A half-century ago, Kansas leadership in Washington pushed back against executive overreach

U.S. Marshals and Homeland Security Investigations agents take a man into custody on Sept. 3, 2025, at the intersection of 14th and N streets NW in Washington, D.C. (Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

I recently emailed Kansas’ senior senator, Jerry Moran, to ask about life in Washington, D.C.: “How does it feel to live in an occupied city?”

As President Donald Trump moves the country ever closer to a full-fledged autocracy, I wrote: “I wish I could say that I was surprised you have, as far as I can tell, said nothing. But I’m not. In fact, at this point, I would be surprised if you raised your voice (or even said NO with your Senate vote) in any meaningful way. It is past time to stand up and demand some real ‘Kansas Common Sense’ in the spirit of Thomas Paine’s clarion call for ‘Common Sense’ of 1776. If Trump’s cruel takeover of America is not stopped, what will be left to celebrate on the country’s 250th?”

Fifty years ago, as our country readied itself for the bicentennial, this was not the case. At that time, Kansas still had Republican leaders capable of independent thought and action, and our senior senator, James B. Pearson, was one.

Pearson (1920-2009) moved to Johnson County after service in World War II. He engaged with Republican Party politics, served a term in the state senate, and identified with the party’s moderate or progressive wing. After U.S. Sen. Andrew Schoeppel died in January 1962, Pearson’s friend and political ally, Gov. John Anderson, appointed him to the vacant seat to which he was reelected twice (1962-1978).

Pearson became known and respected for bipartisan legislating and a willingness to challenge his party’s administration when he thought it was wrong: Vietnam, nuclear weapons policy, judicial and cabinet nominations, and so on. This did not stop in the wake of the Watergate scandal that took down his party’s president.

Pearson was a prominent minority party member of the Special Committee on the Termination of the National Emergency (later the Special Committee on National Emergencies and Delegated Emergency Powers) chaired by his friend and frequent collaborator, Sen. Frank Church, an Idaho Democrat. The committee conducted an investigation and held hearings in 1973 and 1974, and it introduced “A bill to terminate certain authorities with respect to national emergencies still in effect, and to provide for the orderly implementation and termination of future national emergencies.”

The National Emergencies Act passed the Senate in October 1974 but did not become law until amended in the House, accepted by the Senate, and signed by President Gerald Ford on Sept. 14, 1976. Although admittedly imperfect from the outset, the NEA should be used to reign in the Trump administration before it moves into more “blue cities” across America.

Pearson made his case for reform in this area via an editorial published in the Wichita Eagle and Beacon on Aug. 18, 1974, just nine days after Richard Nixon resigned rather than face almost certain impeachment, conviction, and removal from office.

“To say that a contemporary president would not likely abuse emergency power available to him is no guarantee that some future president under unforeseen conditions might not do so,” Pearson wrote.

Even when done with best of intentions (and clearly this is not Trump), executive orders and the application of emergency powers are a convenient way for the president to make “decisions which should be properly shared with the Congress. … If we are to maintain a proper balance of power over the long haul,” warned the senator, “we must continually be on the alert to prevent the unnecessary exercise of presidential power and the undesirable decline of congressional authority.”

And, I would add, an erosion in the rule of law.

Unfortunately, it does not appear that Moran, who really does seem care about the state and its people at one level, will rise to the occasion and take on the role of statesman, not the mere partisan. Kansas once had members of Congress who understood that abuse of power can come from within one’s own party and acted against it. I am hoping against hope, however, that Moran will follow Pearson’s example and do the right thing at this perilous juncture in our nation’s history.

As Paine wrote in 1776: “I’ll tell you friend … in America THE LAW IS KING. … In free countries the law ought to be King; and there ought to be no other.”

Virgil W. Dean, a native Kansan and Lawrence resident since 1983, was editor of Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains, the quarterly publication of the Kansas State Historical Society, for more than 20 years. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.