Question 1

What is the difference between TEXIT and Texas independence?

Accepted Answer

There is no difference in the goal. Texas independence is the destination. TEXIT is the name for the campaign that gets us there. One is the where, the other is the how. Texas independence is the outcome Texas independence means Texas governing itself again as a free and independent nation, the way it did before it joined the union in 1845. It is a state of being. It is Texas making its own laws, signing its own treaties, spending the money Texans earn on the things Texans need, and answering to no government but its own. That is the end we are working toward, and it is the same end free peoples have reached all over the world. TEXIT is the movement that gets us there TEXIT is shorthand for "Texas Exit." It is the word for the organized effort to restore that independence. It follows the same naming the world used for Brexit, when Britain voted to leave the European Union. The campaign, the strategy, the referendum, the vote, the transition, all of that is TEXIT. Independence is what TEXIT delivers. Why we use both words The two words do different jobs, so we keep both. "Texas independence" is the precise, honest description of what Texas would have on the other side. "TEXIT" is the rallying point, the one word that tells a Texan exactly what we are fighting for and connects it to a global pattern they have already seen work. You will see us move between them, and that is on purpose. Neither word is "secession" What both words share is what they are not. They are not "secession." Secession is the word our opponents use to drag a peaceful vote back to 1861 and the Confederacy. Texas independence is restoration, not rebellion. The Texas Constitution still calls Texas "a free and independent State." We are reclaiming something Texas already had, not inventing something new, and we use the words that say so. The bottom line Texas independence is the goal. TEXIT is how we win it. Same fight, two words, one outcome: Texans decide the future of Texas.

Question 2

What does it mean for Texas to "reassert its status as an independent nation"?

Accepted Answer

It means Texas would take back something it already had. "Reassert" is the right word, because Texas was a free and independent nation before it ever joined the union. This is restoration, not invention. Texas was a nation first For nine years, from 1836 to 1845, Texas stood as a country among countries. It had a president, a congress, and a supreme court. It had its own army and its own navy. It signed treaties with other nations and was recognized by them. Texas did not begin as a piece of the United States. It began as the Republic of Texas, and it chose to join the union on terms it negotiated as a sovereign nation. "Reassert" means reclaim, not create When we say Texas would reassert its status as an independent nation, we are saying Texas would resume an identity it already held. You cannot reassert something you never had. The word is deliberate. It rejects the idea that independence would be a leap into the unknown. Texas has been a nation before. The machinery of self-government, the courts, the agencies, the military, the treasury, is already here. Reasserting independence means switching it fully back on. The exact words are on the ballot for a reason This is not loose language. It is the question the Texas Nationalist Movement intends to put to the people of Texas: "Should the State of Texas reassert its status as an independent nation?" That single sentence carries the whole argument. It frames independence as a return to a known status, decided by the people, in plain words, with no trick in it. The Texas Constitution already speaks this way Texas has never stopped describing itself in these terms. Article 1, Section 1 of the Texas Constitution calls Texas "a free and independent State." Article 1, Section 2 says all political power is inherent in the people, and that they have at all times the inalienable right to alter or reform their government as they see fit. The legal language of restoration is already written into the founding document of the state. Reasserting independence is Texas acting on words it has carried for generations. What it is not Reasserting independence is not a declaration of war, a stunt, or a break with the rule of law. It is a peaceful, lawful return to self-government, decided by a vote. It does not require permission from the other forty-nine states or from Washington. It requires the agreement of one group of people, Texans, exercising a right Texas has claimed since the day it was founded. The bottom line To reassert independence is to reclaim what Texas already was: a free and independent nation. Texas did it once. The question is simply whether Texans choose to do it again.

Question 3

What would an independent Texas actually look like day to day?

Accepted Answer

For most Texans, day to day, it would look a lot like it does now, only with the decisions made closer to home. The morning after a successful vote, the sun comes up, the coffee gets made, and the work of building a nation begins quietly, not with chaos. The day after is calmer than people expect Independence is not a single dramatic moment where everything changes at once. It is a process. The day after an affirmative vote, things continue as they have. The mail gets delivered. The trash gets picked up. Goods move. Money is earned and spent. The lights stay on, because Texas runs its own power grid. Independence is a state of being that is reached through negotiation and transition, not a switch that plunges the state into the unknown overnight. Your daily life mostly stays put You would still wake up in the same house, drive the same roads, hold the same job, bank at the same bank, and shop at the same stores. Texas already has a state-level agency for nearly every function people rely on. The institutions that run daily life in Texas are, overwhelmingly, already run from Texas. Independence does not tear them down. It removes the layer above them that answers to Washington. What changes is who makes the decisions The real difference is upstream, in who decides. Today, a large share of what the Texas Legislature does is reacting to federal law, federal money, and federal mandates. An independent Texas sets its own direction. Tax policy, border policy, energy policy, the rules that shape life here, would be decided in Texas, by people Texans elect and can hold accountable, instead of in a Capitol most Texans will never visit. The change you would feel is not disruption. It is control. The hard work happens at the negotiating table, not in your kitchen The complicated parts of independence, dividing assets, settling the relationship with the United States, signing trade and treaty agreements, happen at the negotiating table between governments. That is where the experts and the lawyers earn their keep. It is not something that lands on your kitchen table as turmoil. Other nations have done exactly this, and ordinary life kept moving the whole time. Over time, the upside compounds The deeper changes arrive over the longer term, and they run in Texas's favor. The money that now leaves the state stops leaving. Decisions speed up because they no longer route through Washington. Texas answers to its own constitution and its own people directly. The benefits of self-government are not a fireworks display on day one. They build, year over year, as Texas runs its own affairs. The bottom line Day to day, an independent Texas looks like Texas, with the steering wheel finally in Texan hands. Life continues. The difference is that the decisions that shape it are made here, by people who have to live with them.

Question 4

Is TEXIT a serious movement or just talk?

Accepted Answer

It is serious, and the record proves it. TEXIT is not a slogan or a venting session. It is an organized political campaign with a written plan, legislation that has been filed, a measurable base of support, and a party platform behind it. The support is real and it is documented More than 600,000 Texans are on record demanding a vote on independence. That is not a mailing list of vague sympathizers. It is a base of support that rivals the largest single-issue organizations in the country as a share of registered voters. On top of that, polling has shown around 60 percent of Texans supporting peaceful independence and about 66 percent wanting the chance to vote on it. Movements that are "just talk" do not post numbers like that. The legislation has already been filed This is not a someday idea. The Texas Independence Referendum Act was filed in the Texas Legislature as House Bill 1359 in 2021 by Representative Kyle Biedermann, with Representative James White as coauthor, and it has been refiled since. The bill is on the public record. The single question it would put to Texans, whether Texas should reassert its status as an independent nation, has been drafted and is ready. You do not write and file a bill for something you are not serious about. The party platform is behind it The Republican Party of Texas, the largest political party in the state, has put this in its platform. In 2020 its delegates adopted a plank affirming Texas's right to leave, passed with 93 percent support. In 2022 the party went further and called for a referendum on Texas independence, a position it reaffirmed in 2024. When a state's dominant party writes your goal into its platform, the conversation has moved well past talk. There is an actual plan, not just a wish The Texas Nationalist Movement runs a four-part strategy: build the organized capacity to win, pressure the Legislature to pass the referendum, win the vote, and secure independence in the transition that follows. It is informed by how independence has actually been won elsewhere, in Britain, in Scotland's process, across the former Soviet bloc. Serious movements have a sequence. This one does, and it is published for anyone to read. The opposition takes it seriously, which tells you something The clearest proof that TEXIT is serious is how hard its opponents work to discredit it. People do not spend energy attacking, smearing, and trying to shout down a movement that is going nowhere. The volume of the pushback is a measure of the threat the idea poses to the status quo. You do not aim that much fire at "just talk." The bottom line TEXIT is a serious, organized, growing movement with filed legislation, a party platform behind it, hundreds of thousands of Texans on record, and a written plan to win. It is not a daydream. It is a campaign, and it is gaining ground.

Question 5

What is the difference between Texas independence and "national divorce"?

Accepted Answer

They are not the same thing, and the difference matters. "National divorce" is a slogan about splitting the country along partisan lines. Texas independence is a specific, lawful proposal for Texans to govern themselves. One is a mood. The other is a plan. What "national divorce" actually proposes The phrase "national divorce" was popularized by federal officeholders, most prominently Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who in 2023 called to "separate by red states and blue states." It is a framing built on partisanship: the idea that the country should break apart into a conservative bloc and a progressive bloc. It is a country-wide argument about sorting Americans by their politics. Commentators across the spectrum have noted it is often used as a softer-sounding stand-in for a partisan breakup. Texas independence is about Texas, not about teams Texas independence is not a plan to sort the country by party. It is a proposal for one specific outcome: Texas resuming self-government as a free and independent nation. The case for it does not depend on who wins a federal election or which party is up. It rests on a permanent fact: decisions about Texas should be made in Texas, by Texans, close to the people they affect. That argument holds no matter who is in the White House. Independence is not partisan, and the coalition shows it A national divorce is a partisan idea by definition. Texas independence is not. Support for it has crossed party lines, drawing conservatives, independents, and others who are simply tired of being governed from far away. We take no position on the issues that divide left from right. The single thing this movement asks Texans to agree on is that they deserve the right to decide their own future. That is a Texan question, not a Republican or Democratic one. One has a legal path. The other does not Here is the most practical difference. Texas independence has a defined, lawful route: a bill in the Texas Legislature, a referendum, a vote of the people under the authority the Texas Constitution already grants them. "National divorce" has no mechanism at all. There is no process by which the country sorts itself into red and blue halves. It is a sentiment without a procedure. Texas independence is a procedure, written down, filed, and ready. Why we keep them separate We draw this line clearly because the two ideas get lumped together by people who want to paint Texas independence as a partisan tantrum. It is not. It is the oldest idea in self-government, the consent of the governed, applied to Texas, through the ballot box. Confusing it with a partisan divorce does the idea a disservice and hands our opponents an easy caricature. The bottom line National divorce is a slogan about splitting America by party. Texas independence is a lawful plan for Texans to govern themselves. Different idea, different basis, different path. We are about Texas.

Question 6

Does TEXIT mean Texas wants war with the United States?

Accepted Answer

No. The opposite. TEXIT is a peaceful, lawful, democratic process, decided by a vote. There is no version of it that involves Texas attacking anyone. Anyone who says otherwise is describing 1861, not what is on the table today. The whole method is a ballot, not a battle TEXIT runs through the Texas Legislature and then through the people of Texas in a referendum. The decisive act is Texans marking a ballot. A vote is not an act of war. Casting a ballot is the most peaceful instrument a free people have. The movement has been explicit and unwavering: where there is a legal path, it must be followed, and that path is political, not military. Independence means separation, not conflict Wanting to govern yourself is not the same as wanting to fight your neighbor. Britain left the European Union and did not go to war with Brussels. Scotland held an independence vote and no shots were fired. The Soviet Union came apart into fifteen nations without a civil war. Separation between governments is settled by negotiation, the way grown nations settle their affairs. War is what happens when that process fails, and the entire TEXIT plan is built so it never has to. A negotiated exit is in everyone's interest After a vote, Texas and the United States would sit down and divide the relationship: trade, assets, the practical handoffs. Both sides have every reason to keep that calm. Texas is a top trading partner, a major energy producer, and deeply tied into the continent's economy. A peaceful, negotiated separation keeps goods flowing and the border quiet. Conflict would wreck the economy of both nations for no gain. The rational path, the one nations almost always take, is to talk. The threat of force is a scare tactic, and history undercuts it When opponents raise the specter of war, they are not describing Texas's plan. They are trying to frighten people away from a peaceful vote. No elected official has credibly threatened to answer a lawful referendum with troops. And the world has moved past the idea that self-government is settled by armies. A military response to a peaceful democratic vote would draw condemnation, not applause. The fear is the argument, because the facts are not. The bottom line TEXIT does not mean war. It means a vote. It is peaceful by design, lawful by method, and negotiated in its outcome. Texas does not want a fight with the United States. Texas wants to govern itself.

Question 7

Would TEXIT be peaceful?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Peaceful is not a hope attached to TEXIT. It is the design of it. The entire process is built on a vote, the rule of law, and negotiation, and the modern record shows this is exactly how independence happens now. Peace is built into the method TEXIT is achieved through a referendum authorized by the Texas Legislature and decided by the people of Texas. Every step is a legal, political step. A bill is filed. A vote is held. A result is certified. A transition is negotiated. There is no point in that sequence that requires force, and the movement has been clear that the lawful, peaceful path is the only path. The Texas Nationalist Movement's job is to win at the ballot box and secure the result through negotiation. The modern world votes on this, and it stays peaceful This is not theoretical. Britain voted to leave the European Union and the transition, however slow, was peaceful. Scotland held a full independence referendum under an agreement with London and accepted the result without violence. Czechoslovakia split into two countries on January 1, 1993, peacefully, in what is remembered as the Velvet Divorce. Fifteen nations emerged from the Soviet Union without a civil war. The pattern of the last several decades is clear: free peoples settle this with ballots, not bullets. Even pressure does not have to break the peace Where governments have tried to resist a peaceful vote, the lesson has been that force backfires. When Spain met Catalonia's 2017 referendum with a crackdown, support for independence went up, not down. The instinct to suppress a democratic vote is not just wrong, it is counterproductive, and serious people know it. That reality is itself a force for keeping the process calm. Texas has every incentive to keep it calm, and so does Washington A peaceful, negotiated separation protects what both sides value. Trade keeps moving. The border stays orderly. Investment stays put. Texas is too economically important to the continent for either side to want chaos. The cheapest, sanest outcome for everyone is an orderly, negotiated transition, which is precisely what the plan calls for. Peace is a commitment, not just a prediction This is not only a forecast about how others will behave. It is a commitment about how this movement will. TEXIT is and will remain a peaceful, lawful, democratic effort. That is non-negotiable. The strength of the case for independence is that it never needs anything but persuasion and a vote. The bottom line Yes, TEXIT would be peaceful. It is a vote, not a war. The method is lawful, the precedents are peaceful, and the incentives on every side point toward an orderly, negotiated separation.

Question 8

Is this about leaving America, or leaving the federal government in Washington?

Accepted Answer

It is about leaving the federal government in Washington, not about leaving the values most people mean when they say "America." Texas is not turning its back on liberty, self-government, or the rule of law. It is leaving a federal system that has drifted away from those things. The target is Washington, not your neighbor The grievance that drives this movement is with a federal government that has grown too big to reform, too far away to listen, and too indebted to fix itself. It is not with the people of Ohio or the families of Florida. Texas independence is a separation from a system of government centered on the Potomac, not a rejection of ordinary Americans or the founding ideals they share with Texans. We are leaving an institution, not a people. "America" and "Washington" are not the same thing Part of the confusion is that the two words get treated as one. They are not. There is the country, the people, the history, the founding principles, and then there is the federal apparatus in Washington that claims to act in their name. You can be devoted to the first and done with the second. Texans send hundreds of billions of dollars to Washington and watch a shrinking share come back with strings attached. That is a complaint about a government, not a country. Texas keeps the ideals, and arguably keeps them better Independence is not Texas abandoning the principles the country was founded on. It is Texas carrying them forward. Government by the consent of the governed, accountability to the people, limited and answerable power: those are the ideals an independent Texas is built to honor more fully, not less. Leaving Washington is how Texas keeps faith with the founding idea, not how it breaks with it. This is restoration, not exile Texas is not running away. Texas was a free and independent nation before it joined the union, and reasserting that status is a return to its own history, not a departure from American values. The Texas Constitution still calls Texas "a free and independent State." Reclaiming self-government is Texas acting on words it has carried since the beginning. Why the distinction matters We are careful about this because opponents like to recast independence as "anti-American" to avoid the actual argument. It is not anti-American to want a government close enough to be accountable to you. The real question is not whether Texans love their home. It is who should govern Texas: a distant federal government, or Texans themselves. The bottom line This is about leaving the federal government in Washington, not about leaving America. Texas keeps its principles, its history, and its people. What it sheds is rule from a capital that no longer answers to it.

Question 9

Would Texans still consider themselves American?

Accepted Answer

That would be up to each Texan, and independence does not take the choice away. Identity is personal. A change in which government Texas answers to does not reach into anyone's heart and rewrite how they see themselves. Identity is yours, not the government's to assign How you identify is not issued by a capital. Plenty of people hold layered identities with no contradiction at all. Someone can be Texan, and feel a connection to the broader American story, and be a citizen of an independent Texas, all at once. Independence settles a question of government. It does not hand out or take away the labels people choose for themselves. Those stay with the individual, where they belong. Texas has always carried a double identity, and it works Texans have lived with a strong, distinct identity inside the union for generations. The Lone Star, the pledge to the Texas flag, "Texas, our Texas," a history taught to every Texas schoolchild. People have been proudly Texan and part of the larger country at the same time their whole lives. Independence does not break that habit of mind. If anything, it formalizes what Texans have always felt: that Texas is its own place. Shared history does not disappear when the flag changes Independence does not erase the past. The history, the family ties across state lines, the cultural threads that run through the continent, all of it remains. Britain leaving the European Union did not make British people stop being European in the cultural sense. A Texan who feels American in heritage and values will go right on feeling that way. What changes is the government, not the bloodline or the story. Citizenship and identity are two different things It helps to separate the legal question from the personal one. Citizenship is a legal status. Identity is how you feel and what you claim. They are not the same. An independent Texas would sort out citizenship through the transition, the way new nations always have, and how Texans feel about being American is a separate matter that no treaty touches. On the legal side, the scare stories about losing status are far weaker than people assume, and the live FAQ on citizenship walks through why. Why this question comes up at all People ask this because they have been told independence means renouncing something they love. It does not. You are not required to trade away an identity to govern yourself. The choice to call yourself American, Texan, both, or something else stays exactly where it should: with you. The bottom line Texans could absolutely still consider themselves American if that is how they feel. Independence changes the government, not the person. Identity stays personal, and it stays yours.

Question 10

What does "self-government" really mean here?

Accepted Answer

It means the people who live under a government are the ones who get to choose and shape it. For Texas, self-government means Texans, not a distant capital, making the decisions that govern Texas. That is the whole idea, and it is older than the country itself. The people are the source of the power Self-government starts from a simple premise: political power belongs to the people, and a government is just an instrument they create to serve them. The Texas Constitution puts it plainly in Article 1, Section 2. All political power is inherent in the people. Governments are founded on their authority and instituted for their benefit. And the people have at all times the inalienable right to alter or reform their government as they think best. Self-government is the people exercising that right. Distance is the enemy of accountability Government works best when the governed can reach the people who govern them. The closer a decision is made to the people it affects, the more those people can scrutinize it, influence it, and throw out whoever gets it wrong. A decision made fifteen hundred miles away, by people most Texans cannot name and will never meet, is a decision Texans cannot truly hold to account. Self-government is about closing that distance so accountability is real. It is the right to be wrong on your own terms Self-government does not mean every decision will be perfect. It means the decisions are yours. If a policy fails, Texans can change it, scrap it, and try something else, without asking permission from forty-nine other states or a federal bureaucracy. The freedom to make your own choices, and to correct your own mistakes, is the heart of governing yourself. Right now, Texans do not fully have that. Independence gives it to them. It is the oldest American idea, applied to Texas This is not a radical concept. It is the consent of the governed, the principle the founders staked everything on. Free peoples around the world have claimed it, in Britain, in Scotland's process, across the former Soviet bloc, more than a hundred and forty new nations since 1945. Texas asserting self-government is Texas joining that company, and honoring an idea Texas already wrote into its own founding documents. What it is not Self-government is not one party ruling forever, and it is not government for only the people who agreed. It is government by and for all the people who live here, winners and losers of any given vote alike. The point is not which side wins. The point is that Texans, together, get to decide. The bottom line Self-government here means one thing: Texans decide Texas. The power is the people's, the decisions are made close to home, and the responsibility comes home with them. That is what independence restores.

Question 11

Is TEXIT a left-wing or right-wing idea?

Accepted Answer

Neither. Self-government is not a left or right idea. It is a Texan one. The case for independence does not sit on one side of the partisan map, and the support for it does not either. The argument is not partisan The case for Texas independence is not "your team wins." It is that decisions about Texas should be made in Texas, by Texans, close to the people they affect. That argument does not belong to conservatives or progressives. It belongs to anyone who would rather be governed by people they can hold accountable than by a distant capital they cannot. The principle is the consent of the governed, and that predates the modern left-right divide by centuries. The support already crosses the lines The numbers bear this out. Support for independence has reached levels that no single faction could produce on its own. You cannot poll around 60 percent in a state as varied as Texas by appealing to one wing. That support runs across party lines and includes Texans of every background, from lifelong conservatives to disillusioned progressives to people who have never been political at all. A coalition that broad is, by definition, not the property of one side. We take no position beyond independence itself This movement is deliberately disciplined about staying in its lane. The Texas Nationalist Movement does not take sides on the policy fights that divide left from right. What an independent Texas does about taxes, spending, or any contested issue is for the government Texans elect to decide. Our single ask is that Texans get the right to govern themselves. Loading independence with a partisan policy agenda would be a mistake, and it is one we refuse to make. Scotland is the cautionary tale There is a reason for that discipline. In Scotland's 2014 independence vote, the campaign tied independence to one party's policy program. Opponents pounced, recast the vote as a referendum on that party, and independence lost ground it did not need to lose. The lesson is clear. The moment you turn self-government into a partisan package, you hand your opponents the easiest attack there is. Independence is bigger than any party, and it has to be argued that way. Why opponents push the partisan label anyway Calling independence "right-wing" or "left-wing" is a tactic, not a description. If opponents can pin a partisan label on it, they can write off half the electorate before the conversation even starts. It is easier to dismiss a movement as one side's project than to answer whether Texans deserve a vote on their own future. The label is a way to avoid that question. The bottom line TEXIT is neither left nor right. It is the right of Texans to govern themselves, and that right belongs to every Texan regardless of party. Independence is not a wing of anything. It is a question for all of Texas.

Question 12

Is independence about one issue, or many?

Accepted Answer

Many issues lead people to it, but they all run into one. The many are the symptoms. The one is the cause. Independence is the answer to the single problem underneath all the others: Texans do not govern Texas. People arrive from a hundred different doors Ask Texans why they support independence and you will hear a hundred answers. The federal debt. The border. Property taxes and the cost of living. Federal overreach into Texas business and Texas life. The hundreds of billions of dollars that leave the state every year. Regulation written by people who have never set foot here. Each Texan walks in through the door that matters most to them, and every one of those doors is real. Every door opens into the same room Here is what they have in common. Not one of those problems is something Texas can fully fix while it is governed from Washington. The debt is not Texas's to control. The border policy is not Texas's to set. The share of decisions that route through the federal government is not Texas's to reroute. Behind every specific grievance is the same structural fact: the decisions that shape Texas are not made by Texans. That is the one issue. Everything else grows out of it. That is why independence, and not reform, is the answer If the problem were any single policy, you could chase a single fix. But you cannot reform your way out of a structure in which Texas is permanently outvoted, sending a handful of voices into a federal government designed to be run by majorities from everywhere else. Independence is not one more item on a list of demands. It is the thing that finally puts Texans in a position to address the whole list themselves. One issue to win, many to decide later This is also why the movement keeps the question narrow. The referendum is about one thing: should Texas govern itself. What an independent Texas then does about taxes, the border, or anything else is for Texans to decide afterward, through their own government. Folding every downstream policy into the independence question is the trap that sank Scotland's vote. We win on the one question first. The many questions come after, and they come home to Texas. The bottom line Independence is about many issues and one issue at the same time. Many problems bring Texans to the table. They all trace back to a single cause: Texas is governed from somewhere else. Independence is how Texas fixes the cause, and earns the right to decide the rest for itself.

Question 13

What is the single best argument for Texas independence?

Accepted Answer

That Texans, and only Texans, should decide the future of Texas. Every other argument, the money, the debt, the border, the overreach, is downstream of that one. Self-government is the case. The rest is evidence. The principle is the consent of the governed Strip the argument to its core and it is the oldest idea in free society: a government draws its just authority from the consent of the people it governs. Texas does not fully have that. The decisions that shape life here are made, in large part, by a federal government that Texans cannot hold to account and are permanently outvoted within. Independence corrects that. It puts the people of Texas in charge of the government of Texas. That is the whole case, and it is enough. Every other reason is proof of the same point The hundreds of billions that leave the state. The federal debt Texans never voted for. The border Texas cannot secure on its own terms. The flood of regulation written elsewhere. These are not separate arguments. They are demonstrations of what happens when a people do not govern themselves. They are the receipts. They show the cost of the missing principle, and they all point back to it. It is a positive case, not just a complaint This is not only about what is wrong. It is about what becomes possible. Self-government means Texas can build a government in its own image, sized to its own needs, answerable to its own people. It means the freedom to try, to fail, to fix, and to try again, on Texan terms. The best argument for independence is not anger at Washington. It is the opportunity of self-rule, the chance Texans have never actually had. Texas is uniquely able to make the principle real Self-government is the right of any people, but Texas is unusually equipped to exercise it. Texas already runs its own power grid, fields its own military department, and operates a state-level agency for nearly every function of a nation. Texas is structurally capable of doing what nations do. So the principle is not aspirational here. It is within reach. Texas can govern itself because, in most of the ways that count, it already does. Why it all reduces to one sentence The clearest way to see it is to ask the question the other way around. If Texas were already an independent nation, knowing what we know about how it is governed now, would Texans vote to hand that power back to Washington? Put like that, the answer is obvious, and it reveals the real argument. Texas should govern Texas. Everything else follows. The bottom line The single best argument is self-government: the right of Texans to decide their own future. Every other reason is a symptom of not having it. Independence is how Texas gets it.

Question 14

What is the strongest argument against it, and how do you answer it?

Accepted Answer

The strongest honest argument against independence is uncertainty: that leaving is a hard, complicated undertaking with real risk, and that staying is the known quantity. We take that seriously, because it is the only objection made in good faith. And it has a good answer. State the objection at its strongest The fair version goes like this. Texas is deeply woven into the United States, in trade, in currency, in benefits, in defense. Untangling that is genuinely complex. Independence means transition, negotiation, and a period where some things are still being worked out. Change carries risk, and the status quo, whatever its faults, is familiar. That is a real argument, and we will not pretend it away with a slogan. Hard is not the same as impossible The honest response is that difficulty is not a reason to stay, it is a task to be managed. Since 1945, more than a hundred and forty new nations have made the transition to self-government. Britain did it. Scotland built a credible path to it. Fifteen nations emerged from the Soviet Union, out of a tighter and more centralized union than this one, and they made it. Texas is not less capable than those nations. It is more capable than most. The work is real, and it is work that has been done many times before. The tools to manage it already exist There is almost no part of the Texas relationship with the United States that cannot be handled with tools already on the shelf. Texas has a state-level agency for nearly every federal function. Trade can run on a free-trade agreement or existing World Trade Organization schedules. Currency can stay the dollar through the transition. Benefits people earned are protected through the same totalization agreements dozens of nations already use. Uncertainty is not the same as the unknown. The mechanisms are known, tested, and in use around the world. The status quo carries its own risk, and it is rising The objection assumes staying is the safe choice. It is not a free one. Staying means continuing to send hundreds of billions to Washington, continuing to carry a share of a federal debt Texans never voted for, and continuing to be governed by decisions made elsewhere. The risks of leaving are real but finite and one-time. The costs of staying are real and compounding, year after year. A fair comparison weighs both columns, not just one. The honest close: we do not claim certainty, we claim it is worth it We do not tell Texans that independence is risk-free, because that would be a lie, and Texans can smell one. We tell them the difficulties are real, well understood, and manageable, that other nations have crossed this bridge, and that the prize on the other side, governing themselves at last, is worth the work. An argument that survives its own strongest objection is a strong argument. This one does. The bottom line The best case against independence is that it is hard and uncertain. The answer is that hard is not impossible, the tools already exist, the status quo carries its own growing risk, and self-government is worth the effort. We meet the objection honestly, and we still come out the other side.

Question 15

If Texas were already independent today, would you vote to join the union?

Accepted Answer

No. And that question is the fastest way to see the whole argument clearly. Flip the situation around, and the case for independence stops being abstract and becomes obvious. The question that cuts through everything Imagine Texas is already a free and independent nation. It runs its own affairs, keeps the money its people earn, makes its own laws, and answers only to Texans. Now someone proposes that Texas give all of that up: join a union of fifty, send hundreds of billions of dollars a year to a distant capital, take on a share of a multi-trillion-dollar debt it had no part in creating, surrender control of its border and much of its policy, and accept being permanently outvoted by majorities from everywhere else. Would you vote yes? Almost no one would. It exposes the status quo as a choice, not a default Most people treat the current arrangement as just the way things are, a fixed background nobody picked. The flipped question breaks that spell. It shows that staying in the union is a choice, the same as leaving is, and it forces an honest look at the terms of that choice on their own merits. When you have to actively argue for joining, rather than just accepting it as given, the deal looks very different. No one would sign up for this deal fresh Lay the terms out plainly and they sell themselves backward. Hand over a large slice of your tax revenue, much of which never returns. Inherit a debt you did not vote for. Accept rules written by people far away who do not answer to you. Trade direct control of your own future for a handful of votes in a body designed to be run by others. No independent nation in its right mind would volunteer for that. Yet that is the arrangement Texas is being told it must never question. It reframes independence as the normal choice This is why the flipped question matters so much. It reveals that independence is not the radical option. Self-government is the normal, default condition of a capable people. Staying in a union on these terms is the thing that needs justifying. Texas is not being asked to do something strange. It is being asked whether it would freely choose its current situation, and the honest answer tells you everything. The bottom line If Texas were independent today, knowing what we know about how it is governed now, no one would vote to join the union on these terms. That single realization is the heart of the case. Texas should govern itself, because given a free choice, that is plainly what Texans would choose.

Question 16

Why Texas and not some other state?

Accepted Answer

Because Texas is the one state that already does everything a nation does, at the scale of a nation, with the history of a nation. No other state comes close on all three at once. Texas is already the size of a country Most states could not stand alone, and they know it. Texas is not most states. If Texas were independent today, it would have the world's eighth-largest economy, about $2.77 trillion, ahead of Canada, Russia, and South Korea. Not eighth among the states. Eighth among the nations on Earth. Thirty-one million people live here, more than in most countries that hold seats at the United Nations. The question for almost any other state is whether it could survive on its own. For Texas, the size answers that before it is even asked. Texas already runs the machinery of a nation Texas does not have to build a government from scratch, because it already has one. It has its own power grid. It has its own military in the Texas Military Department. It has a state-level agency for nearly every function the federal government performs. It is the largest energy producer in the union and a net exporter to the world. The institutions a free Texas would need are not blueprints on a drawing board. They are open for business right now, staffed by Texans, paid for by Texans. Texas was a nation before it was a state This is the part no other state can claim. Texas stood as a free and independent republic for nine years before it joined the union in 1845, with its own president, its own congress, its own army, its own courts, and treaties with other nations. The Texas Constitution still opens by calling Texas "a free and independent State." Independence for Texas is not an invention. It is a restoration of something Texas already was and already exercised. Texas has the identity to carry it A nation is more than a balance sheet. It is a people who know who they are. Texans have a flag they salute, a pledge they recite, an anthem, a history taught to every seventh grader, and an identity that does not need Washington's permission to exist. People around the world already think of Texas as a place apart. That shared sense of self is the hardest thing for any independence movement to manufacture, and Texas never had to. It was here first. This is not a knock on anyone else The case for Texas is not an argument that other states are lesser. It is an argument about readiness. Several states have their own independence conversations, and those are theirs to have. Texas simply happens to be furthest down the road: largest economy, deepest institutions, and a living memory of self-government. When people ask "why Texas," the honest answer is that Texas is the state where the pieces are already in place. The bottom line Other states can debate whether they could go it alone. Texas does not have to. It already has the economy, the institutions, and the history of a nation. The only thing missing is the vote.

Question 17

Could other states leave too if Texas did?

Accepted Answer

Possibly, and that is their right, not our problem to solve. Texas independence does not depend on any other state following, and it does not require any other state to stay. Each state's future is for its own people to decide. Self-government is a principle, not a Texas-only privilege The whole foundation of independence is that a people have the right to govern themselves. That principle does not stop at the Red River. If the people of another state look at Washington and decide they want the same direct vote on their own future, the same logic that supports Texas supports them. We are not claiming a special exemption from the rules of self-determination. We are exercising the rights everyone has, and we would not deny them to anyone else. Independence movements already exist in other places This is not hypothetical. There are active self-determination efforts in other states and in other countries on this continent and around the world. The number of self-governing nations has grown steadily for eighty years, with more than 140 new ones since 1945 alone. The idea that lines on a map are permanent is a modern superstition. People reconsider how they are governed all the time, peacefully, through the ballot. Texas would be part of that long story, not a strange exception to it. Texas does not wait for permission or company Some people argue Texas should lead a coalition of states out together, or hold back until others are ready. We reject the wait. Texas independence requires the agreement of exactly one group of people: Texans. It does not require California, or any other state, to come along. Tying Texas to the timeline of forty-nine other states would be handing our future to people who do not live here. The point of independence is the opposite of that. A free Texas makes the path visible for others Here is the likeliest effect. When Texas shows that a peaceful, lawful, democratic exit can be done, it stops being theoretical for everyone else. People learn most from what they can see work. A successful Texas would not force anyone's hand, but it would prove the door exists. What other states do with that is up to them, and it changes nothing about whether Texas should walk through it. The bottom line Other states may follow, and they would be within their rights. But Texas does not lead a parade and it does not wait for one. We decide Texas. They decide them.

Question 18

What makes Texas uniquely able to stand on its own?

Accepted Answer

Scale and self-sufficiency. Texas is already the size of a country, it already pays the full cost of its own government, and it is lightly governed for its wealth, which means it has room to spare. Very few places on Earth can say all three. Texas is already the size of a country Ask whether an economy this size can run a national government, and the size answers for you. Texas GDP reached $2.77 trillion in 2024. If Texas were a country, that would rank eighth on the planet, ahead of Italy, Canada, Russia, South Korea, and Australia. Countries far smaller than Texas run complete, prosperous, sovereign governments right now, with full militaries and diplomatic corps, on a fraction of what Texas produces. This is not a marginal entity wondering whether it can afford a flag. It out-produces most of the nations it would join as a peer. Texas already pays its own way The numbers close, and they close with margin. Texans pay about $453 billion a year to the two governments that tax them, Washington and Austin. Governing Texas, the whole job, defense, every agency and the people who staff it, every grant and contract, plus the entire existing state budget, costs about $295 billion a year. That is roughly $14,500 paid against about $9,400 in cost for every Texan. The revenue Texans already generate covers the full cost of their government, without raising anyone's taxes by a cent. The honest, conservative finding is self-sufficiency: Texas funds the government it runs, and helps foot the bill for other states besides. Texas is lightly governed for its wealth Here is the number that settles the scale question. Developed democracies spend somewhere between 38 and 44 percent of their economy on all levels of government combined. The total government footprint inside Texas, federal and state together, runs closer to 19 percent. Texas is not stretched thin. It is lightly governed for how wealthy it is, which means enormous fiscal headroom to fund whatever a sovereign Texas chose to fund. Most countries operate with far less room than that. Texas already runs the machinery Independence does not conjure a government out of nothing. Texas already educates its children through its own agency and roughly 1,200 school districts. It already runs its own environmental regulator. It already builds its own highways and conducts its own elections, county by county. It already co-administers Medicaid and funds a large share of it from the state treasury. The agencies, the workforce, and most of the funding are already in Austin. What independence adds is the narrow slice Washington still controls, a central bank, a foreign ministry, a customs service, and a few regulators, and comparable nations run those for about $5 to $15 billion a year, much of it self-funding through fees. That is one to three percent of Texas revenue, well inside the headroom. Texas brings its own resources to the table Self-sufficiency is not just an accounting result. It rests on real assets. Texas produces about 43 percent of the union's crude oil and 27 percent of its natural gas. It is the largest wind-power producer in the union by more than two to one. It runs eight of the top twenty-five deepwater ports, exports to more than 200 countries, and operates the largest U.S. port by foreign tonnage. A country with energy, ports, food, and a diversified industrial base is not a country that has to hope it can make it. It is one that already does, under someone else's flag. The bottom line Texas is uniquely able because it is already a country in everything but name: the eighth-largest economy on Earth, paying the full cost of its own government with margin, lightly governed and rich in resources. The capacity is not a question. The only open question is whether Texans get to vote on using it.

Question 19

What makes this different from other secession movements?

Accepted Answer

Almost everything. The word "secession" gets attached to a lot of different things, and most of them have nothing to do with what Texas is doing. Texas independence is peaceful, lawful, democratic, and built on the consent of the governed. That is the opposite of the movements people picture when they hear the word. This runs through the ballot box, not the battlefield The movements that fail, and the ones that earn the ugly reputation, are the ones built on force. Texas independence is built on a vote. The whole plan runs through the Texas Legislature and then through a free, fair, statewide referendum of every eligible Texan. There is no army, no insurrection, no seizure of anything. The closest real-world model is not a war. It is Britain leaving the European Union: a question put to the people, answered at the ballot box, and negotiated afterward like adults. As the saying goes, you have to have the vote to have the conversation. This is not 1861, and the difference is everything The secession people reach for in their minds is the Confederacy, and that comparison fails on every point. The secession of 1861 was bound up with slavery and carried out by conventions, not by a vote of the whole people. Texas independence today rejects all of it. It is decided by a free and open referendum of every eligible Texan, of every race and background, and it stands on the consent of the governed. One was a war to preserve human bondage. The other is a peaceful vote to secure human freedom. Pointing at 1865 to answer a 2026 question is a category error. This is a coalition, not a faction Failed movements are usually narrow, the project of one party, one region, or one grievance. Texas independence is broad. Polling has shown roughly 60 percent of Texans supporting independence and about two-thirds wanting a vote on it. You do not reach those numbers with a fringe. That coalition crosses party lines, racial lines, and regional lines, from lifelong conservatives to disillusioned progressives to people who have never been political at all. The case is not "your team wins." It is that decisions about Texas should be made in Texas. That argument lands everywhere because it belongs to everyone. This rests on restoration, not invention Many independence efforts are trying to create a nation that never existed. Texas already was one. It stood as a free and independent republic for nine years before joining the union, with its own government and treaties, and the Texas Constitution still calls it "a free and independent State." Texas is not inventing sovereignty. It is reasserting a status it already held and already exercised. That history gives the movement a foundation almost no other has. The modern world keeps doing this peacefully Far from being a doomed oddity, peaceful self-determination is one of the defining features of the modern world. Scotland voted on it. Quebec voted on it twice. Czechoslovakia split cleanly into two prosperous countries in about six months. More than 140 new self-governing nations have emerged since 1945. The notion that "secession always fails" only holds if you count the wars and ignore the votes. Texas is firmly on the side of the votes. The bottom line This is different because it is peaceful where others were violent, democratic where others were imposed, broad where others were narrow, and a restoration where others were inventions. The smear works by collapsing all of that into one dirty word. The facts pull it back apart.

Question 20

Why not just win elections instead?

Accepted Answer

Because Texans already win elections, and it changes the structure not at all. Texas sends one of the most reliably conservative delegations in the union to Washington, year after year, and Washington grows anyway. Winning elections inside a system built to outvote you does not give you the system. It gives you a seat at a table where you are permanently outnumbered. The math of the federal system does not close Texas sends 38 members to the U.S. House and 2 to the Senate. That is 38 of 435 and 2 of 100. Even when every Texan in Washington votes as one bloc, Texas is outnumbered roughly ten to one in a body designed to be run by majorities from everywhere else. You can win every Texas race in a landslide and still lose every vote that matters, because the other side simply has more chairs. Winning your own elections does not change how many chairs there are. The other side has no reason to vote power back to Texas Reform through elections means convincing the rest of the country to hand power back to Texas voluntarily. Two-thirds of the states benefit from the current arrangement. Over half the population benefits from the federal status quo. People do not vote to give away an advantage. Asking them to is not a strategy, it is a wish. The votes to undo the system are not there, and they are not coming, because the people who hold them like the system the way it is. We have run this experiment for decades This is not a guess about the future. It is a report on the past. Texans have voted, organized, donated, and sent principled people to Washington for generations. Through all of it the federal government got bigger, the debt climbed past anything anyone plans to repay, and the rules imposed on Texas multiplied. The strategy of "just win elections" has been running at full strength the entire time. The results are in, and they do not improve by doing the same thing harder. Independence is the one election that actually decides it Here is the irony. Independence is won at the ballot box too. The difference is which ballot. A federal election asks Texans to win a contest against the rest of the country, on terms the rest of the country sets. An independence referendum asks only Texans, and only requires a majority of Texans. It is the one vote where Texans are not outnumbered, because it is the one vote that is theirs alone. That is why it is winnable when the others are not. This is not instead of voting. It is voting that counts We are not telling anyone to stop participating. Vote in every election. Hold every office you can. But understand the ceiling. Inside the federal system, the best Texas can do is slow the losses. Independence is the move that changes the board instead of rearranging the pieces on it. One is damage control. The other is a decision. The bottom line Texas already wins its elections and stays outvoted in Washington. The only election where Texans are not outnumbered is the one on their own independence. That is the vote worth fighting for, because it is the only one that actually settles who governs Texas.

Question 21

Isn't reforming Washington more realistic than independence?

Accepted Answer

It sounds more realistic. It is not. Reforming Washington requires the agreement of almost everyone. Independence requires the agreement of only Texans. When you count who has to say yes, independence is the realistic option and reform is the long shot. Realistic means asking who has to agree Test any plan by counting the people who have to go along with it. To reform Washington, Texas needs the cooperation of California, New York, forty-six other states, both chambers of Congress, the federal bureaucracy, and the courts. To win independence, Texas needs a majority of Texans. One of those coalitions is within reach. The other has never once assembled to give power back. The plan that needs fewer people to agree is the plan with the better odds, and that is independence by a wide margin. The "realistic" plan has been failing in plain sight Reform is not the safe, proven option. It is the option that has been tried for decades and has not delivered. Texans have voted, sued, and legislated for a generation, and Washington has grown larger every year, the debt has climbed past forty trillion dollars, and the rules on Texas have multiplied. A strategy that has been run at full effort for fifty years without working is not the realistic one. It is the comfortable one, which is a very different thing. Even the cleanest reform tool does not work Some pin their hopes on a convention to amend the U.S. Constitution. Set aside the real risk of a runaway convention. Even a perfect amendment is only words on paper, and Washington has spent a century reading plain constitutional words to mean their opposite. The Tenth Amendment is already in the Constitution. It already says powers not given to Washington belong to the states and the people. It has not restrained Washington. Adding more text to a document Washington already ignores is not a realistic plan. It is the same plan with extra steps. You cannot fix the fire by feeding it more fuel Every reform offered inside the federal system has to travel through the federal system, which means more money to Washington, more dependence on Washington, and more power concentrated in Washington. Asking the federal government to limit itself is asking the fire to put itself out. It will take the fuel and grow. That is not pessimism. It is what every honest attempt has run into. Independence is the plan you can actually execute The reason independence is realistic is that it does not depend on anyone changing their mind in Washington. It depends on a vote of the people of Texas, the one lever Texans can actually pull without permission from anyone else. There is a clear, lawful path: a bill through the Texas Legislature, then a referendum, then negotiation. Every step is something Texans can do themselves. "Realistic" should mean "achievable by the people who want it," and by that test, independence wins. The bottom line Reforming Washington asks the whole country to change. Independence asks only Texans to decide. The truly unrealistic position is believing that doing the same thing for another fifty years will finally produce a different result. Independence is the realistic option. It always has been.

Question 22

Why do you believe the system can't be fixed from the inside?

Accepted Answer

Because the problem is not a flaw in the system that the system would let you repair. The problem is the system working exactly as the people who benefit from it intend. You cannot fix something from the inside when the inside is the thing that is broken, and when it is designed to protect itself from the very fix you are proposing. The structure is built to outvote Texas, by design Start with the arithmetic, because it is not an accident. Texas holds 38 of 435 seats in the U.S. House and 2 of 100 in the Senate. The system runs on majorities assembled from everywhere else, which means Texas is structurally outnumbered no matter how it votes. Fixing that from the inside would require the majority to vote away its own majority. Systems do not do that. The people who hold the power are the people you would need permission from to take it back, and they have every reason to say no. The bureaucracy is built to survive reform Beneath the elected layer sits a permanent one that no election touches. Roughly 2.5 million unelected federal employees, more than 400 agencies, and over a million individual regulatory restrictions do not change when the voters do. This machinery outlasts every administration and absorbs every reform. You can change the people at the top and leave the structure that actually governs untouched, which is precisely what reform has done. Reform has been tried, hard, and it was beaten This is not theory, it is recent history. Reform movements have come to Washington from both the right and the left promising to shrink or remake the federal apparatus, and the apparatus has outlasted every one of them, absorbing the staff and the energy and carrying on. The system does not just resist reform passively. It has the permanence, the budget, and the legal inertia to wait any reformer out. An institution that durable is not one you fix by asking it nicely. Every fix runs through the thing being fixed The deeper trap is procedural. Every reform offered inside the federal system has to be approved by the federal system. More money flows to Washington, more dependence on Washington, more power concentrated in Washington, all in the name of limiting Washington. It is asking the fire to put itself out, and the fire will take the fuel and grow. Even the Constitution's clearest limit on federal power, the Tenth Amendment, already sits in the text and has not restrained anything. The words are already there. Washington reads them to mean their opposite. Independence does not need the system's permission This is the whole reason independence works where reform does not. Reform asks the broken thing to repair itself, and it can refuse, and it does. Independence does not go through Washington at all. It runs through the Texas Legislature and a vote of the people of Texas, which is the one decision the federal system does not get a veto over. You stop trying to fix a machine designed to resist you, and you build a new one accountable to the people it serves. The bottom line The system cannot be fixed from the inside because it is built to outvote Texas, staffed to outlast reform, and proven willing to fight back. Independence is the answer that does not ask the problem for permission to solve it.

Question 23

Why now? What changed that makes this urgent?

Accepted Answer

Two things changed at once. Texas grew into the eighth-largest economy on Earth, and Washington ran its debt up toward forty trillion dollars. The case for independence got stronger and the cost of waiting got higher, at the same time. That is what makes now different from twenty years ago. The debt crossed into territory no one plans to repay The federal debt has climbed toward forty trillion dollars, and it is not slowing. Washington now spends about $1.37 for every dollar it collects, borrowing the difference. Texans carry a share of that, and the share is not abstract. Texans send roughly $72 billion a year just in interest on a debt they never voted for, plus about $150 billion a year in fresh borrowing piled on top. The interest alone has more than doubled since 2019 and now rivals every dollar of defense spending in the state. Every year inside the union, that bill gets bigger. Waiting is not free. Waiting is the expensive option. The dollar is losing value faster, and Texans pay the difference The same borrowing shows up a second time, as inflation. The dollar has lost about 22 percent of its purchasing power since 2020 alone. In a single bad year, the year ending in early 2022, the erosion of value on Texans' bank deposits alone ran somewhere around $130 to $145 billion. That is roughly the size of the entire annual dividend of independence, taken back invisibly, with no vote and no way to opt out. The longer Texas stays tied to a currency built to inflate, the more of that quiet tax Texans pay. Texas has never been more capable of standing alone While the cost of staying rose, the capacity to leave reached an all-time high. Texas is now the world's eighth-largest economy at $2.77 trillion. It pays the full cost of its own government with margin to spare. It leads the union in energy and in people moving in. Twenty years ago the "can Texas make it" question at least had to be argued. Today the size answers it. The window is not closing on Texas's ability. It is wide open, and it has never been wider. Public support has reached the level where this is real Urgency is also about opportunity. Independence is no longer a fringe idea. Polling has shown roughly 60 percent of Texans supporting independence and about two-thirds wanting a vote on it. The Republican Party of Texas has adopted planks affirming the right and calling for a referendum. Hundreds of thousands of Texans are on record. A movement that was once a conversation is now a coalition with the numbers to win. That alignment of support does not last forever, and it is here now. Most tyrannies survive because people move too late There is a cost to treating this as something for later. G.K. Chesterton observed that most tyrannies were possible because men moved too late. Every year Texas waits, the debt grows, the dollar shrinks, and more of Texans' money and freedom drains away to a government that hands back less per dollar than it gives the average state. The conditions that make independence both necessary and achievable are lined up right now. The question is not whether Texas can afford to act. It is how much longer it can afford not to. The bottom line Now, because the cost of staying has never been higher and the capacity to leave has never been greater, and both arrived at the same time. The longer Texas waits, the more it pays for a problem a vote could end.

Question 24

Isn't this a fantasy that distracts from real political work?

Accepted Answer

No. It is the most realistic political work there is, because it is the only work aimed at a problem Texans can actually solve. What people call "real political work" is too often the work of managing a decline you cannot vote your way out of. Independence is the one effort with a path to an actual win. There is a concrete plan, not a daydream A fantasy has no mechanism. This has a detailed one. The path runs in clear moves: build the capacity, get the referendum bill through the Texas Legislature, win the vote with a simple majority, then negotiate the transition. There is a model bill, the Texas Independence Referendum Act, already drafted and already filed in the Legislature. There is a known vote threshold, fifty percent plus one. There is a turnout math that has been worked out. None of that is a wish. It is a plan with steps you can name, and every step is something Texans can do themselves. The numbers describe a movement, not a fringe Fantasies do not poll at 60 percent. Roughly 60 percent of Texans have told pollsters they support independence, and about two-thirds want a vote on it. Hundreds of thousands of Texans are on record. The Republican Party of Texas has adopted planks affirming the right to leave and calling for a referendum. You can argue about timing, but you cannot call something a fantasy when a majority of the state already agrees with it. The fringe position, statistically, is the one that says the people should not get to vote. It does not distract from local work. It rescues it Here is what the "distraction" charge misses. Texans pour enormous energy into state and local fights, and then watch Washington override the results with a regulation, a mandate, or a court order. Independence is not a detour away from that work. It is the thing that finally makes it stick, by removing the outside power that keeps undoing it. Far from distracting from real political work, independence is what gives real political work a permanent home. Doing the "realistic" thing forever is the actual fantasy Turn the accusation around. The genuinely unrealistic belief is that doing the same thing for another fifty years, voting in a system where Texas is outnumbered ten to one, will somehow produce a different result. That is the fantasy: that the federal government will one day reform itself if Texans are just patient enough. Independence is the clear-eyed alternative. It stops betting on a miracle in Washington and starts working on a decision Texans can actually make. The world keeps proving it is possible Independence is not make-believe anywhere else, so it is not make-believe here. Britain voted to leave the European Union and did it. Scotland and Quebec held votes on it. Czechoslovakia divided into two prosperous countries in about six months. More than 140 new self-governing nations have emerged since 1945. Peaceful self-determination is one of the most ordinary political events of the modern age. The only thing that would make it a fantasy is refusing to try. The bottom line This is not a distraction from real work. It is the realest work on the table, the only effort pointed at a problem Texans can solve by themselves, with a plan, a majority, and a world full of proof that it can be done. The fantasy is believing patience will fix Washington.

Question 25

What is TEXIT?

Accepted Answer

TEXIT is the campaign to restore Texas independence. It is the effort to give Texans what they have never actually had: a direct vote on whether Texas should govern itself again as a free and independent nation, rather than be governed from Washington. Where the word comes from TEXIT is shorthand for "Texas Exit." It follows the same naming as Brexit, the word the world used when Britain voted to leave the European Union. The shorthand stuck because the idea is that simple. Britain left a political union it had outgrown. Texas can do the same. TEXIT is a process, not a single event The most common misunderstanding is that TEXIT is one dramatic moment, a signature on a document or a declaration on the Capitol steps. It is not. Independence is a state of being, and it is reached through a process. That process begins with a free, fair, statewide referendum, the formal expression of the will of the people of Texas. The vote is the starting gun, not the finish line. After it comes negotiation and transition, conducted the way every modern nation conducts its affairs. The legal path runs through the ballot box There are no secret clauses and no shortcuts. Where there is a legal path, it must be followed, and that path runs through the Texas Legislature and then through the people. A bill puts the question on the ballot. Texans answer it. Under Article 1, Section 2 of the Texas Constitution, all political power is inherent in the people, and they have at all times the inalienable right to alter or reform their government as they think expedient. TEXIT simply asks the Legislature to let the people exercise that right. Why it matters For generations, the decisions that shape life in Texas have drifted further from Texas. Texans send hundreds of billions of dollars to Washington every year and watch a shrinking share return with strings attached. The federal government grows, the debt grows, and the distance between the governed and those who govern grows with it. TEXIT is the answer that matches the size of the problem. It does not ask Washington to behave. It returns the decision to the people who have to live with it. What TEXIT is not TEXIT is not a protest, a stunt, or a threat. It is not anti-American, and it is not a call for conflict. It is a peaceful, legal, democratic process, the same kind of self-determination vote that free people have used around the world. The Texas Nationalist Movement leads it, and everything the movement does is built to win that vote and secure the result. The bottom line TEXIT means one thing above all else. Texans, not Washington, decide the future of Texas.

Question 26

Why do you say "independence" instead of "secession"?

Accepted Answer

Because "independence" is the accurate word, and "secession" is a word chosen by our opponents to make an ordinary act of self-government sound like a crime. The words describe different things Secession is a word weighted down by 1861. It conjures the Confederacy, war, and a cause Texans rightly reject. Independence is the word the world uses when a people choose to govern themselves. Scotland held an independence referendum. Britain pursued independence from the European Union. The 140-plus nations that have become self-governing since 1945 declared independence. None of them called it secession, because secession is not what self-determination is. Texas is restoring something, not inventing it Texas was a free and independent nation before it joined the union in 1845. The language the Texas Nationalist Movement has always used is that Texas would "reassert its status as an independent nation." That is restoration, not rebellion. The Texas Constitution itself, in Article 1, Section 1, still describes Texas as "a free and independent State." We are talking about reclaiming sovereignty Texas already exercised, not creating something from nothing. The framing is a trap, and we decline it When opponents insist on the word "secession," they are not making a legal point. They are trying to attach the worst chapter of American history to a peaceful vote. Accepting their word means accepting their frame. So we use the precise term. Texas independence. It is honest, it is historically correct, and it refuses the smear built into the alternative. Why you will still see "secede" in some of our answers In a handful of places, including parts of this FAQ, you will see the words "secede" and "secession." That is deliberate and narrow. When someone types "can Texas legally secede" into a search engine, or throws "the Civil War settled secession" across a dinner table, we have to meet them in their own words before we reframe. Speaking the skeptic's language to win the skeptic is not the same as adopting it as our own. The bottom line This is independence. It is the same right exercised by free people the world over, and Texans have exercised it before.

Question 27

Why not just fix the federal government instead of leaving?

Accepted Answer

Because Texans have spent generations trying, and the results are in. The federal government is not broken in a way Texas can fix from the inside. It is working exactly as those who benefit from it intend. Texas has already tried everything else Texans have voted. Texans have sued. Texas has sent principled people to Washington, passed resolutions, filed lawsuits that reached the Supreme Court, and built one of the most reliably conservative congressional delegations in the union. And through all of it, the federal government grew larger, the debt climbed past levels no one can seriously plan to repay, and the rules imposed on Texas multiplied. The strategy of reform has been run for decades. It did not work. It cannot work, and the reason is structural. The math of reform does not close Texas sends 38 members to the U.S. House and 2 to the Senate. That is 38 of 435 and 2 of 100. Even when every Texan in Washington votes as one, Texas is outnumbered roughly ten to one in a body designed to be governed by majorities from everywhere else. Reform means convincing California, New York, and the federal bureaucracy to hand power back to Texas voluntarily. They have no reason to, and they never will. You cannot vote your way out of a system in which you are permanently outvoted. You cannot fix the fire by feeding it more fuel Every "fix" offered inside the federal system requires going through the federal system, which means more money to Washington, more dependence on Washington, and more power concentrated in Washington. Asking the federal government to limit itself is asking the fire to put itself out. It will take the fuel and grow. A convention will not save Texas either Some good people pin their hopes on a convention to amend the U.S. Constitution. Set aside the very real risk of a runaway convention. Even a perfect amendment is only words on paper, and the federal government has spent a century reading plain constitutional words to mean their opposite. The Tenth Amendment is already in the Constitution. It has not restrained Washington. Adding more text to a document Washington already ignores is not a plan. Independence is the realistic option, not the radical one The truly unrealistic position is to believe that doing the same thing for another fifty years will produce a different result. Independence is the option that actually puts the decision in reach, because it requires the agreement of only one group of people: Texans. We do not need permission from forty-nine other states or from the federal bureaucracy. We need a vote of the people of Texas. That is the one lever Texans can actually pull. The bottom line Reforming Washington asks everyone else to change. Independence asks only Texans to decide. One of those is within our power. The other never has been.

Question 28

How do we get a vote on TEXIT?

Accepted Answer

There is no existing statutory framework in Texas law specifically for conducting an independence referendum. There doesn't have to be. All the pieces are currently there. They just have to be assembled in the one place where it matters: the Texas Legislature. This comes in the form of a standard bill. The Texas Legislature is a true part-time legislative body. They meet for exactly 140 days every other year unless called into a special session by the governor. In that 140-day period, they file and debate legislation over nearly every conceivable issue that impacts Texans. The Legislature files way more bills than ever get passed and it takes considerable work ahead of a legislative session to get enough momentum behind a bill to even give it a shot at passage. The process begins by having the bill filed by a member of the House or Senate, plus a sponsor in the chamber opposite from the member who initially filed it. From there, it gets its first reading on the floor and is assigned to a committee. The committee chair schedules it for a hearing; sometimes they don't if they are opposed to the bill, and it dies when the session ends. But, if the committee hears the bill and it is voted out of committee, it gets scheduled to be heard on the floor, or it doesn't. The House and Senate each have their own rules for scheduling bills for the floor and, as has been the case in the Texas House, the chair of the Calendars Committee can use his or her power to kill a bill by refusing to move it along. However, if it moves along, it gets debated on the floor and is then voted on. If it passes in one chamber, it moves to the other chamber and the process repeats until the bill is passed by both houses. At the end of the day, what any bill needs to pass is the support of 76 members of the Texas House, 16 members of the Texas Senate, the lieutenant governor, and the governor. From there it moves to the governor's desk for his signature or a veto. While this may seem overly complicated, I assure you that it is actually more so. Yet every session the Texas Legislature manages to pass well over one thousand bills into law.

Question 29

How do we start the TEXIT process?

Accepted Answer

The entire issue will literally come down to a question, two choices, and the decision made by the people of Texas. In reality, the vote itself isn't the exciting part. What comes before and after it is. There is one fundamental and immutable truth about the Texit process. Where there is a legal path to Texit, it must be followed. There are no secret processes or hidden clauses in the old documents that can be used. There are no shortcuts. It boils down to what laws and processes are on the books right now and how they can be applied to resolving the issue of Texas independence. That means it absolutely, at a minimum, must culminate in a free and fair vote of the people of Texas, a referendum. The current Texas Constitution, while not explicitly establishing a framework for referenda, definitely reserves the right to make fundamental changes to how Texas is governed exclusively to the people. Article 1 Section 2 lays the right and responsibility squarely at the feet of the people of Texas to make fundamental changes in governance. In every example cited in this work where a Western-style democratic society has achieved independence, the people, in their capacity as a body politic, have had the final say on their political destiny. In every instance, the very act of a referendum has clarified the political realities, pitting the people who want their voices heard against a political class who believe that they are, in fact, the ruling class in a de facto oligarchy. The very process of even attempting to obtain a referendum makes clear those battle lines and, more specifically, the people and institutions on each side. Those who oppose even having a referendum are, in reality, opposing the foundational principles of Texas and the United States, the people, and the democratic cornerstone of Western civilization. In short, anyone opposed to having a referendum on the issue of self-government is un-Texan and un-American.

Question 30

Can the Texas Legislature call a referendum on Texas independence?

Accepted Answer

There has been some discussion over the issue of whether or not the Texas Legislature has the legal authority to call for a referendum on Texas leaving the Union. It is a worthwhile discussion and signals some progress in the debate over the issue of Texas independence. The short answer is 'absolutely'. Whether or not the Texas Legislature possesses this power is answered in a very similar way as the question of the legality of Texas independence in general. The very first words of the Texas Constitution lay the foundation. Art. 1, Sec. 1. FREEDOM AND SOVEREIGNTY OF STATE. Texas is a free and independent State, subject only to the Constitution of the United States, and the maintenance of our free institutions and the perpetuity of the Union depend upon the preservation of the right of local self-government, unimpaired to all the States It is in Article 1 Section 1 that we find the guidestones to the legality of a referendum. Because of this clause, we look first to the Constitution of the United States. In that document, we find nothing whatsoever forbidding a State Legislature for initiating a vote on their independence, forbidding the people of a State from participating in that vote, or preventing action based on that vote. In this matter the U.S. Constitution is silent. Therefore, we must look at the 10th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. United States Constitution, 10th Amendment: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. Since the U.S. Constitution is silent on the matter, the issue is solely a State matter. This was reaffirmed in the US Supreme Court case of United States v. Darby Lumber, 312 U.S. 100, 124 (1941), which states: "The amendment states but a truism that all is retained which has not been surrendered. There is nothing in the history of its adoption to suggest that it was more than declaratory of the relationship between the national and state governments as it had been established by the Constitution before the amendment or that its purpose was other than to allay fears that the new national government might seek to exercise powers not granted, and that the states might not be able to exercise fully their reserved powers." Therefore, with the U.S. Constitution silent on the issue, it is a reserved power of the State of Texas. Then the question becomes one of whether or not Texas law allows for a referendum on independence. For that answer, we look to Article 1 Section 2 of the Texas Constitution. Art. 1, Sec. 2. INHERENT POLITICAL POWER; REPUBLICAN FORM OF GOVERNMENT. All political power is inherent in the people, and all free governments are founded on their authority, and instituted for their benefit. The faith of the people of Texas stands pledged to the preservation of a republican form of government, and, subject to this limitation only, they have at all times the inalienable right to alter, reform or abolish their government in such manner as they may think expedient. From this we see that a referendum on independence is an ultimate and fundamental right of the people. There can be little argument on this fact. But those that question the legality of the Texas Legislature calling a referendum say that there is no mechanism in the Texas Constitution or Texas law for them to do so. What most fail to realize is that there was, until 1969, an explicit clause in the Texas Constitution that did just that. Art. 3, Sec. 42. The Legislature shall pass such laws as may be necessary to carry into effect the provisions of this Constitution. This clause mandated that the Legislature pass laws that dealt with carrying out provisions of the Texas Constitution. That includes the Texas Bill of Rights. As Legislatures often do, they passed laws related to specific portions of the Constitution as it became necessary. This is their mode of operation to this very day. But in the 1960s, a serious movement rose up to streamline the Texas Constitution and "repeal the obsolete, superfluous and unnecessary sections of the Constitution". If sections of the Texas Constitution dealt with obsolete issues (like Spanish land grants) or were redundant, they were to be removed. All of these were lumped into a Constitutional Amendment authorized by HJR 3 in 1969 and put to a vote of the people to repeal all at once. Among these was Article 3, Section 42. The rationale for including it as part of the so-called "Deadwood Amendment" was simple. It was an unnecessary section that stated something that was already a fundamental and well-understood power of the Legislature. Therefore, it wasn't needed. This thinking is evident in the ballot wording found in Section 2 of HJR 3. HJR 3, Sec. 2. The foregoing constitutional amendment shall be submitted to a vote of the qualified electors of this state at an election to be held on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in August, 1969, at which election the ballots shall be printed to provide for voting for or against the proposition: "The constitutional amendment to repeal the obsolete, superfluous and unnecessary sections of the Constitution." Removing this section from the Texas Constitution did not strip away the Texas Legislature's power to make laws to carry out portions of the Constitution. That includes Article 1 Section 2. If this were the case, then every law passed in furtherance of the provisions of the Texas Constitution are null and void. This is simply not the case. There is no doubt that the Texas Legislature has the legal power to call for a vote on the independence of Texas. In fact, the failure of the Texas Legislature to do so is a failure to do their Constitutionally mandated duty.

Question 31

Do we have legislation ready to file for a TEXIT vote?

Accepted Answer

Yes, and it has already been filed. The legislation needed to put Texas independence on the ballot is remarkably simple for the size of the decision it carries. The Texas Independence Referendum Act was first filed as House Bill 1359 in 2021 by Representative Kyle Biedermann, with Representative James White as joint author, and it has been refiled since. The question the movement intends to put to the people of Texas is the one TNM has carried from the start: "Should the State of Texas reassert its status as an independent nation?" That is the wording Representative Biedermann planned to restore through a committee substitute. If the people vote yes, the act directs the Legislature to act on that mandate. It establishes a Texas Independence Committee, a joint interim committee, charged with studying and recommending the most effective and expeditious method for Texas to return to its status as an independent republic, and with delivering that strategy within sixty months of the result being certified. The bill is written carefully to survive the procedural and constitutional challenges the opposition will throw at it, the kind of point of order or lawsuit that could otherwise stall the effort for years. But make no mistake about where the power sits: under Article 1, Section 2 of the Texas Constitution, all political power is inherent in the people, and a vote of the people of Texas is the decisive act. The full filed text is on the public record at Texas Legislature Online.

Question 32

How much support is there for TEXIT?

Accepted Answer

In 2009, Research 2000 conducted a poll of Texans and asked them this question: "Do you think Texas would be better off as an independent nation or as part of the United States of America?" The results were trumpeted to the media and parroted by numerous media outlets. "Only 35% of the 600 Texans surveyed believed that Texas would be better off as an independent nation." However, the left-leaning Burnt Orange Report did something that most media outlets did not. They looked at the actual results and caught something that no other outlet bothered to check. "The Research 2000 Texas Poll was conducted from April 20 through April 22, 2009. A total of 600 likely voters who vote regularly in state elections were interviewed statewide by telephone. The poll was 39% Republican, 33% Democrat, and 28% independent." Looking at the breakdown by political affiliation changed the landscape. 48 percent of Republicans, 40 percent of independent voters, and 15 percent of Democrats believed that Texans would benefit from independence. The numerical breakdown matters, especially in a state where Republicans have a lock on every statewide office and where independents claim their electoral independence but typically vote for Republican candidates. The percentages broken down by political affiliation weren't the only earth-shattering information in the poll. Also buried in that statement was the real key to unlocking the real impact of the survey. The respondents were likely voters who also regularly vote. However, one poll does not make a trend. In 2014, a Reuters/IPSOS poll asked a slightly different question. Rather than asking a question about whether Texans felt they would be better off under the flag of independence, respondents were asked if they felt Texas should leave the Union. The difference between the two questions is very important. The Research 2000 poll was a question about perceived benefit. The Reuters/IPSOS question was a question of political will. The results, again broken down by political affiliation, showed 54 percent of Republicans, 49 percent of independent voters, and 35 percent of Democrats favored an independent Texas. While the political trend obvious in these two polls is the growth of support for Texit and the strengthening of the attitudes of the voters, what goes virtually unnoticed by pundits is what these numbers look like in reality. When these percentages are overlaid with the actual voting patterns of Texans in statewide races, support for Texit, on average, polls anywhere from 6 to 10 percentage points higher than those who want to stay in the Union. In addition, the depth and diversity of Texans in favor of independence would be the dream of a politician. The support of a majority of Republicans, nearly half of independents, and a substantial percentage of Democrats is enough to get anyone elected in Texas at any level. In short, if Texit were a political candidate, it could get elected to any statewide elected office. However, those are just polls that ask simple binary questions with no consequence and no mechanism to measure the commitment of the respondent to Texit. And polls, as was shown in the 2016 U.S. presidential election cycle, can be deceiving. To get an idea of how Texit stacks up in the real world, and to get a better sense of the level of commitment of the supporters, one need only compare the leading organizational proponent of Texit, the TNM, to other major political advocacy organizations by measuring their membership or declared support numbers as a percentage of registered voters in the geographic areas they serve. Among the top ten political organizations considered the most influential across all 50 States, membership figures for the National Organization of Women (0.34 percent), the NAACP (0.21 percent), the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (0.68 percent), MoveOn (0.21 percent), and LULAC (0.09 percent), represent less than 1 percent of the registered voters. The National Rifle Association (3.42 percent), Americans for Prosperity (1.57 percent) and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (2.05 percent) are standouts in this group. Among Texas-focused organizations, the powerful political action committee, Texans For Lawsuit Reform, only represented 0.11 percent of the registered voters in Texas with the current favorite cause of Governor Greg Abbott, the Texas branch of the Convention of States Project boasting dismal support of only 0.61 percent of Texas voters. In comparison with all these mainstream organizations, the TNM holds its own and then some. With more than 600,000 Texans on record, its base of support rivals the largest single-issue organizations on this list as a share of registered voters. And on the more modern battleground of social media, the TNM has a larger following across all platforms than the Texas Republican and Democratic Parties combined.

Question 33

What will it take to win a TEXIT vote?

Accepted Answer

The current threshold to win any vote in Texas is a simple majority of those who vote. Some places have imposed higher thresholds for political separation, but there is no similar precedent in Texas for popular votes. Even Quebec, often cited as the exception, is no exception: Canada's Supreme Court declined to set any fixed number and asked only for a "clear majority." There is no question or debate about that aspect of the referendum. What's more interesting is predicting the number of votes it will take to win. Since the threshold to win a Texit vote is a simple majority, it will take 50 percent plus 1 of those who cast a vote in the referendum. In the modern-day independence referenda, voter turnout is exceptional. In some instances, over 90 percent of those who are eligible to vote do so. The Scottish referendum turnout of 84.6 percent was the highest recorded for an election or referendum in the United Kingdom since the introduction of universal suffrage. The voter turnout for the Brexit referendum was 72.2 percent. When people finally get a real choice on the ballot, they show up. By estimating a high-average turnout of 85 percent or more, we can ballpark the number of votes it will take for Texit to carry the day. With more than 15 million registered voters in Texas, the number required to win would fall somewhere between 6.5 and 8 million. To put that figure in perspective, that is on the order of the total votes cast for all presidential candidates in a Texas general election. Like all elections, it will all come down to retail politics, excelling in the fundamentals of getting the message out and getting voters to the polls. Whichever side does it most effectively will win the day. Nigel Farage, former leader of the U.K. Independence Party, on the eve of the Brexit referendum, summarized what it would take to win. "The Leave side can only win if we have an effective ground campaign comprising of activists from across the political spectrum working together."

Question 34

How do we avoid losing our independence vote like Scotland did in 2014?

Accepted Answer

Leading up to the passage of the referendum bill and through to the actual vote, the debate will be vigorous. However, until there is a vote, there will be no honest debate on the issue of Texit. To quote Weston Martinez, "You have to have the vote to have the conversation." Ultimately, the success or failure of Texit at the polls will be determined by the scope of the debate and the strategy used by each side to convince Texans to choose to leave or remain. In any debate on Texit, the side advocating for maintaining the status quo has a near insurmountable task. They essentially have to argue that all of the reasons that created enough political momentum to actually have a vote to leave still aren't bad enough to leave. This puts them in the unenviable position of having to dismiss the legitimate concerns of virtually every Texan. At a minimum, if they acknowledge that legitimate concerns exist, they have to show that there is a reasonable and viable path to addressing these concerns within the federal system. Again, given the attitude that Texas voters have about the feasibility of reforming the federal system, this puts them at a severe disadvantage. This is why, so often, you see the advocates of the status quo attempting to redirect the debate to focus voters on the uncertainty posed by abandoning the status quo. By shifting the debate in this way, it baits those who are seeking self-determination into explicitly declaring post-independence policies that are then tied to the referendum. For those advocating for Texit, it is important to avoid this pitfall that became a major factor in the rejection of independence by Scottish voters. One of the biggest mistakes made by the Scottish National Party in the 2014 Scottish independence referendum came in the form of a white paper produced by the SNP-dominated government, called Scotland's Future. The purpose of the 670-page tome was to create, in the words of First Minister Alex Salmond, the "most comprehensive blueprint for an independent country ever published." Within its pages, it attempted to do that very thing. It contained 200 pages of answers to the most commonly asked questions about Scottish independence, and specifically addressed some of the more complex issues related to citizenship, travel, currency, and debt. However, it went further by advocating for post-independence policies that were staples of SNP campaigns in Scotland for years. This is where it went off the rails. While many hailed the ambition of the document and lauded the effort for moving the independence conversation forward, others, particularly voters, saw it more as a post-independence SNP election manifesto. With the publication of the white paper, the debate over Scotland's independence shifted. The points of contention no longer centered on the viability and practicality of an independent Scotland. Rather, the conversation became infinitely more complicated as the focus of contention became about the post-independence policies of the SNP. Sensing an opening, the Better Together campaign pounced on an opportunity to tie the entire issue of Scotland's independence on the governance of the SNP and the popularity of its specific policy positions. Suddenly their messaging shifted from "independence is a bad idea" to "a vote for independence is a vote for the SNP." The SNP was then forced into a two-front war, having to defend its policies while simultaneously trying to advocate for independence. After all, that's what political parties do. They advance policy proposals based on the principles of their party. In doing so, the SNP fell into a trap of its own making and subverted the most attractive benefit of independence, the opportunity to create something new. They promised a concrete, fixed future that didn't yet exist and created in the minds of the voters the notion that Scottish independence was merely an extension of current SNP governance. The voters were aware of what the future looked like if they stayed in the United Kingdom. The boundless and unlimited opportunity presented by the right of self-government, to remake the future in their image, was stolen from Scottish voters by the introduction of the white paper. Although it was not the primary cause of the defeat of the Scottish referendum, this played a major role in the final result. The clue is in the numbers. The SNP received 44.04 percent of the votes in the 2011 Scottish Parliament elections. The 'Yes' vote in the 2014 independence referendum received 44.7 percent. If the majority of Texit advocates can avoid this trap, they are in the proverbial "catbird seat." However, this debate will not be the normal partisan bickering we are all used to. It will create very strange bedfellows as the battle lines become clearly drawn. For Texit to win the debate, it will have to be able to clearly articulate why staying in the Union is no longer an option and, with exceptional discipline, key in on the opportunity that can exist in an independent Texas, promising nothing other than giving Texans their first chance at self-government in their entire lives. Given the broad patchwork of people and interests that will be working for Texit, all would do well to remember the saying, "Only a fool fights in a burning house."

Question 35

What will happen immediately after a TEXIT vote?

Accepted Answer

Parties and celebrating. Lots of celebrating. Beyond that, we have to begin the process of operating as an independent, self-governing nation. Contrary to the doomsday predictions of those who oppose Texit, in the immediate aftermath of an affirmative Texas independence vote, things continue as they have until they don't. The mail gets delivered. The trash gets picked up. Goods flow. Money is earned and spent. Literally, nothing changes until it does. While this may be a surprise to some, their surprise stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of the independence process. Independence is not a single act embodied in a referendum. Independence is a state of being. The referendum is the first step in the process, an expression of political will that kicks off the process of becoming independent. It is, however, an important step. Such an expression of political will must be respected. It demands action. However, that action must be balanced with care and caution as Texas enters the next phase: negotiation and transition. There should be one single aim for relations with the United States in the immediate aftermath of Texit: minimizing disruption. While those opposed to Texit would love to think that disruption cannot be avoided or even mitigated as Texas leaves the Union, they are dead wrong. In fact, the tools necessary to effect a speedy, efficient, and minimally disruptive Texit are already at our disposal.

Question 36

Do we have to vote on a President before we TEXIT?

Accepted Answer

No. Texas already has its own government, and it will continue to be our government until the Texas Constitution is amended. After TEXIT, an independent Texas will absolutely have a president and a congress and supreme court, among other offices and agencies that are common to all independent, self-governing nations. Texas independence will give the power of government back to the people to vote for who they want to lead their country, as it should be. During the 9 years before Texas joined the Union, the independent Texan Nation had all of these government bodies and multiple presidents but had full control over their laws and values.

Question 37

Will Federal Pension Recipients Still Get Their Benefits After Texit?

Accepted Answer

One of the most common questions we get from Texans considering independence is whether they'll lose their federal pension benefits if Texas leaves the union. It's an understandable concern. After all, we're talking about Social Security, military retirement pay, federal civilian pensions, and VA benefits that hardworking Texans have earned through decades of service and contributions. The short answer is this: yes, you'll still get your benefits. Here is why. The Reality of Federal Policy People already live outside the United States and collect their federal pension benefits every single month. The federal government has well-established policies for paying benefits to recipients living abroad. This is happening right now. Federal civilian retirees under the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) or Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) can live anywhere in the world and continue receiving their retirement annuity. There are no residency-based disqualifications. The Office of Personnel Management doesn't care if you're living in Paris, France or Paris, Texas. Your pension check keeps coming. Social Security works the same way for U.S. citizens. You can receive your benefits while living outside the United States as long as you remain eligible and reside in a country where payments can be sent. Military retirees face no residency restrictions either. The Defense Finance and Accounting Service will send your retirement pay wherever you call home. VA pensions? Same story. They're payable regardless of your place of residence. Why This Matters for Texas Independence When Texas becomes an independent nation, Texans don't stop being Texans. More importantly, the federal government doesn't stop owing them the benefits they've earned. These aren't gifts from Washington. They're earned benefits that represent decades of service, contributions, and sacrifice. Consider a retired federal employee who moves to Germany. Their pension doesn't stop. If a Social Security recipient decides to spend their golden years in Costa Rica, their checks keep coming. Why would Texas be any different? The only countries where federal benefits can't be sent are those under U.S. Treasury sanctions, places like Cuba, North Korea, Iran, and Syria. Does anyone seriously believe that an independent Texas would fall into that category? We're talking about Texas, not some rogue nation. The Negotiation Reality Now, I want to be clear about something. While federal policy already supports continuing these payments, this will absolutely be part of the negotiations between Texas and the United States following a successful independence referendum. Our position will be straightforward and non-negotiable: Any Texan who has paid into the Social Security system and is currently receiving benefits should continue to receive them. Any Texan who has earned federal civilian or military retirement benefits should continue to receive them. This was an obligation undertaken by the federal government to those who paid in and served, and it should be met without question, hesitation, or reservation. This is about honoring commitments made to hardworking Americans who played by the rules their entire careers. The Practical Side From a practical standpoint, continuing these payments makes sense for everyone involved. The federal government already has the infrastructure in place to send payments worldwide. They already deal with currency exchanges, international banking, and tax withholding for overseas recipients. For Social Security specifically, they've even established "totalization agreements" with more than two dozen other countries to prevent dual taxation and ensure smooth benefit transfers for people who've worked in multiple countries. There's no reason Texas couldn't have a similar agreement with the United States. The federal pension money that comes back to Texas runs on the order of $13 billion a year. Texans overpay the federal system by tens of billions a year on top of fully funding their own government, so if Washington ever chose the immoral route and tried to cut off benefits Texans earned, Texas would have more than enough to take care of its own. Beyond the Scare Tactics Some opponents of Texas independence want to scare seniors and veterans by suggesting they'll lose their benefits if Texas becomes independent. This is nothing more than fear-mongering designed to prevent Texans from exercising their right of self-determination. The reality is far different. Countries around the world maintain pension and social security agreements with each other. It's standard practice in international relations. The idea that the United States would suddenly become hostile to basic pension payments for people who spent their careers serving the country is absurd. Looking Forward Following a successful independence referendum, Texas and the United States would negotiate an agreement covering these benefits. It will likely include provisions for: Continued payment of all earned federal benefits to current recipients Preservation of accrued benefits for those who haven't yet retired Options for current workers to either continue in the federal system or transition to a Texas-based system Totalization agreements to prevent double taxation and ensure smooth transitions This is how these issues are handled around the world when political relationships change. The Bottom Line Federal pension recipients have nothing to fear from Texas independence. Your benefits are safe. In fact, they may be more secure in an independent Texas that actually values the contributions of our seniors and veterans, rather than a federal government that's driving toward bankruptcy and threatening the long-term viability of these programs. The federal government has existing policies that already cover exactly this situation. They send pension checks to retirees living all over the world, every month, without fail. An independent Texas would be no different. So to every Texan who's worried about their federal pension, Social Security, military retirement, federal civilian retirement, or VA benefits, let me be clear: You've earned those benefits through your service and contributions. Texas independence doesn't change that. If anything, it ensures that you'll have a government closer to home that actually respects the promises made to you. Your benefits will be there. That is already federal policy.

Question 38

What is required for Texas to leave the union?

Accepted Answer

One thing, above everything else: a vote of the people of Texas. Independence is decided by Texans at the ballot box, through a referendum the Texas Legislature puts on it. That is the requirement. Everything else is detail. The single decisive act is the referendum Texas does not leave the union by lawsuit, by declaration, or by the stroke of any one official's pen. It leaves because the people vote to leave. Under Article 1, Section 2 of the Texas Constitution, all political power is inherent in the people, and they have at all times the inalienable right to alter or reform their government as they think expedient. A statewide referendum is how that right gets exercised on a question this big. A decision that reshapes the future of every Texan cannot be made by some Texans. It has to be all of them. What it does not require It does not require permission from the other forty-nine states. It does not require an act of the United States Congress. It does not require three-quarters of the states to agree, and it does not require a supermajority of Texas voters. Those bars get thrown around to make independence sound impossible. None of them is real. The threshold is a simple majority, fifty percent plus one of the Texans who cast a ballot. The vehicle already exists The bill that puts the question on the ballot has a name and a history. It is the Texas Independence Referendum Act, first filed as House Bill 1359 in 2021 by Representative Kyle Biedermann, with Representative James White as coauthor, and refiled since. The question it carries is the one the movement has always carried: "Should the State of Texas reassert its status as an independent nation?" Texans answer yes or no. The work splits into three stages Getting out is a process, not a single moment. First, the Legislature passes the Act and the people vote. Second, on a yes, Texas and the United States negotiate the terms and Texas stands up the functions of a nation. Third, Texas takes its place as a self-governing country among the nations of the world. The vote is the starting gun. The rest is the race. The path is legal, peaceful, and democratic There are no secret clauses and no shortcuts. Where there is a legal path, it must be followed, and that path runs through the Texas Legislature and then through the people. That is the whole point. Independence won by a free and fair vote is independence the world can recognize and no one can credibly call illegitimate. The bottom line What it takes is a referendum, won by a simple majority. Pass the bill, win the vote, and the people of Texas have decided. That is the requirement, and it is entirely within Texans' own hands.

Question 39

Would a referendum be binding or non-binding?

Accepted Answer

The Texas Independence Referendum Act is written to be binding in effect. A yes vote does not just register an opinion. It triggers action by the Texas Legislature. That is by design, and it is the difference between this effort and the symbolic gestures that came before it. What a binding referendum actually means A non-binding referendum asks the people what they think and then leaves politicians free to ignore the answer. A binding referendum attaches a consequence to the result. Under the Texas Independence Referendum Act, a yes vote directs the Legislature to act on the mandate. It stands up a Texas Independence Committee, a joint interim committee charged with studying and recommending the most effective and expeditious method for Texas to return to its status as an independent republic, and with delivering that strategy within sixty months of the result being certified. The vote does not end the conversation. It starts a clock. Why this is not just another resolution Texas has seen the toothless version before. In 2013, an effort that began as a referendum push was watered down into a resolution with the binding language stripped out, advisory only, no consequence attached. That is exactly the trap the Referendum Act is built to avoid. It is drafted as operative law, not as a suggestion, and written carefully to survive the points of order and lawsuits the opposition will throw at it. The people's will has to mean something There is a deeper principle here. An expression of political will by the people of Texas, delivered through a free and fair vote, demands action. It would be its own kind of betrayal to ask Texans whether they want to govern themselves, hear them say yes, and then file the answer in a drawer. A binding referendum honors the vote. It says the people decide, and the government carries it out. Where the real power sits Even with the mechanism written into statute, the ultimate authority is not the committee or the calendar. It is Article 1, Section 2 of the Texas Constitution, which places the inalienable right to alter or reform the government with the people. The Act puts that right into operation. A yes vote is the people of Texas instructing their government, and in a republic that instruction is not optional. The bottom line The referendum is built to bind. A yes does not ask Austin to consider independence. It directs Austin to deliver it, on a clock, in the open. That is the point of doing it right.

Question 40

Why hasn't the legislature passed a referendum bill yet?

Accepted Answer

Because the Texas Legislature does not pass bills on the merits alone. It passes them on pressure. The referendum has not crossed the finish line yet for the same reason most good bills do not: not enough weight has been put behind it, in the right place, at the right time. That is changing. How the Legislature actually works The Texas Legislature is a part-time body that meets for just 140 days every other year. In that window it files far more bills than it ever passes, and most die quietly. A committee chair can refuse to schedule a hearing. The Calendars Committee can decline to send a bill to the floor. Any bill that survives needs the support of 76 members of the House, 16 in the Senate, the lieutenant governor, and the governor. The system is built with choke points, and at every choke point a single person can stall a bill that lacks momentum. This is true of the referendum and true of nearly everything else. The obstacle is political will, not law There is no legal barrier here. The Legislature has the clear authority to call a vote on independence, and the Texas Constitution places that power with the people. What has been missing is the political will inside the building, and that is a function of pressure from outside it. Politicians move when they believe the cost of not moving is losing their seat. Until enough of them feel that, a bill can have every argument on its side and still sit in a drawer. Some of them are looking at Washington, not at you Part of the inertia is that too many Texas officials still treat Austin as a waiting room for a federal career. They calculate how a vote will play on cable, or with a party leadership that answers to interests far outside Texas, instead of how it serves the Texans who elected them. A representative angling for the next rung up does not want a hard vote on his record. That is not a reason the bill cannot pass. It is a reason Texans have to make the politics of blocking it more painful than the politics of passing it. The momentum is already building This is not theoretical. Texas First Pledge signers are heading into the Legislature. The Republican Party of Texas has carried independence planks across multiple conventions, including a plank affirming the right to leave that passed with 93 percent of delegates in 2020 and a dedicated call for a referendum adopted in 2022 and reaffirmed in 2024. The Libertarian Party of Texas stood up a TEXIT caucus. More than 633,000 Texans are on record. The ground under the Capitol is shifting, and legislators feel it. What gets it across the line A bloc of single-issue voters who will not be talked out of it. That is the one thing the system reliably answers to. The job at this stage is not to win arguments online. It is to organize the pressure that makes passing the bill the safe vote and blocking it the dangerous one. The bottom line The bill has not passed because the pressure has not yet peaked, not because the law forbids it or the case is weak. Pressure is the missing ingredient, and pressure is something Texans build. That is the work.

Question 41

Could the governor call a referendum?

Accepted Answer

Not on his own. No Texas governor can single-handedly put independence on the ballot. The referendum is created by a law passed through the Legislature, and the governor is one part of that process, not a shortcut around it. But the governor's role is real, and his support matters. A referendum is created by law, not by decree Texas is not an initiative-and-referendum state, and the governor is not a king. There is no executive order that conjures a statewide independence vote into existence. A referendum exists only when the Legislature passes a bill creating it. That bill follows the ordinary path: filed, heard in committee, debated, and passed by both chambers. The governor cannot skip those steps and cannot manufacture the vote by himself. Where the governor does fit in There are two routes through the Legislature, and the governor figures differently in each. The cleaner route for the referendum is an ordinary bill, which needs majorities in both chambers plus the lieutenant governor and the governor, ending with the governor's signature. On that path the governor is a decisive yes-or-no. The other route is a constitutional amendment, which the voters ratify directly and which does not require the governor's signature at all. Either way, the governor is a player in the process. He is not the whole process. The governor can also use the bully pulpit What a governor can do, short of any signature, is lead. He can throw the weight of the office behind the bill, call a special session that puts it on the agenda, and tell the people of Texas plainly that they deserve the right to decide their own future. A governor who championed the referendum would move it faster than almost anything else could. That is influence worth pursuing, and it is exactly why the movement works to put independence in front of every officeholder in the state. Why it still comes back to the people Notice that every road runs back to the same place. Whether the vehicle is a bill or an amendment, the decision is not finally the governor's. It is the people's, because Article 1, Section 2 of the Texas Constitution places the power to alter or reform the government with them. The governor can help open the door. Only Texans walk through it. The bottom line A governor cannot call the referendum alone, but he can help pass it, sign it, and champion it. The vote itself belongs to the people of Texas, and that is exactly where it should belong.

Question 42

Could Texans force a referendum through a petition?

Accepted Answer

Not directly, and it is important to be honest about why. Texas has no statewide citizen-initiative process. There is no number of signatures that, by itself, places a question on the statewide ballot. The path to a referendum runs through the Legislature, period. A petition is a tool of pressure on that path, not a substitute for it. Texas is not an initiative-and-referendum state Some states let citizens gather signatures and put a measure on the ballot over the heads of their legislators. Texas is not one of them. At the statewide level there is no ballot-initiative mechanism in Texas law. So no petition drive, however large, automatically triggers an independence referendum. Anyone who tells you a million signatures forces the vote is describing a system Texas does not have. We will not pretend otherwise. The honest answer is that the route is legislative. Why we say this plainly It would be easy, and dishonest, to promise a petition shortcut that does not exist. We do not do that. Where there is a legal path, it must be followed, and the legal path here is a bill passed by the Texas Legislature and signed into law, or a constitutional amendment ratified by the voters. There are no secret clauses and no back doors. Telling Texans the truth about the process is part of earning the result. What a petition actually does This does not make petitions worthless. Far from it. A petition is one of the clearest ways to show a legislator exactly how many of his constituents want the vote, and politicians answer to the fear of losing their seats. Names on a list, supporters on record, pledge signers, voters who will not be moved: that is the pressure that gets a bill heard, voted out of committee, and onto the floor. More than 633,000 Texans are already on record demanding the vote. That weight is real. It just works by moving the Legislature, not by bypassing it. The power is still the people's, by a different mechanism The thing a petition tries to capture, the will of the people overriding a reluctant government, is already guaranteed in Texas. It just runs through Article 1, Section 2 of the Texas Constitution and through the ballot box rather than through a signature drive. When the referendum passes and Texans vote, that is the people forcing the issue, in the most powerful and most legitimate way there is. The bottom line No petition by itself puts independence on the ballot in Texas. The path is legislative. But organized Texans, on record and turning up, are precisely how that legislation gets passed. The signatures matter. They just point at the Capitol.

Question 43

How long would the transition take?

Accepted Answer

There is a concrete marker to anchor on: the Texas Independence Referendum Act gives the interim committee up to sixty months, five years, to deliver its strategy for becoming independent after a yes vote. That is the outer planning window the law sets. The practical transition can move faster on the pieces that are simple, and it is built to keep daily life running the entire time. What the law actually sets The Referendum Act does not leave the timeline to guesswork. On a yes, it stands up a Texas Independence Committee and charges it with recommending the most effective and expeditious method for Texas to return to independence, and with delivering that strategy within sixty months of the result being certified. Sixty months is a ceiling for the planning, not a countdown of paralysis. It is there so the work is thorough, lawful, and done right. Day-to-day life does not wait for the paperwork Here is the part the scare stories leave out. In the immediate aftermath of a yes vote, things continue as they have until they don't. The mail gets delivered. The trash gets picked up. Goods flow. Money is earned and spent. Independence is not a single act embodied in a referendum. It is a state of being, reached step by step, and the single aim in the early going is to minimize disruption. Texans do not wake up the morning after the vote in a different world. They wake up in the same Texas, now headed somewhere new. Some things move fast, some take longer The transition is not one task with one deadline. It is many. The pieces that already have a Texas analog, the agencies, the courts, the existing state government, switch over quickly because they are largely in place today. The pieces that require negotiation with Washington or new agreements abroad take longer, and they should. Real precedent says this is doable on a sane timeline. The Velvet Divorce that split Czechoslovakia into two countries was negotiated in about six months. Brexit shows the other end of the range, where opponents who stayed in government dragged the exit out for years. The lesson is to win decisively and then, in Daniel's words, pour on the gas. The committee plans it, the people own it The five-year window is a tool for getting it right, not a sentence to serve. The interim committee maps the sequence, and the decisions belong to the Legislature and the people of a free Texas. Expect the essential continuity, your job, your bank, your benefits, your border with the rest of the country, to be protected from day one, with the larger settlement finalized over the months that follow. The bottom line Plan for a window of up to five years for the full strategy and settlement, with ordinary life continuing throughout and many pieces moving much faster. The law sets the outer bound. Discipline and momentum set the real pace.

Question 44

Who would negotiate the terms of separation with Washington?

Accepted Answer

The government of Texas would, on behalf of the people who just voted for independence. Once the result is certified, Texas and the United States deal with each other as two governments across a table, the same way sovereign nations settle their affairs every day. The Referendum Act sets up the body that drives the work, and the existing Texas government carries it out. The committee maps it, the state executes it A yes vote triggers a Texas Independence Committee, a joint interim committee of the Legislature, charged with recommending the most effective and expeditious method for Texas to return to independence within sixty months of certification. That committee is the planning engine. The executing is done through the government Texas already has: the governor leads, the Legislature legislates, and the office handling foreign relations, expanded for the new role, carries the diplomacy. Texas does not have to invent a state to negotiate. It already runs a constitutional republic, structured much like an independent nation. The mindset shift that makes it work From the moment the vote is certified, Texas and the United States become, for all intents and purposes, foreign to one another. Negotiating with Washington becomes like negotiating with Mexico or any other government. That is not hostility. It is just the new footing. Both sides send representatives, both sides have interests, and both sides have every reason to get to a deal that keeps trade flowing and the relationship calm. One missing tool gets restored first There is a practical first step at home. As a state, Texas is barred by Article 1, Section 10 of the United States Constitution from making treaties. To sit across the table as an equal and sign binding international agreements, Texas restores its own treaty-making power. That is handled through a focused update to the Texas Constitution early in the process, the same kind of streamlined amendment Texas has used before, not a years-long rewrite of the whole document. What actually gets negotiated The list is shorter than people imagine, and it sorts into a clean basket: the Social Security credits Texans earned, the disposition of federal property in Texas, the standing of Texans serving in the United States military, and the federal debt. Texas is under no obligation to assume that debt, and may choose to negotiate it in good faith against the federal assets and property sitting inside our borders. Most of the rest of the relationship, trade, travel, currency, can ride on agreements that already exist and simply convert from internal arrangements to international ones. Both governments want the same outcome The strongest fact in Texas's favor is that a smooth separation serves Washington too. A negotiated, recognized exit keeps goods moving and the border quiet. Stonewalling a peaceful, democratic vote would isolate Washington internationally and disrupt its own economy for nothing. The practical course, the one governments almost always choose, is to come to the table and settle the terms. The bottom line Texas negotiates as a government, for its people, with a committee charting the course and the existing state carrying it out. Washington has every incentive to negotiate in good faith, because a clean settlement is in its interest as much as ours.

Question 45

Why a referendum instead of just declaring independence?

Accepted Answer

Because a declaration is words, and a referendum is a mandate. Independence has to be legitimate to last, and legitimacy in the modern world comes from the consent of the governed, expressed in a free and fair vote. A vote is what turns a wish into a nation the world will recognize. Consent is what makes it real Self-government means the people govern themselves. You cannot claim that and then hand a small group the power to declare a new country in everyone else's name. Every Western-style democracy that has won its independence in the modern era has let the people have the final say. Texas independence is built on the consent of the governed, full stop, and consent is something you demonstrate at the ballot box, not something a leader announces from a podium. Recognition runs on legitimacy A new nation lives or dies on whether other governments deal with it as a nation. The single most important thing a process can produce is recognition, and recognition follows legitimacy. A peaceful, lawful referendum, conducted under the laws of Texas with millions of Texans voting, is about as legitimate as a founding act gets. It makes it far harder for Washington or anyone else to dismiss the result, and far easier for trading partners to formalize relations. A bare declaration, with no vote behind it, hands opponents the easiest possible argument: that it does not speak for the people. It keeps the path peaceful and legal The referendum is also what keeps this lawful and bloodless. A vote is plainly not an act of force. It is not levying war and it is not a rebellion. It is the most ordinary instrument of democracy there is. Routing independence through a vote keeps it squarely inside the law, which is exactly why the movement insists on it. The legal path must be followed, and the legal path is the ballot. It is the difference between 1861 and now History makes the point. The 1861 secession was carried out by conventions, not by a free vote of the whole people, and it is rightly remembered as illegitimate. The lesson Texans took from that is not to repeat it. Today's path is the opposite: every eligible Texan, of every background, deciding together in the open. The referendum is what separates a legitimate act of self-determination from a power grab. The bottom line A declaration alone is fragile and contestable. A referendum is durable and undeniable. We do it by the vote because the vote is what makes Texas independence legitimate, recognized, and permanent.

Question 46

What happens if the vote fails?

Accepted Answer

Then Texas stays in the union for now, the movement keeps building, and the question can be asked again. A single referendum is not the last word. It is one round in a long fight for self-government, and history is full of movements that lost a vote and won the country later. Nothing catastrophic happens A no vote changes nothing overnight. Texas remains a state, life goes on, and no one is punished for having asked the question. A referendum is an ordinary democratic exercise. One side wins and one side loses, the same as any election, and the next morning everyone is still a Texan with every right they had before. The doom scenarios some opponents float depend on pretending a vote is something other than a vote. A loss is not the end of the question Self-determination is not a one-time offer that expires. Quebec voted on independence, lost narrowly, and the question stayed alive for a generation. Scotland voted no in 2014 and the debate did not vanish. The right of a people to decide their own future does not get used up by a single ballot. If Texans vote no, the right to ask again remains exactly where the Texas Constitution puts it, with the people, at all times. The fight does not stop, it informs the next push A campaign that falls short still moves the ball. It proves the question is real, surfaces every argument the other side has, and shows precisely where the support is and where the work remains. The movement keeps organizing, keeps signing up Texans, keeps electing officials who back the right to vote, and comes back stronger. The same pressure that put the question on the ballot the first time does not evaporate because of one result. Why we expect to win it This is not a long shot to begin with. Polling has put support for independence around 60 percent, with about two-thirds of Texans wanting the chance to vote. Independence referendums draw turnout that ordinary races never see. The job is to win decisively and to verify the win so it cannot be questioned. We plan to win the first time. But the cause does not hinge on a single day, and the other side knows it. The bottom line If the vote fails, Texas stays, the movement endures, and the question returns. The right to choose self-government belongs to the people permanently. One ballot cannot take it away.

Question 47

Could Texas hold more than one referendum over time?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Nothing limits Texas to a single vote. The right of the people to decide their own government is held, in the words of the Texas Constitution, at all times. If a first referendum does not carry, the question can return, the same way it has in other places that voted on independence. The right does not expire Article 1, Section 2 of the Texas Constitution says the people have at all times the inalienable right to alter, reform, or abolish their government as they think expedient. At all times. That is not a one-time coupon. The power to put self-government to a vote does not get spent on a single use. It stays with the people, available whenever they choose to exercise it through the Legislature. The precedents had more than one vote This is how it has worked elsewhere. Quebec held independence referendums in 1980 and again in 1995, the second one decided by less than one percent. Movements that fall short regroup and come back. A first vote, win or lose, sharpens the case, exposes the opposition's arguments, and shows where the support sits. There is nothing unusual or improper about a people returning to a question this fundamental. The goal is still to win it the first time Saying a second vote is possible is not the same as planning to need one. The strategy is to win decisively on the first attempt, because a clear, verified result is the cleanest path to recognition and the hardest for opponents to contest. Support already polls well above the line, and the work is to convert that support into turnout and a margin no one can dispute. We aim to settle it once. What would not happen What the people would not tolerate is the reverse trick, a defeated establishment forcing endless re-votes to wear down a yes, or refusing to honor a yes by demanding Texans keep voting until they get a no. The Referendum Act is built to make a yes binding and to act on it. The right to ask again belongs to the people seeking self-government, not to a government trying to overturn the people's decision. The bottom line Texas can return to the question as many times as the people choose, because the right is permanent. The plan is to win it once and win it clean. The option to ask again is simply a feature of who holds the power: the people, at all times.

Question 48

What role does the old Republic of Texas Constitution play, if any?

Accepted Answer

Mostly a historical one. The path to independence runs on the Constitution Texas operates under right now, the one ratified in 1876, not the 1836 Republic of Texas Constitution. The old document is a powerful reminder that Texas already governed itself as a nation once. It is not the legal instrument the process relies on. The working document is the current Texas Constitution The legal engine of Texas independence is Article 1, Section 2 of the present Texas Constitution, which places the inalienable right to alter or reform the government with the people. That clause is live, governing text and has been for about 150 years. Everything in the process, the referendum, the committee, the transition, builds on the constitution Texas has today, because that is the one with legal force. There is no need to reach back to 1836 to find the authority. It is right here. No secret authority hides in the old documents It is worth saying clearly, because the myth comes up: there are no hidden clauses in the old Republic documents that quietly authorize a return to independence or supply a shortcut. The movement has always been straight about this. Where there is a legal path, it must be followed, and that path is the present-day Texas Constitution and Texas law, not a buried provision from the Republic era. We do not rely on legal trapdoors, because we do not need them. Texas does not have to draft a brand-new constitution first A related misconception is that Texas must write a whole new constitution, perhaps revive the old one, before it can become independent. That is not so. Texas can become independent on its existing constitution, then make the targeted changes that nationhood requires through a streamlined amendment, the same kind of single, cleanup-style amendment Texas has passed before. That means renaming the State of Texas as the Republic of Texas, removing references to the federal government, and, most importantly, restoring treaty-making power. A future Texas may well choose to revisit and modernize its constitution. That is a decision for a free Texas, downstream of independence, not a precondition for it. What the old Republic actually gives us The 1836 Constitution and the nine years of the Republic do real work, just not legal work. They are proof of concept. Texas had presidents, a congress, a supreme court, an army, and treaties with other nations. The 1836 document even carried the same principle of popular sovereignty that anchors the case today. That history answers the skeptic who says Texas could never function as a nation. Texas already did. The old Constitution is the receipt. The bottom line The 1876 Constitution Texas uses now is the legal foundation for independence. The 1836 Republic Constitution is the historical proof that Texas can stand as a nation. One is the tool. The other is the precedent. Both point the same direction.

Question 49

What stops the federal government from simply ignoring the vote?

Accepted Answer

Self-interest, mostly, backed by international pressure and the plain illegitimacy of stonewalling a peaceful, democratic vote. Washington could try to ignore a yes. It would gain nothing and lose a great deal, and that is exactly why the practical course for Washington is to come to the table. Ignoring it is the worst option for Washington, not the easiest Economies hate disruption, and a refusal to recognize a clear vote creates nothing but disruption. The settled, profitable move is a negotiated separation that keeps trade flowing and the border calm. Pretending the result did not happen freezes investment, rattles markets, and solves no problem for the federal government. When Washington has faced this kind of choice before, with Brexit, it threatened consequences, the British voted to leave anyway, and Washington promptly sat down to negotiate a trade deal. Faced with the practical path or the spiteful one, governments take the practical path. The world is watching, and recognition is leverage Independence does not depend on Washington alone. A peaceful, lawful referendum carries weight with the entire community of nations, and recognition by key governments and major institutions is what makes a new state real. The United States has spent decades championing self-determination and signing agreements that affirm it. Refusing to honor a free vote in Texas would isolate Washington internationally and brand it a hypocrite on the very principle it preaches. That reputational cost is real, and it pushes hard toward recognition. Texas keeps functioning regardless A nation exists when it governs, trades, and conducts its own affairs, and the world deals with it accordingly. Texas already runs a full government, the world's eighth-largest economy, its own power grid, and a state-level counterpart to nearly every federal department. A Texas that is up and operating is a Texas other countries do business with, whether or not Washington has sent a formal letter. Recognition does not have to be unanimous or instant to be real. Holdouts cannot un-make a functioning country. Force is off the table, so stalling is the only card left, and it is weak The one thing Washington cannot credibly do is use force against millions of Texans whose only act was voting, and that case is made in full in our answer on the military. With force ruled out, "ignoring it" is the strongest move opponents have, and it is not strong. Delay does not change the result. It only postpones the settlement and piles costs on the side doing the delaying. Time is on the side of the people who voted. The bottom line Washington cannot make a clear vote disappear by looking away. The economics, the world's eyes, and Texas's own functioning all push toward recognition and a deal. Ignoring the vote is not a strategy. It is a stall, and stalls lose.

Question 50

Is there a realistic timeline for when this could happen?

Accepted Answer

The honest answer is that the timeline depends on the work, not on a fixed date, and we will not pretend to know a day certain. What we can say is concrete: the vote can only be created in a legislative session, the law sets a five-year planning window after a yes, and the pace is set by how fast Texans build the pressure to pass the bill. We will not fabricate a countdown. The schedule is gated by the legislative calendar The Texas Legislature meets in regular session for 140 days every other year, with special sessions in between only if the governor calls one. A referendum bill can realistically advance during one of those windows. So the timeline is not continuous. It moves in legislative sessions. The question is not "what day," it is "which session," and that depends on having the votes lined up before the session opens, because momentum has to be built ahead of time. The one hard number the law gives After a yes vote, the Referendum Act gives the Texas Independence Committee up to sixty months, five years, to deliver its strategy for becoming independent. That is the firmest planning marker in the whole process. It is an outer bound for getting the full transition right, not a prediction that everything takes five years. Many pieces move faster. What the real precedents suggest History offers a sane range rather than a single number. The Velvet Divorce split Czechoslovakia into two recognized countries in about six months. A trade settlement of the kind Texas would negotiate ran around eighteen months in that case. Brexit shows the slow end, dragged out for years by opponents who stayed in power. The spread tells you the timeline is real and achievable, and that the deciding factor is political will and discipline, not some law of physics. The pace is in Texans' hands This is the part worth sitting with. The single biggest variable is not Washington and not the calendar. It is how fast Texans organize. The bill passes when the pressure peaks. More than 633,000 are already on record, support polls around 60 percent, and the Republican Party of Texas has carried independence planks across multiple conventions. The faster that base grows and turns into pressure on the Legislature, the sooner the vote. Texans set the clock. The bottom line There is no honest fixed date, and we will not invent one. There is a realistic shape: pass the bill in a legislative session, win the vote, then up to five years to secure the result, with much moving faster. How soon it starts is up to how hard Texans push.

Question 51

What is the actual path from where we are now to independence?

Accepted Answer

Four moves, in order: build the capacity, get the vote, win the vote, secure independence. That is the whole plan, and it is deliberately sequenced. Each move sets up the next, and skipping ahead is how movements lose. Here is the path, start to finish. Move one: build capacity Independence is built, not declared. Before anything reaches a ballot, the movement grows the organized base that makes the rest possible: Texans signed up and on record, leaders and institutions brought on board, pressure assembled where it counts. Sam Houston won at San Jacinto in about eighteen minutes because he built the army first. The early work is unglamorous and it is everything. You do not need a majority on day one. You need a committed, organized core, and the research says that core can be a fraction of the whole. Move two: get the vote This is the legislative fight. Texas is not an initiative-and-referendum state, so the referendum exists only if the Legislature passes a law creating it. The vehicle is the Texas Independence Referendum Act, filed as House Bill 1359 by Representative Kyle Biedermann in 2021 with Representative James White as coauthor, and refiled since. The job in this move is pressure: single-issue voters, pledge signers, and party planks aimed at the Capitol until the bill passes. One sentence describes the goal of this stage. Pass the bill. Move three: win the vote Once the question is on the ballot, the work becomes winning it and proving the win. The threshold is a simple majority, fifty percent plus one. With roughly 15.8 million reliable voters and turnout that independence referendums push toward 85 percent, the winning number lands around 6.7 million votes, and support already polling near 60 to 66 percent projects well past it. Then you verify the result so it cannot be stolen, the way the movement that toppled Milosevic in Serbia did: organize, turn out, verify. Move four: secure independence Winning the vote opens the door. Securing independence is the work that follows, and it sorts into four baskets: constitutional changes to align Texas with nationhood and restore the treaty power, statutory work to fill legal gaps, international work to join agreements and win recognition, and a negotiation with Washington over a short list including federal property, the standing of Texans in the United States military, Social Security credits, and the federal debt. This is where Texas becomes a nation in full. When you are close, pour on the gas. Why the order matters The sequence is not decoration. Try to win a vote you have not built capacity for and you lose. Declare independence you have not won at the ballot and the world ignores it. Win the vote and then drift, and opponents drag the exit out for years. Each move earns the right to the next. That discipline is the plan. The bottom line Build capacity, get the vote, win the vote, secure independence. Four moves, in order, peaceful and lawful at every step. That is the actual path, and Texans are already moving down it.

Question 52

What is the very first step that has to happen?

Accepted Answer

Before any bill, any vote, any negotiation: organized Texans. The very first step is building the committed base that makes everything else possible. Capacity comes first, and the single most useful thing any one Texan can do right now is get counted and get plugged in. Capacity before everything Independence is built, not declared, and it is built in a specific order. The first move is not the referendum. It is assembling the people. A movement that tries to win a vote it has not built the base for loses that vote. So the foundational work is signing Texans up, putting them on record, and organizing them into a force the Legislature cannot ignore. Sam Houston did not declare victory at San Jacinto. He built the army, and then the eighteen minutes took care of themselves. It does not take everyone, it takes a committed core The encouraging part is that the first step does not require a majority. The research on how movements actually win is clear: a committed, organized core, a fraction of the whole population, can move the entire structure when it is focused and sequenced well. Texas has roughly 15.8 million reliable voters, and support already polls around 60 percent. The first step is not persuading the last skeptic. It is converting existing support into organized, committed numbers. What that looks like for one person In practical terms, the first step has a face. Become a Texian and get on the record. Add your name to the more than 633,000 Texans already counted. Then do the thing that multiplies it: bring others, plug into the organized effort, and turn quiet support into visible, countable weight. Pressure on the Legislature is built one Texan at a time, and it starts with you deciding to be one of them. Why this is the step that unlocks the rest Everything downstream depends on this. The bill passes when the pressure peaks, and the pressure is just organized Texans made visible. Win the vote, and the margin comes from the base built now. Secure independence, and the mandate behind the negotiators is the same base, speaking through the ballot. The first step is the seed of every step after it. The bottom line The very first step is to build capacity, and the very first thing you can do is get counted and get organized. Independence starts not with a declaration but with a Texan deciding to stand up and be counted. That step is available today.

Question 53

Is TEXIT unconstitutional?

Accepted Answer

The U.S. Constitution contains no explicit prohibition against state secession. Article 1, Section 10 enumerates specific acts forbidden to states, but neither that section nor any other part of the Constitution explicitly forbids a state from leaving the union or grants the federal government power to prevent it. This constitutional silence is significant when considered alongside the Tenth Amendment. The Tenth Amendment provides: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." This absence of delegated federal authority combined with explicit state power reservations means the decision regarding union membership rests with the people of each state. The Texas Constitution further addresses this matter. Article 1, Section 1 establishes that "Texas is a free and independent State, subject only to the Constitution of the United States, and the maintenance of our free institutions and the perpetuity of the Union depend upon the preservation of the right of local self-government, unimpaired to all the States." Article 1, Section 2 declares that "All political power is inherent in the people, and all free governments are founded on their authority and instituted for their benefit. The faith of the people of Texas stands pledged to the preservation of a republican form of government, and, subject to this limitation only, they have at all times the inalienable right to alter, reform or abolish their government in such manner as they may think expedient."

Question 54

Didn't the Supreme Court rule that Texas can't leave the Union?

Accepted Answer

The entire legal argument for the unconstitutionality of States leaving the Union rests on the Supreme Court's decision in the 1869 case of Texas v. White. However, when it comes to Texas v. White, more and more academics are adopting the stance of historian Dr. Brion McClanahan. When asked that very question at an academic conference in Florida, his response was an indignant, "So what?" Dr. McClanahan's attitude toward Texas v. White is not based on a denial of facts. In fact, contrary to the concrete pronouncements by Texit detractors, the decision in Texas v. White has been debated and debunked extensively starting from the moment Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase issued the majority opinion. The dissenting opinion, issued by Justice Robert C. Grier, highlighted many of the deficiencies of the Supreme Court's ruling, stating that he disagreed "on all points raised and decided." The assertions made by Chase were so offensive to his contemporaries that Union and Confederate sympathizers, both fresh from the battlefields and still harboring deep divisions, were united in their contempt for his ruling. Bristling at the usurpation by the judiciary of the power to determine political questions, Lyman Trumbull, a United States senator from Illinois, introduced legislation that, in part, stated, "Under the Constitution, the judicial power of the United States does not embrace political power, or give to judicial tribunals any authority to question the political departments of the Government on political questions." There is no doubt that Chief Justice Chase, an appointee of Abraham Lincoln, used the opportunity presented by Texas v. White to stamp a retroactive "seal of approval" on the federal government's policies and actions during the Civil War. To do so, Chase had to rewrite history and virtually all established law on the subject. To reinforce his belief that the United States was a "perpetual union," he had to assert the ludicrous argument that the United States Constitution was merely an amending document to the previous Articles of Confederation, citing the Preamble to the Constitution. He then had to ignore that it only took 9 States of the original 13 to ratify the Constitution of 1787 and that, had less than 13 States ratified, it would have destroyed the "perpetual union" allegedly created by the Articles of Confederation. To reinforce his assertion that the United States was an "indestructible Union, composed of indestructible States," Chase had to ignore the existence of West Virginia, and the agreement with the Republic of Texas upon its admission, that it could divide into 4 additional States and that those additional States would be guaranteed admission into the Union if they so chose. To reinforce his assertion that States, upon entering the Union, gave up all rights of sovereignty and became incorporated in a single, monolithic superstate, Chase had to ignore every reference to the States as individual political entities in the Declaration of Independence, the aforementioned Articles of Confederation, the Northwest Ordinance, the United States Constitution, and all intent of the framers, clearly expressed in the period. In his zeal to confirm the supremacy of the Union, Chase ascribed qualities to it that are usually reserved for deities. In effect, he equated the Union to God and established a quasi-religious orthodoxy that requires adherence to a doctrine that elevates the federal government to godhood, its three branches to the Holy Trinity, and the judiciary as its holy priesthood. There is no doubt that, had the States been exposed to Chase's logic during deliberations over the ratification of the Constitution, they would have soundly rejected it and likely drafted a new Declaration of Independence. The Supreme Court was not and never will be perfect. Some of the most heinous, morally reprehensible, logically flawed decisions have emanated from the Supreme Court. To imbue it with infallibility is to say that, when it upheld slave catching or when it upheld racial segregation, it was right. Yet decisions by the Court in both of those instances have been overturned. Even Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., in the 1904 case of Northern Securities Co. v. United States, recognized that the Court could be caught up in the politics and passions of the day and render bad decisions. "Great cases like hard cases make bad law. For great cases are called great, not by reason of their importance... but because of some accident of immediate overwhelming interest which appeals to the feelings and distorts the judgment." With all its obvious flaws, some academics continue to point to Texas v. White as the "silver bullet" that handles all questions related to States separating from the Union. However, others tend to glide over it so as not to have to acknowledge its most significant problem. Embracing Texas v. White requires one to believe the last 150 years never happened. Since 1869, the world kept spinning. Generations have come and gone, and the Supreme Court has continued to issue rulings that chip away at the foundations of Texas v. White. As the entirety of Chase's determination is predicated on the claim that "perpetual union" is the "more perfect union" spoken of in the Preamble of the Constitution, the single ruling by the Court in the 1905 case of Jacobson v. Massachusetts, where it was determined that the federal government can gain no powers based on the Preamble, could utterly destroy Texas v. White. The federal government's position on self-determination has evolved to the point of signing international agreements, covenants, and treaties pledging to respect the right of self-determination. The same chorus of voices who declare that Texas v. White is the "end all, be all" of decisions on the matter of self-determination of the States are the same voices who declare that subsequent rulings by the Supreme Court obligate the federal government and the States to give treaty obligations, such as those dealing with self-determination, the same weight as constitutional law and argue for its application as such. Ultimately, though, any question of self-determination is political in nature. It is not, and never will be, a judicial question.

Question 55

Is supporting TEXIT treason?

Accepted Answer

The term treason has become an increasingly popular charge in this divisive political climate. While Texit advocates are the recipients of it at a higher than average rate, it has become far more common in federal partisan wrangling. Obama was accused of treason over the Iran nuclear deal and Trump has been accused of treason for his alleged ties to the Russian government. However, those who seem to be quickest to use the term seem to be most clueless as to its meaning. Drawing from an English statute from 1351 that was created to limit the scope of treason, the framers of the United States Constitution included a specific definition in Article 3, Section 3, which stated that, "Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort." Recognizing that accusations of treason were often the tool of tyrants, James Madison explained the necessity to clearly define it in Federalist 43. "As treason may be committed against the United States the authority of the United States ought to be enabled to punish it: but as new tangled and artificial treasons have been the great engines by which violent factions, the natural offspring of free governments, have usually wreaked their alternate malignity on each other, the Convention has with great judgment opposed a barrier to this peculiar danger by inserting a Constitutional definition of the crime." Treason is a criminal act committed by an individual, not a political body and, therefore, cannot be committed by a State. To continue to level the charge of treason, one must believe that the entirety of the population of Texas who would vote in support of Texit would be individually guilty of treason. This, however, completely ignores the constitutional definition of treason. Such a vote is not levying war against the United States unless one considers casting a ballot as an act of war. Nor is it adhering to or giving aid and comfort to an enemy of the United States. If so, who would that enemy be? An enemy of the United States is someone who has been declared as such by the United States Congress, generally through a formal declaration of war. In this instance, North Korea might perhaps fit the bill, since the Korean War was never formally concluded. According to Carlton F.W. Larson, a professor of law at the University of California at Davis, "Certain nonstate actors can also count as enemies, and terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda and the Islamic State probably fit the definition." Adhering to the enemy would mean that voting for Texit was, in fact, joining North Korea or the Islamic State. Giving aid and comfort would mean that voting for Texit was, in fact, providing concrete and material support to the same. Neither of these applies.

Question 56

Is TEXIT the same as overthrowing the government?

Accepted Answer

There is a federal statute in Title 18 of the U.S. Code that outlaws attempts to do that very thing. In its entirety, it reads: "Whoever knowingly or willfully advocates, abets, advises, or teaches the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying the government of the United States or the government of any State, Territory, District or Possession thereof, or the government of any political subdivision therein, by force or violence, or by the assassination of any officer of any such government; or Whoever, with intent to cause the overthrow or destruction of any such government, prints, publishes, edits, issues, circulates, sells, distributes, or publicly displays any written or printed matter advocating, advising, or teaching the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying any government in the United States by force or violence, or attempts to do so; or Whoever organizes or helps or attempts to organize any society, group, or assembly of persons who teach, advocate, or encourage the overthrow or destruction of any such government by force or violence; or becomes or is a member of, or affiliates with, any such society, group, or assembly of persons, knowing the purposes thereof Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both, and shall be ineligible for employment by the United States or any department or agency thereof, for the five years next following his conviction." The operative words in the statute are "force or violence" and, given that a Texit, initiated by a legal process, ratified by a vote of the people of Texas, and secured by a declaration of the reclamation of the right of self-determination, is neither force nor violence, Texit is not the same as overthrowing the government. It is this reason that TEXIT must follow a legal, peaceful, political process.

Question 57

Is Texas too integrated with the United States to TEXIT?

Accepted Answer

It is true that Texas is highly integrated with the United States. However, these political and economic ties are not so tight or intricately interwoven that it would be impossible to untangle them. In many instances, it would not be necessary to untangle them at all. There is no part of the relationship between Texas and the rest of the United States that could not be accomplished by utilizing existing State-level institutions and agencies, executing bilateral agreements between Texas and the United States, or by Texas signing onto multilateral international agreements that are already in place. Is the issue trade? Countries, including the United States, trade with one another every hour of every day and have done so for all of recorded human history. The free trade agreements that the United States already has in place for 20 other countries around the world treat trade with them as though they were one of the States of the Union. Yet no one would argue that any of those countries are inseparable members of the federal Union. Texas could execute a free trade agreement with the United States and adopt the United States tariff schedule with the World Trade Organization for external trade, and no one would even notice the difference. Is the issue currency? If Texas needed or wanted to, it could adopt the U.S. dollar as its official currency in an informal currency union like many other countries have done. We don't need permission to do it. However, if Texas were so inclined and the United States were amenable, we could enter into an official currency union with the United States. Scotland proposed a similar move for itself and the United Kingdom ahead of its independence vote. This would be similar to the formal currency union that exists throughout the European Union. Is the issue banking? Foreign banks are allowed to operate in the United States at this very moment with no trouble. That includes large retail banks like Compass and HSBC. In fact, more banks in Texas are State-chartered and State-regulated than those who are federally chartered and regulated. Is the issue federal pension benefits? People live outside of the United States and collect their federal pensions, including Social Security, every month. The Social Security Administration has an entire section on its website and publishes numerous informational documents on this subject. Through totalization agreements with other countries, U.S. citizens work outside the United States and continue to pay into the United States Social Security system and vice versa. Is the issue travel? Cars, planes, trucks, and trains move between the United States and other countries every day. Over 1 million people per day legally cross the border between the United States and Mexico for work or travel using only a "Border Crossing Card." No passport needed. This is essentially no different than traveling between Texas and Oklahoma, Louisiana, or New Mexico. Perhaps the concerns are more about having the money to continue certain functions of government. Not a problem. Simple arithmetic proves the ability of an independent Texas to fund a government at the same level that Texans are currently accustomed to if that's what Texans want. Rebuilt in 2026 on six years of federal data (2019 through 2024), the arithmetic is straightforward. Texans pay about $453 billion a year to the two governments that tax them, Washington and Austin. Governing Texas, every program, every federal and state job, every department, every facility and base, costs about $295 billion a year. That works out to roughly $14,500 paid per Texan against about $9,400 in cost. The revenue Texans already generate covers the full cost of their government, with a wide margin, and without raising anyone's taxes by a single cent. To be fair about it, net Social Security and Medicare out of both sides, the benefits and the payroll taxes that fund them, and the margin narrows toward break-even, so the honest claim is not a giant surplus. It is self-sufficiency: Texas funds 100 percent of its own government, and a large share of the rest of the country's besides. Somehow, since 1945, 140 new, formerly dependent countries have been able to "make it" as independent, self-governing nation-states. The unspoken assertion is that, to be able to do anything that Texas would have to do as an independent nation, it must be a part of the United States. The implication is that Texas, and Texans, aren't as good, as smart, or as capable as other nations. This requires them to ignore the truth about how Texas stacks up against other self-governing countries in the world. In every category in which nation-states are traditionally compared, Texas overperforms. Texas has the 8th largest economy in the world. Texas ranks 40th in the world in size. Texas ranks 47th in the world in population. Texas ranks 40th in the world in the size of its labor force. Texas is a net global exporter ranking 22nd in the world and leading all other States in the United States. 93 percent of Texas exports are manufactured exports. Texas is the 12th largest technology exporter in the world. Texas ranks 19th in the world in the size of its active farms and ranches. Texas is the largest energy producer in the United States, accounting for more than half of the entire United States energy production and one-quarter of the refining capacity with over 26 petroleum refineries. Texas has the 7th largest coal reserves. Texas is the 6th largest producer of wind energy in the world. Texas has its own power grid. These statistics, while impressive, don't tell the whole story. Texas not only does well in spite of the federal government, Texas is already structurally capable of doing everything that is traditionally done by a national government. In Texas, you will also find a state-level analog for every single cabinet-level federal department. Texas even has its own military. The Texas Military Department is composed of the three branches of the military in the State of Texas. These branches are the Texas Army National Guard, the Texas Air National Guard, and the Texas State Guard. All three branches are administered by the state adjutant general, an appointee of the governor of Texas, and fall under the command of the Texas governor. The State Guard, which is exclusively under the command of the governor, is divided into six army regiments, two air wings, three maritime regiments, and three medical battalions. The Texas Army National Guard consists of the 36th Infantry Division, 71st Troop Command, and the 176th Engineer Brigade. The Texas Air National Guard consists of the 149th Fighter Wing, 147th Attack Wing, and the 136th Airlift Wing. Contrary to the opinion of some, Texas' attachment to the federal system is not a special case. There was no union in recent history with more power aggregated into a central government than the Soviet Union. Within an even tighter integration and under extreme economic stress, its constituent republics were able to extract themselves and become fully functioning nation-states. If the United States has truly become more centrally controlled than the Soviet Union, then it is no longer the United States. It has become the United State and no longer represents the vision of its founders. If those who believe that separation is too difficult are to be believed, and today it is too complicated, tomorrow it will be more so and the day after harder still. If this argument is true, then Texas is destined to fall ever deeper into the depths of the federal system until Texas is only a distant memory that exists in a history book. It is a false argument and one that strikes counter to everything Texans have historically believed about themselves. It runs contrary to the reputation gained by Texans around the world. It is the same argument made by "helicopter parents" for why their children should still live at home well into their thirties. And it's the excuse used by socially stunted adults, well into their thirties, as to why they still live with mommy and daddy. Ultimately, Texans bristle at the suggestion that we simply aren't good enough to govern ourselves. We reject the idea that independence can't be done as we remember the old adage that, "If you want something done, tell a Texan that it can't be done." The real question is this: Given all our natural advantages, if Texas can't make it as an independent nation, then who can?

Question 58

Does the Constitution actually prohibit a state from leaving?

Accepted Answer

No. There is no clause in the United States Constitution that forbids a state from leaving the union. Read the document from the Preamble to the Twenty-seventh Amendment and you will not find the prohibition, because it is not there. The Constitution is a list of powers, and this one is not on the list The federal Constitution works by enumeration. Article I, Section 8 lists what the federal Congress is allowed to do: coin money, raise armies, regulate commerce, establish post offices, and so on down a finite list. If a power is not granted, the federal government does not have it. There is no "power to prohibit a state from leaving" anywhere in that list, and there is no "power to hold the union together by force." The thing opponents insist the federal government possesses was never handed to it. Article I, Section 10 is the actual list of what states cannot do, and leaving is not on it either The Framers knew exactly how to restrict the states when they wanted to. Article I, Section 10 is a precise catalog of the things states are forbidden to do: enter treaties, coin money, pass bills of attainder, lay tariffs without the consent of Congress, keep troops in peacetime, make compacts with foreign powers, or engage in war unless actually invaded. The Framers sat down and wrote out the limits on state power line by line. Leaving the union is absent from that list. When the people drafting a document specify what is prohibited and leave something out, the omission is not an accident. It is a decision. Silence, in a system of enumerated powers, is not a gap. It is an answer. This is the heart of it. In a government of enumerated powers, what the document does not grant is not delegated, and what is not delegated is not a federal power at all. The lawyers have a Latin phrase for the interpretive rule, expressio unius est exclusio alterius: to express one thing is to exclude the others. Francis Bacon put the same idea plainly centuries ago. As he wrote, "As exception strengthens the force of a law in cases not excepted; so enumeration weakens it, in cases not enumerated." The Framers enumerated the limits on the states. Leaving was not among them. The silence is the answer. The strongest version of the argument is not "the text permits it." It is "the power to stop it was never granted." We are not claiming the Constitution contains a clause that expressly authorizes a state to leave. We are pointing out something more durable. In a system built on enumerated powers, the federal government can only do what it was empowered to do, and it was never empowered to prevent a state from leaving. That is not a loophole. That is the design. The burden is not on Texas to find permission. The burden is on Washington to find the power, and the power is not in the document. This was the understanding of the founding generation The view that powers not surrendered remained with the states was not a fringe position. It was the mainstream understanding of how the Constitution worked. St. George Tucker, whose 1803 edition of Blackstone's Commentaries was the first major legal treatise on the new Constitution, described each state as remaining "a perfect state, still sovereign, still independent, and still capable, should the occasion require, to resume the exercise of its functions." The idea that joining the union dissolved the states into a single consolidated mass came later, and it had to be argued for against the plain understanding of the people who ratified the thing. The bottom line The Constitution does not prohibit a state from leaving the union, because the power to stop it was never given to the federal government in the first place. The argument against Texas independence has always been a political argument dressed up as a legal one. On the law, the door was never locked.

Question 59

What does the Tenth Amendment have to do with this?

Accepted Answer

Everything. The Tenth Amendment is the rule that turns the Constitution's silence on a state leaving into a reserved right of the states and the people. What it says The Tenth Amendment reads in full: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." It is one sentence. It is the closing argument of the Bill of Rights, and it sets the default rule for the entire system. Anything not handed to Washington stays with the states, or with the people themselves. Connect it to the silence and the answer writes itself Walk the logic one step at a time. The Constitution is a list of delegated powers. The power to prevent a state from leaving is not on that list. The Tenth Amendment says every power not on the list is reserved to the states or the people. Therefore the decision about whether to remain in the union is a reserved power. It belongs to Texas and to Texans, not to the federal government. There is no clever step hidden in that chain. It is just the Tenth Amendment applied to a power Washington was never given. The Supreme Court itself has described the amendment exactly this way In United States v. Darby (1941), the Court explained that the Tenth Amendment "states but a truism that all is retained which has not been surrendered." That is not a movement slogan. That is the Supreme Court describing the amendment as a rule of retained sovereignty: the states kept everything they did not give up. The power to hold a state in the union by force was never surrendered, because it was never granted, so it was retained. Madison drew the same map James Madison, in Federalist No. 45, told the ratifying public precisely how the balance would work. As he wrote, "The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite." Few and defined on one side, numerous and indefinite on the other. The federal government was meant to be the one with the short, specific list. Jefferson made the stakes plain: to step beyond the boundaries drawn around the powers of Congress, he warned, "is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition." Forcing a state to stay is the ultimate version of what the Court has already forbidden The modern Court has built a whole doctrine, called anti-commandeering, holding that the federal government cannot conscript a state's government to carry out federal aims. In New York v. United States (1992) the Court struck down a law that tried to force states to act as federal instruments. Now apply that principle to its limit. If Washington cannot commandeer a state's legislature to pass a single statute, the claim that it can commandeer a state's entire existence, forcing the whole apparatus of Texas to remain a federal subunit against the will of its people, is the most extreme commandeering imaginable. The smaller version is already unconstitutional. The bottom line The Tenth Amendment is the legal hinge. The Constitution never gave Washington the power to keep a state in the union, and the Tenth Amendment says that unsurrendered power stays with the states and the people. The states created the federal government. They retain the authority to decide their own membership. That is not insurrection. It is sovereignty operating exactly as the Constitution describes.

Question 60

Could Texas leave through a constitutional amendment?

Accepted Answer

Yes, that path exists, and tracing it exposes how weak the "Texas can never leave" claim really is. The same Article V that lets the states rewrite the Constitution can be used to provide for a state's departure, and the logic of that power reaches further than most people realize. Article V puts the states in charge of the Constitution itself Article V gives the states the power to amend the Constitution, and there is almost no limit on what an amendment can do. Three-quarters of the states, thirty-eight of them, can change any provision they choose. They can add powers, strip powers, or rewrite the structure of the federal government from top to bottom. The Constitution has been amended twenty-seven times, including the Twenty-first Amendment, which repealed the Eighteenth and ended Prohibition outright. Amendments can undo amendments. The states hold that pen. The greater power includes the lesser Here is the argument that the "perpetual union" theory cannot survive. If thirty-eight states can lawfully abolish the entire federal government tomorrow morning by amendment, dissolve it, replace it, or restructure it beyond recognition, then it is absurd to claim that the far smaller act of one state departing is somehow constitutionally impossible. The law has a maxim for this: he who can do the greater can do the lesser. A power large enough to erase the whole federal government is obviously large enough to release one state from it. You cannot hold that the states are powerful enough to destroy the union entirely but powerless to let a single member leave. Madison described the states as the masters of the bargain This is not a modern invention. In Federalist No. 39, Madison explained that in ratifying the Constitution each state acted "as a sovereign body, independent of all others, and only to be bound by its own voluntary act." The states were the parties to the agreement and the authors of it. They built the federal government, and through Article V they retain the authority to remake or unmake it. The creature does not get to overrule its creators. Article V's one protected clause proves states keep consent-based rights Look at the single thing Article V places beyond the reach of even a supermajority. It says that "no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate." The Framers carved out one aspect of state sovereignty and made it unamendable without the affected state's own agreement. That tells you something important: the constitutional structure assumes states retain certain rights that cannot be stripped from them by outside vote, and that consent is the currency of the whole arrangement. A system that protects a state's equal vote even against thirty-eight other states is not a system that traps a state inside the union forever. Which path is realistic The amendment route is the cleanest answer to anyone who insists departure is flatly impossible, because it works entirely inside the machinery the Constitution already provides. In practice, an amendment requires thirty-eight states, which is a heavy lift. That is precisely why the Texas Nationalist Movement's path runs first through the Texas Legislature and a vote of the people of Texas under Article 1, Section 2 of the Texas Constitution, and then through negotiation. The amendment argument matters because it settles the question of whether a lawful path exists at all. It plainly does. More than one, in fact. The bottom line A constitutional amendment is one lawful route to Texas independence, and it dismantles the "impossible" claim by itself. If the states can lawfully abolish the federal government, they can lawfully let one state go. The states are the masters of the Constitution. The union is their creation, and the creation does not get the last word over its creators.

Question 61

Could Texas and the United States simply negotiate a separation agreement?

Accepted Answer

Yes. A negotiated separation is not only legal, it is the most likely path, and it is the one the modern world uses. Even the Supreme Court case opponents cite against Texas concedes that the union can be dissolved through the consent of the states. The case they quote against us admits the exit exists In Texas v. White, the 1869 opinion that is the entire legal foundation for the "Texas can't leave" claim, Chief Justice Chase wrote that once a state was in the union "there was no place for reconsideration or revocation, except through revolution or through consent of the States." Read that clause again. Except through consent of the states. The very opinion held up as the iron door has a key sitting in the lock. Chase conceded that a lawful, peaceful exit by consent exists. Opponents quote the first half of his sentence and skip the part that gives the game away. Consent is how grown nations part ways A negotiated separation is a constitutional transition, not a war and not a collapse. It is the path Scotland was offered in 2014, the path Quebec voted on in 1995, and the path the Czech Republic and Slovakia actually walked in 1993 when they divided peacefully into two countries in about six months. These are orderly, lawful processes governed by agreement and recognized by the world. The Confederacy is not the template. Brexit is, and an amicable divorce between two governments that decide to go their own way is older than that. A clear vote creates an obligation to come to the table The legal architecture for this already exists in the democratic world, and the leading example is Canada. When Canada's Supreme Court considered Quebec in 1998, it held that a clear majority on a clear question would create a binding duty on the rest of the country to negotiate the terms of separation in good faith. The court was direct: the other partners "would have no basis to deny the right of the government of Quebec to pursue secession" after such a vote. Canada then wrote that principle into law in the Clarity Act of 2000. A clear expression of the people's will does not get to be ignored. It opens negotiations. What the negotiation actually covers A separation agreement is detailed but entirely ordinary in its subject matter. The Quebec framework lists the kinds of questions on the table: the division of assets and liabilities, the treatment of borders, the rights and interests of affected populations, and the protection of minority rights. For Texas the agenda would include trade, the status of federal facilities, currency continuity, citizenship and benefits, and the rest. None of it is mysterious. Nations have negotiated exactly these terms many times. The choice belongs to Washington, not to Texas Here is the structure of it. Texas asks the question. The people of Texas answer it. After a clear majority votes to restore independence, Washington faces a decision, not Texas. It can recognize the result and negotiate a clean, mutually beneficial separation, the path that keeps trade flowing and the border calm. Or it can refuse to honor a peaceful, democratic vote, which isolates it internationally and serves no one. The practical, stabilizing choice, the one nations almost always make, is to negotiate. The bottom line Texas and the United States can absolutely negotiate a separation agreement, and that is the realistic route to independence. The case cited against us concedes that consent is a lawful exit, the democratic world has a working model for it, and a clear vote of the people of Texas is what starts the conversation. Consent is not a permission slip from Washington. It is a vote of the people of Texas that Washington then has every reason to honor.

Question 62

What does international law say about a people's right to self-determination?

Accepted Answer

International law has moved steadily toward the right of a people to determine their own political status, and it contains no prohibition on a people declaring independence. The two clearest modern statements, from the world's highest court and from Canada's Supreme Court, both point the same direction. The highest court in the world found no prohibition on declaring independence In 2010 the International Court of Justice, the principal judicial organ of the United Nations, was asked directly whether Kosovo's declaration of independence violated international law. The court examined centuries of practice and answered, by a vote of ten to four, that "general international law contains no applicable prohibition of declarations of independence." There is no rule of international law that forbids a people from declaring themselves independent. The court looked for the prohibition everyone assumes exists, and it was not there. Territorial integrity is a rule between countries, not a cage for peoples The Kosovo opinion settled a second point that opponents lean on. The principle of territorial integrity, the court held, "is confined to the sphere of relations between States." In plain terms, territorial integrity governs how countries treat each other's borders. It is not a rule that locks a people inside the state they happen to live in. It restrains foreign invasion. It does not bind a population to a government it no longer consents to. The United States argued for this very result This is the part that should end the debate. When the Kosovo question was before the International Court of Justice, the United States argued in favor of the position the court adopted, and the United States recognized Kosovo as an independent country the day after it declared. So the federal government's own stated position in front of the world's highest court is that international law contains no prohibition on declaring independence. Washington cannot argue one rule abroad and the opposite rule at home. A clear vote creates a duty to negotiate The other landmark is Canada's. In 1998 the Supreme Court of Canada held that while a province cannot simply declare itself gone overnight, a clear majority on a clear question creates a binding obligation on the rest of the country to negotiate separation in good faith. As the court put it, "a clear majority vote in Quebec on a clear question in favour of secession would confer democratic legitimacy on the secession initiative which all of the other participants in Confederation would have to recognize." A free people who vote clearly to govern themselves are owed a negotiation, not a dismissal. The whole framework shifted from borders to consent after 1945 These rulings did not appear from nowhere. Since 1945 the foundation of international legitimacy has moved from the sanctity of existing borders toward the consent of the governed. The principle is written into the law the United States helped author. The United Nations Charter, in Article 1, states one of its core purposes as developing friendly relations among nations "based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples." We should be candid that the Charter frames self-determination as a guiding principle and that its application to a wealthy region of a stable democracy is genuinely debated by lawyers. But the direction of the law is not debated. The world has spent eighty years deciding that peoples, not just states, hold rights. The bottom line International law contains no prohibition on a people declaring independence, the principle of territorial integrity applies between countries rather than against peoples, and a clear democratic vote earns a duty to negotiate. The federal government argued for exactly this when it suited Washington's interests abroad. If it is lawful for Kosovo, it is lawful for Texas.

Question 63

Does Texas have any special legal claim because of how it was annexed?

Accepted Answer

Texas has a strong claim, and it rests on two pillars: the right several states reserved when they ratified the Constitution, and the doctrine that carries that right to every state admitted afterward, Texas included. Three states reserved the right to take their powers back, and Congress accepted it When the Constitution was being ratified, three states did not simply sign on. They ratified while putting on the record that the people retained the right to resume the powers they were delegating. Virginia, on June 26, 1788, declared that the powers granted "may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression." New York, on July 26, 1788, declared "that the Powers of Government may be reassumed by the People, whensoever it shall become necessary to their Happiness." Rhode Island used nearly identical reassumption language on May 29, 1790. These were not side letters. They were part of the formal instruments of ratification. And Congress seated all three states without objection. The reservation became part of the constitutional bargain. Equal footing carries that right to Texas Here is the bridge to Texas. Under the Equal Footing Doctrine, every state enters the union on completely equal terms with the original states. The Supreme Court has been emphatic about this. In Coyle v. Smith (1911), the Court described the union as one "of States equal in power, dignity and authority, each competent to exert that residuum of sovereignty not delegated to the United States," and struck down a condition Congress had tried to attach to a new state's admission. The Court in Pollard's Lessee v. Hagan (1845), the year Texas joined, held that new states enter with the same full sovereignty as the originals. So whatever rights Virginia, New York, and Rhode Island reserved, Texas holds too. You cannot have an original thirteen states with a reserved right to resume their powers and thirty-seven later states locked in without it. That would be a union of unequal members, which is exactly what equal footing forbids. Madison confirmed the compact runs on consent and breach The Framers understood the union as a compact among sovereign states, and a compact carries the ordinary rules of agreements. Madison said so directly. In Federalist No. 39 he described each state as "a sovereign body, independent of all others, and only to be bound by its own voluntary act." In Federalist No. 43 he applied the law of compacts to this very union: "a breach committed by either of the parties absolves the others; and authorises them, if they please, to pronounce the treaty violated and void." A union entered by consent, on equal footing, under compact terms, is a union a state can lawfully leave. The honest part We should be straight about the counterargument, because a careful opponent will raise it. Madison, in correspondence, also drew a line between a conditional ratification, which he rejected, and a declaration of reserved rights, which was accepted. He wrote that the Constitution required adoption "in toto, and for ever." Our answer is the distinction Madison himself drew. Virginia, New York, and Rhode Island did not ratify on the condition that they could leave. They ratified fully and stated, as a reserved right of the people, the power to resume their authority later. That is the kind of reservation Congress accepted, and equal footing carries it forward. The reserved right of the people is the live claim, and it is the one that holds. The bottom line Texas joined the union on equal footing with the original states, three of which reserved the people's right to resume their delegated powers, with Congress's acceptance. Madison described the union as a compact of consenting sovereigns. Texas's claim does not depend on a single odd clause. It rests on the structure of the founding bargain itself, applied equally to Texas.

Question 64

What was actually in the 1845 annexation agreement?

Accepted Answer

The terms by which Texas joined the United States are a matter of public record, set out in the Joint Resolution for Annexing Texas, approved March 1, 1845, and accepted by a Texas convention on July 4, 1845. Texas did not enter as ordinary territory. It entered as an independent republic negotiating its own terms. Texas came in as a nation, not a territory Most states were carved out of federal territory and admitted once they met conditions Washington set. Texas was different. Texas had been an independent, internationally recognized republic for nearly a decade, and it joined by agreement, not by petition. That distinction matters. The act of joining was an act between two governments, which is the same posture Texas would occupy again in negotiating a departure. Texas kept its own public lands Under the 1845 resolution, Texas retained ownership of its public lands. The agreement provided that Texas would "retain all the vacant and unappropriated lands lying within its limits," to be applied first to its debts and then disposed of as the state directed. This is unusual. In most states the federal government held vast public lands. In Texas, the land stayed with Texas. That is why Texas controls its own public lands to this day, and it is a concrete marker of the sovereignty Texas carried into the union. Texas kept its own debt, and Washington refused to assume it The flip side was the debt. The resolution specified that Texas would retain its public debts and liabilities, and it was explicit that "in no event are said debts and liabilities to become a charge upon the Government of the United States." Read that in light of today's debate over the federal debt. The founding agreement between Texas and the United States established the principle that each side keeps its own books. Texas did not pool its debt into the union in 1845. The terms of entry treated the two as separate fiscal entities. The agreement included the right to divide into as many as five states The resolution's third article addressed Texas's future shape. It provided that "new States, of convenient size, not exceeding four in number, in addition to said State of Texas," might later be formed out of Texas territory and admitted to the union. Four new states plus the existing one is five. This is the famous divisionism provision, and it is real text in the founding agreement. We will be precise about what it does and does not do, because precision is the whole point of a legal answer. What that provision means, stated honestly The divide-into-five clause is genuine, but it is not a hidden self-executing trigger for independence, and we do not claim it is. Any actual division would still require action by the Texas Legislature and, on the strongest reading, the agreement of Congress, and serious scholars argue later admission acts complicate it. What the provision does establish is more useful than a gimmick: it is documentary proof that the United States itself, at the moment of annexation, treated the political shape of Texas as something Texas retained a special say over. Washington wrote into the founding bargain that Texas was not just another block of federal land to be administered. Texas kept its lands, kept its debts, and kept an extraordinary voice over its own future configuration. That is the posture of a sovereign that joined by consent. The bottom line The 1845 agreement shows Texas entering the union as a recognized republic on negotiated terms: it kept its public lands, it kept its own debt with Washington expressly refusing to assume it, and it secured a unique provision over its own future as states. Texas joined by agreement between two governments. The historical record of how Texas came in reinforces the case for how Texas can go.

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