Welcome to this week’s Capitol Bee, where we’re rethinking advocacy in an era where they have the votes. The policies dismantling public schools, targeting marginalized communities, and consolidating power aren’t theoretical—they’re happening, and traditional tactics aren’t enough to stop them.
Table of Contents
Never bring a knife to a gun fight…
This is fine.
There is no shortage of headlines over the past week about Very Bad Things: tariffs and trade wars and mid-air plane collisions and more plane crashes and Medicaid freezes and Medicaid un-freezes and CDC publication bans and disappearing government websites and insurrectionist pardons. I consider myself to be a well-informed consumer of world events, but it’s a bit much to hold in my mind at once.
And we haven’t even talked about Kansas yet! We’ve got the tuberculosis outbreak and the passage of SB 63 (the “Help Not Harm” act that bans gender-affirming care) and a parade of bills designed to erode the public school system: for example, SB 75 (the $125M private school tax credit) and SB 48 (a level of accountability almost certainly guaranteed to eventually cause public school districts to lose accreditation, and a standard that I dare you to find anywhere in the private sector).
Many friends and aligned organizations are working the available channels to improve these bills, or block them, or at least weaken the supermajority’s political will to carry them across the finish line1. In other years and other political climates, this may have been an effective strategy. It will not work in 2025. Why?
They 👏 Have 👏 The 👏 Votes 👏.2
I’ve always been more of a strategy guy than a tactician, so allow me for a moment to lift our conversation up above the klaxons and outrage. In Kansas (and DC), the most fervent conservatives we have seen in the American political system in perhaps a century have captured enough systemic power to institute nearly any policy they choose with little direct consequence. This didn’t happen by accident; incremental victories, decade by decade, created the conditions for this moment. They are organized, they have a plan (see: Project 2025), and they are executing that plan.
Their strategic advantage is simple: they have immunized themselves against legal challenge by overwhelming the system. Does it matter if a law violates the Kansas constitution if everyone is too busy dealing with immigration and ICE and LGBTQIA+ and book bans?
Laws only matter to the degree they govern behavior. Right now, the conservatives in power don’t seem concerned about legalities. When we speak of injustices, it’s the constitutional equivalent of bringing a knife to a gun fight—an outdated argument facing overwhelming force.
Advocacy in a Project 2025 World
Implementation of Project 2025 is well underway. It has a combination of structural changes, legal challenges, and wholesale employee rotations designed to transform the federal government into a machine that can continue to serve conservative ideals for a generation. Billionaires have aligned themselves to this cause, because they came to the conclusion that this outcome is currently the most likely scenario.
(And yes, they will politically benefit, but more importantly they will preserve wealth.)
For the rest of us, when you’re looking for ways to engage in political influence and community building, keep these three points in mind:
Right now, the system doesn’t reward quality. It rewards quantity. Focus on things that can maximize how many people are exposed to the message. (This is where the influence of money in politics can be particularly unfair.)
Everyone has learned how to tune out and ignore content that isn’t what you’re searching for. Establish an enduring conversation before trying to persuade anyone of anything. (In social media terms, this means followers and subscribers. This is where grassroots and community-based activism can gain.)
Don’t surrender platforms just because they’re not politically aligned. (See #1.)
Advocacy Knives | Advocacy Guns |
|---|---|
Traditional Letter-Writing – Sending generic, mass-produced letters that rarely stand out. | Data-Driven Digital Outreach – Crafting targeted online messages using analytics to hit the right audience. |
In-Person Town Halls with Low Turnout – Attending local meetings that often feel like shouting into the void. | Multichannel Digital Communities – Live events reward the converted, they don’t build the audience. |
Generic Social Media Posts – Posting sporadic updates that lack strategy and rarely spark conversation. | Coordinated, Constant Campaigns – Social media is ephemeral; find tools and automation to keep your work refreshed and aligned across All The Channels. |
Door-to-Door Canvassing – Knocking on 1,000 doors without any integration or coordination with other activities will not move the needle. | Peer-to-Peer Canvassing – Find ways to enable people to promote your message within their peer networks. |
I’ve been reading this newsletter for the past couple of weeks, and have found it to be a balanced and non-partisan source of information. -Jason
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Updates Continue on the DataHive
Week by week, we’re continuing to add new features to the DataHive bill tracker. This week’s updates:
We’re now doing a much better job tracking changes to a bill over time, so you can switch between different versions of the bill and see any associated fiscal or supplemental notes.
We are faster. ‘Nuff said.
Referral Program
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1 I deeply respect the advocacy class and their tireless (and often thankless) work to lobby for causes.
2 The partisan spread in the Kansas Senate is 31(R) to 9(D). You need 27 to override a governor’s veto. The partisan spread in the Kansas House is 88(R) to 37(D). You need 84 to override a veto.
