Odd thing about the Texas GOP: It's all for small government and local control except when its philosophy runs up against one simple fact. Texas' largest urban areas tend to be Democratic strongholds. They also tend to have sizable populations of Latinos. So when Senate Bill 4 came up before this year's legislative session, the party faced a philosophical conundrum. Can right-thinking Republicans support a bill that threatens criminal penalties for local officials who refuse to act as federal proxies in enforcing immigration law? You bet they can. When it comes to immigrant-bashing, there's no low that the party of Donald Trump won't sink to. Under SB 4, local sheriffs and police chiefs are forbidden from adopting any policy that might hinder the enforcement of federal immigration laws, even if that means local immigrant communities are less likely to turn to the police when they're victims of crime for fear of being deported. Texas' major cities aren't taking that lying down. Dallas joined Houston, San Antonio, Austin and other communities in a federal lawsuit challenging the bill, which means that eventually a federal court will determine for Texas whether its state government can order local government to act as proxies for the federal government. The word you're looking for, by the way, is "hypocrites."