What an Independent Texas Would Look Like

Supporters of "Texit," the campaign for Texas to secede from the United States and become a fully independent nation, have had a busy year. Earlier this month the Texas Nationalist Movement (TNM), the leading pro-independence campaign group, delivered a petition with 139,456 signatures to the Republican Party of Texas in Austin.

It called for an advisory referendum on Texan independence to be included on the March 2024 primary ballot. According to the Texas election code, the minimum number of signatures needed for a referendum to be considered is "five percent of the total vote received by all candidates for governor in the party's most recent gubernatorial general primary election."

The most recent Republican gubernatorial primary was in 2022, when 1,954,172 votes were cast, electing incumbent State Governor Greg Abbott. A total of 97,709 signatures are therefore needed for a referendum to be considered.

In March then-Texas state Representative Bryan Slaton introduced legislation calling for a referendum on "whether or not the State should investigate the possibility of Texas independence," though it failed to pass the legislature's state affairs committee. It came after the Republican Party of Texas approved calls for a referendum on whether the state "should reassert its status as an independent nation" at its June 2022 convention in Houston.

These moves have sparked growing interest in what would happen if Texas did vote to become an independent nation, as it was for nine years between declaring independence from Mexico in 1836 and joining the United States in 1845. In an interview with Newsweek, TNM president Daniel Miller argued Texit is the antidote to a failing federal system, though one prominent academic branded the scheme "a combination of fantasy and symbolic gesture" and another claimed there is "no plausible scenario" in which Texas becomes independent peacefully.

Miller told Newsweek: "The federal system is broken and Texans are paying the price. It makes more sense for Texans to govern Texas."

He blamed the federal government for the rising price of gas and groceries, along with the increasing national debt, adding: "If it could be fixed, it would have been fixed."

Miller envisages a successful independence referendum leading to a process of negotiation between Austin and Washington, ending with two independent but closely linked countries.

He said: "Once the vote comes back in the affirmative, nothing changes immediately. Texans will begin a process to move toward independence that involves changes to our state constitution, statutes that follow the constitutional changes, evaluation and execution of international covenants, treaties, and agreements, and the negotiation of issues with the federal government.

"If the federal government follows its near-century-long policy of respect for the right of self-determination, we would expect the relationship with the remaining United States to be cordial and cooperative."

On its website the TNM argue an independent Texas should initially continue using the U.S. dollar to provide "economic stability," meaning interest rates would continue to be controlled by the Federal Reserve. In the longer term they call for Texas to seek "a negotiated currency union with the United States," similar to the Euro which is the currency of 20 European countries, though if this isn't on offer "Texas will want to explore moving toward a currency of its own as soon as possible."

Miller told Newsweek Texas would have "no obligation to pay a portion of the debt accumulated by the federal system" and suggested that whether an independent Texas accepts a share would depend on negotiations with Washington over current government assets, including what it would receive from the U.S. military.

The TNM claims that after independence Texas would be ruled as a "unitary nation-state," rather than being sub-divided into different states or provinces. Citizenship requirements would be determined by the Texas legislature but "will likely mirror many of the requirements to be a citizen of any other self-governing independent nation," while "Texans who are already legally living within the state when it becomes independent will automatically gain Texas citizenship."

According to Miller the TNM wants "the United States and Texas to maintain a frictionless movement of people and goods between the two" should they split. On its website the group points to the U.S. relationship with Mexico as a model and states Texas would "readily qualify" for America's federal Visa Waiver program, which allows citizens from 41 countries to enter the U.S. for 90 days without requiring a visa.

The TNM program calls for the establishment of an independent Texan military after independence, claiming if the new nation spent the NATO minimum of 2 percent of GDP of defense each year it would fund "an active duty enlistment in excess of 125,000 troops." These would primarily be used for home defense, but the TNM also suggests Texas would contribute to "the combined military might of the western world" to tackle threats to international instability.

Any bid at secession would almost certainly result in intense legal disputes, with the Supreme Court ruling in the 1869 Texas v. White case that a state leaving the union is unconstitutional. Miller disputes this view commenting: "Article 1 Section 10 of the U.S. Constitution lists all actions that are prohibited to the states. Withdrawing is not in that list. Therefore, under the 10th Amendment to the Constitution, the lack of an explicit constitutional prohibition means it is a right reserved to the states and the people."

However, James Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin, argued that the debate over Texan independence is more about internal Republican politics than a serious project in its own right.

He told Newsweek: "Texas nationalists calling for something akin to a 'Texit' represent some combination of fantasy and symbolic gesture, each divorced from reality…The GOP party apparatus has become the favored dwelling place of extreme and esoteric elements, where such factions are treated much more seriously than they are among the general public. In some areas, they sometimes succeed in moving the center of the party to the right, and in attracting attention to ideas and proposals that have little relation to reality—like the idea of an independent Texas."

Joshua Blank, an expert in state politics at the University of Texas at Austin, and research director of the Texas Politics Project, argued any Texit is unlikely to be peaceful and would require a greatly expanded state capacity of the type that would repel many Republicans.

In an interview with Newsweek he said: "I think history has made clear that there is no plausible scenario in which Texas could peacefully extract itself from the United States, even were that the will of its populous—which there is no indication of to my knowledge.

"When you start to think about the mechanics of Texas withdrawing from the United States, the ridiculousness of the proposition quickly makes itself apparent. As much as Texas prides itself on the notion of independence, like most states, Texas relies on federal dollars—especially in recent years—to help provide a relatively low baseline of state services. For Texas to withdraw from the U.S., the state would have to significantly increase its revenue through both taxes and fees to make up for lost federal dollars, but also, to begin providing funding for the many, often very expensive, services no longer provided by the federal government.

"A central element of Republican orthodoxy in Texas is a government model based on low taxes and few services. Filling in the gaping financial and service-providing role of the federal government would require a dramatically different, significantly expanded, model of government in Texas, one that I would suspect most GOP voters would detest more than Texas' ongoing participation in the United States."

Correction 12/25/23, 5:33 a.m. ET: This article was updated to correct the spelling of Joshua Blank's name.