On The Logical Podcast, a national, non-partisan show that once dismissed Texas independence as fringe, Daniel Miller laid out the polling, the lawful path, and the only thing still missing: permission to put it on the ballot.
Daniel Miller, President of the Texas Nationalist Movement, returned to The Logical Podcast with Josh Tolley on June 3 for an hour-plus conversation on Texas independence. Tolley is a nationally syndicated, explicitly non-partisan host whose program bills itself as logic over emotion, a conversation for thinking adults. This is no movement outlet, and Tolley does not run soft interviews. What stood out was how much had changed since Miller’s last visit. Years ago, Tolley recalled, the idea struck him as fringe. He does not treat it that way now.
Tolley pointed to why. Since their first conversation, California’s State of Jefferson movement has surged and Alberta has voted to move forward with its own separation. Miller filled in the rest. New Hampshire has debated withdrawal across three legislative sessions. California’s CalExit campaign is pursuing a citizen ballot initiative. Nevada’s constitution bans withdrawal outright, which, as Miller noted, only makes sense if the right exists in the first place. The movement is continental now, and Texas is out front.
In 2005, the TNM had six founders and support in the single digits. Critics predicted it would crater once Donald Trump took office. Instead the Trump years were among its highest-growth periods, because the motivation was never partisan. “It’s not about who pays the gas bill at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue,” Miller said. “It’s about a broken system.” Support held and grew across three presidencies. Miller cited a 2014 Reuters Ipsos poll showing majority backing inside the Texas GOP, and a 2022 Survey USA poll, which he credits as the fairest read on the question, finding 60 percent of Texas voters would vote yes if it reached a ballot. He believes the number now runs higher.
Miller then laid out, step by step, how Texas would actually leave. The legislature passes the Texas Independence Referendum Act, already filed twice in Austin. Texans go to the polls and vote on a single question, internationally vetted under referendum standards: should the State of Texas reassert its status as an independent nation, yes or no. On a yes, the legislature works through the mandate across four areas: constitutional changes to align the state charter with nationhood, statutory changes to absorb functions now run federally, treaties and trade agreements, and negotiated questions with Washington covering the federal debt, federal facilities, citizenship, and a likely mutual defense pact. There are 140 examples since World War II to draw on. Nothing in the process is illegal, extra-legal, or a rebellion. This is not 1836 and a march on the courthouse with muskets. Welcome to 2026.
So why has it not happened? Not the public. There is no organized opposition to the TNM. Not the federal government, which Miller calls the mechanism, not the endgame. The block is an entrenched political establishment, funded on both sides by the same political action committees, that will not put the question on a ballot. The TNM brought in Dr. Matt Qvortrup, among the world’s foremost authorities on independence referendums and a consultant on Scotland, Brexit, and United Nations self-determination cases. His verdict, in Miller’s paraphrase: measured against comparable movements at the same stage, the TNM is ahead on every metric, and anywhere else in the world Texas would already have voted. If any other issue polled 60 percent, Miller said, there would be a special session and a stack of bills to act on it. They withhold this one vote because they know it would pass, and that passing it would break their grip.
Miller is candid that he does not want to run an independent Texas. His goal, in his words, is to get Texas to a yes vote and then step away. He has been at this since 1996, through years when advocating independence meant checking under his car and finding his name in a terrorism database. The mindset that wins independence, he argues, is not the mindset that governs afterward. “Wars are won by armies, not by committees.” Once the vote is won, he is done.
Miller closed where the TNM now opens every conversation, with a question instead of an answer. Suppose Texas were already a self-governing nation, with its own borders, its own money, its own defense, everything other nations control. Suppose the question was not whether to leave the United States but whether to join it. Knowing everything you know about Washington today, would you vote to join? And if the answer is no, why support staying one second longer than you have to?
Watch the full conversation above. Then do the one thing the establishment is counting on you not to do: demand the vote.
