- A movement advocating for Texas to secede from the US is gaining attention.
- The movement's de facto leader told BI that Texans are "sick and tired of being crushed."
- Critics argue that secession is impractical, illegal, and bad for business.
A movement calling for Texas to leave the US and become its own country is growing louder.
Daniel Miller, a sixth-generation Texan, is the de facto face of the modern Texas Nationalist Movement, nicknamed "Texit." He advocates for secession through peaceful means, citing frustration with the federal government and a desire for greater autonomy.
"Texans are seeing themselves increasingly disenfranchised by a federal system that is just terminally broken," Miller told Business Insider.
"At the end of the day, Texans are fiercely independent, and frankly, they're sick and tired of being crushed."
On March 2, which is also Texas Independence Day, the Dallas Morning News issued a warning against pro-secession candidates.
"The desire for smaller government and increased state's rights is valid. But this rhetoric, largely espoused by far-right candidates, is not conservative. It's unpatriotic," the paper's editorial board wrote.
Critics of the movement have said this would be illegal, unconstitutional, impossible, and, as some point out, very expensive.
'Bad for business'
The modern Texas secession movement has been around for decades, but it has been gaining attention as the state has been at the center of multiple political storms — most recently, the stand-off at the southern border between state and federal authorities over immigration.
Walter Buenger, a history professor at the University of Texas at Austin, told BI that seceding would be illegal and impractical.
"I don't think much will come of it. Talk about secession pops up in Texas every few years, usually when a Democrat is the president. And this is clearly politically based," he said.
Miller, the secession leader, said that Texans are also unhappy with the large amounts of money they contribute to a federal system that he said does not serve their needs.
Texas has the second-largest economy in the US after California, buoyed by its oil-and-gas industry.
Texans are also among the largest contributors to the federal budget through federal taxes, typically contributing over $200 billion annually.
But they get a lot of it back: federal dollars account for one-third of the Texas state budget, according to the budget and policy nonprofit Every Texan.
"To replace the government services we rely on, the nation of Texas would have to find a way to get an additional $9,000 or so per person living here — possibly through income or sales taxes," Eva DeLuna, a state budget analyst at Every Texan, told Texas Monthly in 2022. "For a two-person household, that's $18,000 coming out of your pocket."
Buenger, the professor, said that Texas' economy is built on connections outside the state and that anything that hampers that would simply be "bad for business."
As Business Insider's Noah Sheidlower reported in December, Texan economic growth is strongly outpacing the US average.
A huge disruption like declaring independence would threaten that success.
Attempts to get a question about secession into the primary voting process of the Texas GOP have failed, which Buenger believes is partly because the business community would not support it.
Miller said that if Texas were to secede, Texas would then vote on a new form of government and negotiate with the US on things such as trade and mutual defense.
Buenger said this was wishful thinking.
"The last time they tried to secede we had a war, and that's a more likely scenario than a happy-go-lucky trade agreement," he said, a reference to Texas joining the Confederacy in the Civil War.
Many legal experts have also said there is no legal way for a state to secede from the US.
Critics cite the Texas v. White Supreme Court case of 1869, which addressed whether Texas had lawfully seceded from the Union during the Civil War. The ruling concluded that Texas had not legally seceded and established that states cannot unilaterally leave, holding that the US is "an indestructible union."
Miller called the SCOTUS ruling "one of the biggest jokes known to man." He cited Article 1 Section 10 of the US Constitution, which lists things states are not allowed to do, like mint their own currency or sign treaties.
He noted that it doesn't say states can't leave.
A fantasy with unlikely allies
James Henson, the director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin, told BI that while the independence movement may be loud, it is unrealistic and has little support among Texans.
"For the most part, this is a fantasy projection among a very small sliver of people," he said. "And I think the romance of some general notion of Texas independence wears off pretty fast if people were to start considering it seriously."
He pointed to a recent poll of 1,300 Texans by his project, which found that 63% of responding Texans consider themselves Americans first and Texans second, compared with the 26% who put Texas first.
The idea of "Texit" has been grabbing headlines and generating controversy lately, but at least some of this appears to be manufactured.
Amid the border stand-off, the Texas independence movement gained an unlikely ally in the former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, who expressed support for the idea and suggested that a "destructive civil confrontation" in the US could be coming.
As posts supporting the idea spread across social media, Wired reported that a Russian disinformation campaign led by bots and the country's powerful state-run media propelled some of it.
A Just Russia Party Supports Independent Texas Republic
"If necessary, we are ready to help with the independence referendum. And of course, we will recognize the Texas People's Republic, if there is one. Good luck! We are with you!"
— Sergei Mironov, Deputy of the Russian… pic.twitter.com/XNlDlW2RmI
— James Porrazzo (@JamesPorrazzo) January 27, 2024A desire to sow discord in the US, which has been one of Ukraine's strongest international allies since Russia invaded, likely motivated the intervention.
The Texan yearning for independence
The Lone Star State's yearning for independence is baked into its history — even its nickname is a reference to its former status as an independent nation after it gained independence from Mexico in 1836.
Even after the US agreed to annex Texas in 1845, its status was unsettled.
It became one of the 11 states that formed the Confederacy and tried to secede from the US in the Civil War of 1861-65. The Confederacy lost, and all 11 states remained part of the US.
"Every Texan learns in school that Texas was an independent nation for a while and there is a strong sense of Texas identity that comes from the history of the state," Henson said.
Buenger said it's important to note that "almost every time that there's been talk of secession there's a sort of racial or ethnic bias involved."
He said that Texas seceded in the 1860s hoping to preserve the enslavement of Black people, and noted that modern-day discussion of secession often revolves around migration.
"More recently, I think there's been a larger uptick in Christian and white nationalism," Henson said.
"The conservative kind of substrate of the state here culturally is more amenable to this kind of nationalist movement that does have strong ethnic and racial overtones in a state that has historically been multi-ethnic and multiracial is getting more so over time."
"Mother may I?"
The first step for Texas to become independent, the secessionists say, would be a statewide referendum.
Earlier this month, Miller and other supporters of secession delivered a petition with more than 170,000 signatures to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's office, calling for the governor to hold a special session in the Texas Legislature for an independence vote.
A recent survey of 814 eligible Texas voters by Redfield & Wilton Strategies suggested that such a vote would fail.
But Miller believes the movement has sufficient support and dismisses the argument that the federal government would not recognize such a vote.
"The one thing about self-government is it's not a 'mother may I?' proposition. The people of Texas are going to have to make their decision," he said. "It'll be interesting to see what the federal government does."
Despite secession supporters' determination, it will likely remain a pipe dream.
"This is pretty much a settled issue in the United States," Henson said.
"Beyond the expressive value of waving the flag and showing up at rallies, if people were really to consider the trade-offs, it doesn't make any sense."
Watch: Why there's a chain of wrecking ball-sized buoys in the Rio Grande
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