New Orleans       As Dylan sang, sometimes you don’t need a weatherman to know the way the wind is blowing.  Trump and his administration are in that position when it comes to their brutal, invasive, and rule-breaking mass deportation campaign.  It turns out that there are limits to the administration’s excesses that go beyond Trump’s claim that only his willpower could stand in the way of program.  Two murders in Minneapolis have put the breaks on this effort in blood, even if they don’t want to admit it and are slow walking their race to the exit ramp.

When the Republicans lose Texans on immigration, they have to know it’s code red for their election prospects.  The biggest headlines are the butt kicking they took in a district in Fort Worth, a big city in Texas that still sometimes presents as a smaller town, but which has been in recent years the biggest city in the country with a Republican mayor.  The party ran a woman first time candidate who has been well known in conservative circles as an activist especially on school board and educational restriction issues.  She ran on that platform as well as immigration and other contemporary classic party blanks.  Trump won the district by 17 points in 2024, but a first time, 33-year-old, union leader won in a landslide by a 57-43 margin to give Democrats the seat in the state senate.  Taylor Rehmet’s platform was straightforward:  funding public schools, protecting veterans, investing in affordable housing, and putting workers first.  Nothing too fancy about that meat-and-potatoes program, which makes it hard for the Republicans not to understand that the size and scale of his victory is as much a rejection of their calling cards, especially mass deportation, as it was an affirmation of his candidacy.

Less attention has been paid to another Texas bellwether that deportation is sinking their ship.  Governor Abbott has been rabid about immigration.  He tried to build the wall himself.  He’s put immigrants on buses and planes to blue cities to highlight border issues.  On immigration, he has been the mad dog, sharp end of the stick.  In the wake of the Minneapolis killing, even he called for a change in deportation tactics.  When Noem, Miller and Trump lose Abbott on immigrant busting, they’ve lost almost everyone.

It turns out that also includes another source of their strongest support, the arch-conservative Wall Street Journal editorial page.  Recently, they went after the Department of Homeland Security for their arrest and refusal to give asylum to Guan Heng, a prominent Chinese dissident, by saluting the decision by a judge overturning their action.  They debunked the DHS claim that its immigration crackdown focused on criminals, saying “…its treatment of Mr. Guan is one example of how its enforcement has been far more indiscriminate…even after the …ruling in his favor Mr. Guan still hasn’t been freed from detention as DHS is reserving the right to appeal.”

Now, they have stepped up and gone after Stephen Miller, politically and personally, as the architect of Trump’s mass deportation strategy.  Reading between the lines, the Journal is calling on Trump and his team to either muzzle his attack dog or put him down, noting…

…a debate on the right over what themes to stress to avoid a GOP washout in November. Even after Minneapolis, some of MAGA’s mouthpieces are saying the GOP should run more forcefully on immigration enforcement. This was White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller’s strategy in 2018 as he helped to blow up a bipartisan immigration reform compromise on Capitol Hill. The GOP lost a net of 41 House seats.  The Miller strategy isn’t likely to fare better this year, as the polls show voters turning against the way Mr. Trump is pursuing mass deportation. In the wake of the Minneapolis shootings, Mr. Trump has said he wants to dial back the confrontations on the street. That’s smart, but he’ll also have to dial back Mr. Miller, who is the mastermind of the mass deportation strategy.

The wind is blowing against the Republicans and the administration at gale force now.  They either pull back on mass deportation and their Gestapo tactics, or there is little doubt the country will go as Texas is going now, and blow them away.