Recorded Call Has Governors Running ‘Parts of the Country’ Without Washington

Organizers working with a network of retired military and intelligence officials have written a memo for governors and described a plan for them to take over the functions of the federal government, “wall off” its leaders and reach out to foreign governments once Washington crosses red lines the organizers are drawing themselves, according to a recorded call posted online Monday night.

“If the federal government” is found illegitimate “by whatever crossing of whatever red lines,” one speaker said, “then the governors become the leading governing authority under the current republic framework of our constitution.”

In the recording, no one proposes asking the voters.

Their lines, their call

The call opens with a speaker predicting “a very acute legitimacy crisis sometime in the next few months or the next few years where literally our federal government becomes illegitimate,” and calling that breakdown a chance for “a big structural reform, you know, refounding moment.”

Who decides when the line is crossed? According to the speaker, a coalition of the activist groups “doing all the lawsuits and the civil resistance and the non-cooperation” has “developed a set of red lines that are now being refined in terms of indicators and metrics,” and is building “a situation room” to feed real-time updates to the movement through the midterms. The speaker said the effort is led by National Security Leaders for America, described on the call as 1,600 retired military, intelligence and diplomatic officials.

The governors

The speaker said an “options memo that we created for governors” had gone to a group of governors who are “reviewing it and considering it,” and that organizers had reached out to the governors of Wisconsin, Utah and Washington.

“I had previously been able to get it, while we’re in the safe space here, to the governors of Massachusetts, California, and Illinois,” the speaker said. “Massachusetts didn’t want to touch it. California and Illinois both were interested in it.” They would get involved, the speaker said, “if someone else would take the lead on it.” The Texian Partisan found no public confirmation from any of those governors.

A second speaker spelled out what it would take. Governors “would need to start making plans now for what functions of government they would have to assume, how they would coordinate with each other, how they would make outreach to foreign governments,” the speaker said, in order to “wall off these illegitimate individuals and keep on trying to run the country, or at least parts of the country.”

The Constitution says otherwise. Article I, Section 10 bars any state, without the consent of Congress, from entering “into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power.”

Not leaving, taking over

Then the second speaker added: “I really want to emphasize, this is not a concept for a secession. No one is talking about leaving the United States.”

They are not talking about leaving. They are talking about governors running “parts of the country” on their own authority, conducting their own foreign outreach and walling off the officials voters elected.

The recording was posted on X by DataRepublican, a pseudonymous researcher, in a thread that drew more than 2 million views. DataRepublican identifies the speakers as Paul Zeitz and Danielle Reiff of Renew to Thrive, an initiative Reiff co-founded, according to her published biography. The speaker describing the memo refers to it as one “that Danielle or I will put up in the chat.” The Partisan has listened to the recording and transcribed it, but could not independently confirm who is speaking or when the call took place. The speakers refer to the coming midterm election.

https://x.com/DataRepublican/status/2112364654991409339

Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, one of the states whose governor the organizers say they tried to reach, shared the recording the same night. “It’s not every day you stumble across a recording in which U.S. citizens discuss plans to declare the federal government illegitimate,” Lee wrote on X, calling the governors passage “one particularly alarming excerpt.”

In public, the two argue for working through the Constitution. In an October 5 essay, Reiff wrote that the deepest reforms “require the supermajorities that constitutional change demands: two-thirds of both houses of Congress and three-quarters of the states.” She added: “By design, there is no partisan road to those numbers.”

The difference

Texans who ask for a vote on independence are routinely told it would be illegal. On this call, people who claim the backing of 1,600 retired national security officials describe governors shutting out an elected federal government and running their own foreign outreach, and no one in the recording mentions a ballot.

The Texas Nationalist Movement wants the opposite. It wants Texans to decide their future in an open vote, under the law, with every Texan’s ballot counted. “No one is talking about leaving the United States,” the speaker said. Texans are, and they are asking for a vote.