Daniel Miller opened this Late Night Coffee Talk with the news he had been waiting all session to deliver. Sometime between midnight and 1 a.m., the Texas Senate passed the transactional gold bill on second and third reading and sent it to the House to concur with the amendments. The committee substitute stripped the Garin amendment and restored most of the original language, and the lone Senate change was Senator Bettencourt sliding the deadlines a few months to give the Comptroller room to breathe. What it establishes is a precious-metals-backed transactional currency for Texas. Miller’s point was blunt. People keep asking what Texas will use for money after independence, and within about 48 hours that question answers itself. Independence is a process, not a single vote, and anything that moves Texas toward political, cultural, and economic self-government is TEXIT happening right now.
That win arrived inside a session he refused to sugarcoat. He called the 89th a crapfest and walked through the receipts. A property tax “cut” sold to seniors while local appraisal districts were left free to keep jacking up appraisals. A billion and a half dollars in incentives handed to Hollywood. More spending and regulation stacked on top. He even let a floor slip about “saw off shark guns” during the short-barrel rifle debate stand in as a summary of the whole thing. The deeper problem he named is a knowledge gap. On-the-ground research in one challenger’s district showed most Republican primary voters feel real pain and pin almost all of it on Washington, with little sense of what Austin is doing to them. Closing that gap is the TNM’s next job, and Miller teased a major announcement aimed at the next cycle so the 90th does not repeat the 89th.
He also widened the lens beyond Texas. He pointed viewers to his Texas News interview with Jack Miller, a Cape Town councilman in the Western Cape’s Cape Exit movement who was physically dragged out of a council meeting for refusing to retract the word “migrant.” Miller tied that to a global surge of self-determination he believes is cresting, from Alberta and Louisiana to Scotland and Catalonia, and argued the rest of the world is now drawing hope from what Texans are building.
Questions answered in this episode
- If the Constitution bars states from taxing each other’s goods and U.S. tariffs apply only to foreign imports, will an independent Texas pay tariffs on goods from the Union, and will the Union tariff goods coming out of Texas?
- What exactly is a Texas nationalist, and why did the movement settle on that name back in 2005?
- Who might be a strong, quality candidate capable of challenging Governor Abbott?
- Has Texas made any real progress on election integrity for our state elections this session?
- Is there a list showing which officeholders are with us and which ones need to be replaced?
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