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By Rachel Dobkin
Weekend Reporter
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Horror novelist Stephen King's social media post on Saturday morning about the Supreme Court trying to distance itself from recent controversial rulings has taken off online.
While many know King as the author of famous horror novels such as Carrie and The Shining, he is also very politically engaged, often sharing his views, some critical of former President Donald Trump, on X, formerly Twitter.
King has also been critical of the Supreme Court, which has a conservative 6-3 lean. In an X post on Saturday, the author wrote: "Mary Anne Franks, law professor: The Supreme Court is trying to distance itself from the monster[s] it has created."
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King's post has already received over 87,000 views in three hours.
Dr. Mary Anne Franks, a law professor at George Washington University, spoke with The New York Times about how the Court is trying to trick the American public into thinking they are overreacting to recent rulings that could have a drastic impact on the country in an opinion piece published on Friday by Jesse Wegman, titled, "The Supreme Court Is Gaslighting Us All."
Aside from the quote that King mentioned in his X post, Franks said in the article about the Supreme Court: "They're trying to say, 'We don't know where you got these crazy ideas from!' But of course we do know where they got them from."
Newsweek has reached out to King's management company via email for comment. It also reached out to the Supreme Court via online form for comment.
One controversial ruling that the Supreme Court recently handed down was on presidential immunity. On July 1, the Court ruled that former presidents have immunity for official acts conducted while in office, but not for unofficial acts.
Franks told Newsweek via email on Saturday afternoon, "The Court's presidential immunity ruling is the clearest sign yet that the theocratic, autocratic, regressive elites trying to seize control of this country are fully aware that they can only win when they change the rules. Fortunately for them, and unfortunately for democracy, they have bought and paid for enough Supreme Court Justices to make this a reality."
There are three Trump-nominated Supreme Court justices on the bench—Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch.
The presidential immunity ruling was related to an argument by former President Donald Trump in the federal election interference case against him. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has accused Trump of attempting to overturn President Joe Biden's 2020 election victory, but the former president claims that he is immune from prosecution because he was in office when the alleged scheme took place. Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges against him and claims the case is politically motivated.
King bashed the Court's ruling upon its release, writing on X at the time: "In the name of 'originalism,' Trump's Supreme Court has taken a wrecking ball to the Constitution."
Last week, the author continued to attack the Court on social media. In reaction to a post about Project 2025—a political agenda created by The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, that proposes to install Republican loyalists at all levels of the federal bureaucracy—King wrote: "Trump's cronies are planning what amounts to a fascist state, and the Supreme Court is clearing the way for them. This should concern conservatives as well as liberals."
While Project 2025 is designed to be implemented if Trump wins this year's presidential election, the former president recently said that he knows "nothing" about the conservative initiative. A Project 2025 spokesperson previously told Newsweek that it "does not speak for any candidate or campaign."
Update 7/13/24, 4:04 p.m. ET: This article has been updated with comment from Franks.
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