Table of Contents

• Kansas Legislature Half-Time Score

  • Legislative Predictions

• Chaos as a source of power

Kansas Legislature Half-Time Score

Right on schedule, the Kansas House and Senate accomplished a blizzard of floor votes in the days leading up to Turnaround (the procedural deadline for passing proposed bills in either the House or Senate so as to be able to “turn it around” and send it to the other chamber). Our math might not be perfectly precise, but at the moment there are a little over 700 bills to track:

• 1 bills introduced (SB 277, a proposal to exempt tips from state income tax…it was introduced the day before Turnaround and moved safely to an exempt committee).

• 10 bills failed in the House

• 112 House bills sent to the Senate

• 78 Senate bills sent to the House

• 1 bill passed by both, then vetoed, then overridden

This leaves us with 190 potential new laws to pay attention to for the next 6-8 weeks.

Additionally, we have a number of constitutional amendments to follow:

• HCR 5001 would add Kansas to the list of states calling for an Article V Constitutional Convention. This, if not painfully obvious, would not be a good thing.

• HCR 5004 reiterates existing law around citizenship and voter age requirements to participate in elections.

• HCR 5006 applies strict scrutiny standards to the right to bear arms. This would be a fairly expansive weakening of gun safety laws.

• HCR 5008 would give the legislature expansive oversight and the ability to veto or override most proposed rules and regulations of the executive branch. It’s a significant weakening of the separation of powers.

Legislative Predictions

Throughout this first phase of the legislative process, things have basically played out as expected. Democrats and aligned advocacy groups, firmly in the superminority, have had limited-to-no options for influencing outcomes. Campaigns to drive testimony to oppose controversial bills have essentially fallen on deaf ears; there are zero examples of citizen advocacy changing the course of any major bills thus far.

The three pillars of conservative legislation this year–school vouchers, tax cuts, and regression of election law regressions–remain likely to become law by the end of April. There may be some massaging of specific details for how these laws would function, but it’s difficult to see these not sailing through both chambers (and the inevitable veto overrides).

For Democrats to derail any of these initiatives would take a level of civil disobedience and/or procedural hijinks by Democrats for which there is no precedent in Kansas. This leaves the opposition with only two options:

• War of Attrition: attempt to slow down, weaken, or delay the supermajority’s plans where possible but accept the reality of this year’s outcome. Plan ahead and rebuild for the 2026 election cycle.

• Chaos.

Chaos as a source of power

One of the most politically manipulative characters from Game of Thrones¹ was Petyr Baelish, who infamously asserted “chaos is a ladder.” At its core, the phrase means that disorder and instability create opportunities for those who know how to exploit them. Instead of seeing chaos as a destructive force (a pit), Baelish sees it as a means to gain power (a ladder).

Surveying the broader political landscape, it’s easy to feel awash in chaos right now. Between national narratives with Trump, the Department of Justice, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the Department of Education, and the wholesale rewriting of history and international law that we all directly lived through and witnessed over the past decade, I can only conclude that chaos is a feature of the current Republican strategy. Not a bug.

Chaos is power because it cannot be planned, only anticipated. The randomness prevents any defense. The only way to fight chaos is to build resilience—not just at the individual level, but within the systems that govern us. If chaos is the ladder, then stability must be the scaffolding that prevents its opportunistic climbers from reaching the top. The Republican strategy, as it stands, is not merely to disrupt for the sake of disruption; it is to destabilize to consolidate—to weaken the very foundations of democratic governance and replace it with a structure of their own making. The ultimate prize? The ability to rewrite the Constitution itself.

An Article V constitutional convention is not a fringe concern—it is an active and ongoing effort, with right-wing groups organizing to meet the threshold of 34 state legislatures needed to call such a convention. Once convened, the rules governing its scope are murky at best, leaving open the terrifying possibility of a wholesale restructuring of American democracy under the guise of "reform." The strategy is elegant in its ruthlessness: manufacture disorder, erode public trust in institutions, stoke political nihilism, and then swoop in with a ready-made blueprint for a new order—one where their power is locked in.

So, how does one counter a strategy built on destabilization? The answer is structural reinforcement and preemptive action:

• Expand State-Level ResistanceThe battle for constitutional control isn’t happening in D.C.; it’s unfolding in state legislatures. The key battlegrounds are not swing states in presidential elections, but red and purple states where legislative majorities could tip the scales toward an Article V convention (see: HCR 5001). Efforts to flip or fracture Republican control in these legislatures—or at the very least, block supermajorities—are the most immediate way to disrupt the convention strategy.

• Strengthen Civic Infrastructure: One of the greatest weaknesses in the face of a chaos strategy is public disengagement. When voters lose faith in government’s ability to function, they become passive—willing to accept whatever “new system” is imposed on them, if only to end the uncertainty. Countering this requires massive investments in civic education, media literacy, and local engagement, ensuring that people not only understand what is happening but have the tools to fight it.

• Proactive Legal Strategies: The courts remain a double-edged sword. While they have been strategically stacked with ideologically aligned judges, they still operate within the existing constitutional framework—one that, for now, places limits on the power grabs at play. Proactive litigation can stall or block the more egregious state-level overreaches, buying time to mount political resistance.

• Starve the Chaos Machine: Disrupting a chaos-based strategy means refusing to feed it. This doesn’t mean ignoring threats or downplaying risks—it means not allowing the manufactured crises to dictate the terms of engagement. The right thrives on panic, outrage, and reactionary responses that keep opposition forces on the defensive. Instead of reacting to every provocation, the goal should be to dictate an alternative agenda, one rooted in governance, stability, and future-focused policy.

• Prepare for the Worst-Case Scenario: If an Article V convention does happen, a coordinated, nationwide response will be needed to prevent it from being a free-for-all rewriting of constitutional democracy. The best time to stop a constitutional coup is before it begins; the second-best time is during its execution—when the full weight of public resistance can be leveraged to block radical restructuring.

Baelish was right: chaos is a ladder. But it is also a tool—a weapon wielded by those who seek power without accountability. The current Republican strategy isn’t about policy; it’s about permanence. The true fight isn’t over specific legislation or even electoral cycles—it’s about whether democracy itself remains the framework under which that fight can continue. The only way to win against a chaos-based strategy is not just to resist it, but to replace it with something stronger, something enduring—a system built to withstand the storm, rather than be consumed by it.

1  I shall not involve myself in great literary debates about the Game of Thrones HBO vs. literary narratives and timelines here.