An Outside-Money Ban Championed by the TNM Advances in the Texas Legislature
Two bills restricting out-of-state campaign contributions, long championed by the movement as a sovereignty issue, advanced in the 2025 legislative session.
After a decade of the Texas Nationalist Movement pressing to limit out-of-state campaign contributions, two bills doing exactly that are moving through the Texas Legislature. House Bill 3592, by Representative Dade Phelan, and its companion, Senate Bill 405, by Senator Mayes Middleton, are before the State Affairs committees in each chamber.
The bills would set tiered limits on contributions from out-of-state donors, 5,000 dollars for statewide offices, 2,500 for district offices, and 1,000 for county offices, and would bar political committees from giving to Texas candidates if more than half of their money came from outside the state in the prior reporting period.
The movement has framed the measure not as a campaign-finance technicality but as a matter of sovereignty. When non-Texans fund Texas elections, it argues, the will of actual Texas voters is diluted, a concern that has driven its message since 2015 and that grows more important as the state moves toward an independence referendum, when Texans alone should decide their future.
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The Texas Nationalist Movement is the largest organization working to put a single question to the people of Texas in a binding, up-or-down vote: whether Texas should govern itself as an independent nation. 635,472 Texans across all 254 counties are on record in support. Learn more at tnm.me.