"The only way for Congress or the President, or the States for that matter, to establish that the Supremes do NOT have that authority would be to simply defy them, and then for the covalent branches of government to stand with the defiant one.
That has not happened since Lincoln."
Incorrect. In 1936, the SCOTUS rejected Roosevelt's New Deal, including "Socialist Security". Roosevelt threatened to add six new Justices. Several Justices resigned; the new SCOTUS decided that the 1936 decisions were wrong, and what was Unconstitutional in 1936 was Constitutional in 1938, without benefit of Amending the Constitution in the meantime.
The "Switch in Time that Saved Nine" did not exactly happen as you have described it.
FDR did indeed threaten to pack the court, but the court-packing scheme got nowhere in Congress.
What did not happen was that FDR did not disregard the orders of the Supreme Court and proceed anyway. He waited for the court to change positions, which it did, in the West Coast Hotel decision. But that was made by the same justices who had been ruling against the New Deal previously.