end, Trump may learn the same lesson.

I give you Danielle Sassoon, the top federal prosecutor in New York, who just gave Trump a taste of what’s to come. When his hatchet man in the Department of Justice, Emil Bove, ordered her to drop bribery and conspiracy charges against New York’s slippery mayor, Eric Adams, she resigned in protest. And that sparked a larger mutiny – the head of the DOJ’s corruption unit in Washington quit, too, and so did his deputy. When the case moved back to New York, Sassoon’s successor quit as well.

Sassoon’s eight-page resignation letter is a scorcher. You can study her legal argument if you like but allow me to boil it down: “Take this job and shove it.”

And really, the decision to drop the case against Adams is gobsmacking. These guys just do not believe in the rule of law. In his letter ordering Sassoon to drop the case, Bove noted that he was not contesting the facts in the indictment, which paints Adams as a two-bit crook who took bribes and illegal campaign donations as a routine. (He pleaded not guilty.) Nor was Bove challenging the legal basis for the indictment.

This was a political deal, a quid pro quo, Sassoon charged in her letter. Adams got out of jail free, in return for his promise to cooperate with Trump’s plans for mass deportation of undocumented immigrants.

Bove and Adams deny that, of course. But in a moment of comic relief in this dark story, the truth popped out during an appearance on Fox News on Friday by Adams and the new border-czar, Tom Homan. Homan was asked if he felt Adams could be trusted to help Trump with the deportations. He made the mistake of answering honestly.

“If he doesn’t come through, I’ll be back in New York City, and we won’t be sitting on the couch—I’ll be in his office, up his butt, saying, ‘Where the hell is the agreement we came to?’” Homan warned.

It’s tough to imagine a more humiliating moment for Adams. The DOJ has moved to dismiss these charges “without prejudice” – meaning they can be reinstated any time. That may be why Bove made a point of saying he’s not contesting the evidence or the law. The gun is still loaded, in other words. If Adams makes a wrong move, Trump can pull the trigger.

Or as House Speaker Hakeem Jeffries, of Brooklyn, put it, “It is the intention of the Trump administration to keep the current mayor on a short leash.”

Adams might fight for a while, but he’s dead meat politically. If he wins the June primary, I hereby promise to light what’s left of my hair on fire. Calls for his resignation are spreading like fire, joined by people like Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez. Four of his deputy mayors have quit, and Gov. Kathy Hochul is openly musing about removing him from office before his term ends in December.

So, this mess is great news, really. It comes as no surprise that Trump is abusing the law like this. He promised he would. It’s the hearty push-back that catches my eye. Franklin would be pleased.

And Sassoon and her fellow mutineers have plenty of company already, one month into Trump’s term. Brian Driscoll, the acting director of the FBI, refused a DOJ order that he assist in firing FBI employees who took part in the investigations of the Jan. 6 riot. He was backed up by James Dennehy, the top FBI agent in the New York field office, who wrote a defiant email protesting that “good people are being walked out of the FBI and others are being targeted because they did their jobs in accordance with the law and FBI policy.”

And as Trump and Musk take their hatchet to independent agencies and authorities created by Congress, many of their targets have refused to step down and gone to court, including Ellen Weintraub of the Federal Election Commission, Hampton Dellinger, head of the Office of Special Counsel, and Gwynne Wilcox, chair of the National Labor Relations Board.

Our Constitution, it seems, is a good deal more than a few scraps of paper, and the rule of law is more than a bromide for school kids. To many of us, on both sides of the aisles, this is sacred stuff. And the fight to defend it is only getting started.

Moran is a national political columnist for Advance Local and the former editorial page editor/columnist for The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J. He can be emailed at [email protected].