On his first day in office, Donald Trump signed an executive order purporting to limit the Constitution's guarantee of birthright citizenship. In the final opinion of the term, on the last day of June, the Supreme Court struck down that order.

In a fractured 6-3 decision, it rejected Trump's position. But his nonsensical reading of the 14th Amendment still garnered the votes of several conservative justices.

Ultimately, the Supreme Court majority confirmed that constitutional language means exactly what it says: except under the rarest circumstances, anyone born in the United States is automatically a U.S. citizen.

The first sentence of Section 1 of the 14th Amendment reads: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."

Trump's position wasn’t just meritless: Unlike most of the cases decided in the final days of the term, there was no real suspense about how this would come out. At every stage of this case, judges expressed incredulity at Donald Trump's assertion that he could dictate which babies born in this country had citizenship.

After the case was argued before the Supreme Court, it was clear to nearly everyone that Trump was going to lose. He seemed to know it too.

But that does not mean that real damage has not been done...