Is Senator Josh Hawley having second thoughts?

Sure looks that way. Last week, a mere 14 days after the Missouri Republican did as he was told and voted for President Trump’s megabill, he introduced legislation that would counter that monstrosity’s cuts to Medicaid and repair the very damage he’d just endorsed. It redefines the flip-flop. And reeks of regret.

So does Senator Thom Tillis’s recent decision not to seek re-election. Both in and after his announcement of that, the North Carolina Republican wrestled with what Congress under Trump had become, with the president’s broken promises and bad judgment, with his own indulgence of that. He told the CNN anchor Jake Tapper that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — who ascended to that position by dint of Tillis’s final-hours capitulation to Trump’s bullying — was “out of his depth.” If only that had been predictable! I salute Tillis’s candor, no matter how belated. But I see it as something else, too: atonement.

There’s a lot of that going around, as politicians and others who submitted to Trump reckon with the toll of that obeisance. The president may well be notching legislative victory after victory as a meek Congress abdicates its responsibilities and a cowardly Supreme Court looks the other way. But I sense a countervailing current.

“What have I done?” are the words in the thought bubbles above more and more people who have grudgingly and not so grudgingly supported Trump.

To judge by some polling, that includes voters; in a recent, fascinating Gallup survey, they gave him poor marks even for his handling of immigration, and that’s his signature issue. They wanted a more secure border, yes. But suspending civil liberties and feeding migrants to swamp creatures? That wasn’t high on their wish lists.

Lowering the cost of living was, and yet, as Colby Smith recently noted in The Times, “Inflation accelerated in June as President Trump’s tariffs started to leave a bigger imprint on the economy.” Started is the key word there. “The June data still reflects only the initial impact of Mr. Trump’s global trade war,” Smith added.