When will the Dr. Frankenstein clones on the U.S. Supreme Court admit they helped create a monster they can’t control?

Let’s see… In June the Court reiterated the purpose of the 14th Amendment, which states that people born in the United States, with few exceptions, are citizens by birth. But their monster, Donald Trump, countered the Court’s ruling in August by issuing executive orders that limit birthright citizenship.

Which arguably means that Trump in effect is placing himself above the judicial and legislative branches of the government and implicitly embracing the role of dictator. (See “Trump to Supreme Court: Make Me” in the Bulwark.)

My neighbor Swamp Rabbit was drunkenly indignant when I called his attention to Trump’s never-ending attack on constitutional democracy. “He can’t say ‘eff you’ to them Supremes. They’re gonna put him in his place, you watch.”

“How will they do that?” I replied. “This is the same Court that decided former presidents have immunity from criminal prosecution for most of the official acts they committed while president.”

Or, as Justice Sonya Sotomayor wrote in dissent of that 2024 ruling, official-acts immunity grants unprecedented power to “any president that wishes to place his own interests, his own political survival, or his own financial gain, above the interests of the nation.”

The irony is that Roberts and the other rightwing justices seem to have thought their monster would issue executive orders to help them destroy existing laws they opposed — regarding abortion, voting rights, etc. — but wouldn’t attack them if he defied them regarding other laws and they tried to rein him in.

Footnote: I can’t see Chief Justice John Roberts getting super-excited about anything, but it’s easy to picture Justice Samuel Alito as Dr. Frankenstein shouting “It’s alive!” and “Now I know what it feels like to be God!”