Daniel Miller went to the camera in a t-shirt this week, a small jab at the person who complained about a Texian store shirt reading that low-information voters kill republics. The bigger fight was a few miles down the road. With the Alamo ringed by DPS and the National Guard ahead of anticipated unrest, the TNM’s monthly Alamo Memorial March was moved from dusk to morning. Miller drew his usual line: California’s ICE-raid riots, Gavin Newsom suddenly talking like a states-rights man, and Donald Trump answering with a Lincolnian threat to send in the Marines are exactly the spiral Texas should want out of. The same crowd that wanted a shooting war over Abbott’s border moves now cheers Newsom, and that hypocrisy is the whole argument for getting Texas off the federal treadmill.
The most actionable item of the night was House Bill 1056, sitting on Greg Abbott’s desk, which would let Texas build a precious-metals-backed currency on top of the Texas Bullion Depository. The banking lobby is leaning hard for a veto, and Miller argued that a veto should cost Abbott at the ballot box. He tied it to the broader chaos atop Texas politics: the SB3 THC fight he says Dan Patrick badly misplayed, the school-choice and property-tax grievances that fractured the Republican base, and a cascade of musical chairs from Paxton’s Senate run to Hegar’s exit to the A&M chancellorship.
Underneath it all sat the number Miller keeps returning to. The 2022 Survey USA poll found 66 percent of likely voters would vote yes on independence, but only about a quarter would give a single cent to make it happen. That gap, he argued, is why this takes so long. A vote is the floor, not the ceiling. Without funded candidates and organized ground work, supporters are just old men shaking fists at the sky. And if the Legislature will not deliver election integrity, he said, the movement may need 35,000 to 70,000 trained volunteers to guard the referendum itself.
Questions answered in this episode
- How should Texas respond to the Mexican Senate president’s threat to rebuild the wall to the 1830 map, and to Reconquista talk?
- Would the US House and Electoral College shrink or stay the same after Texas leaves, and how do those numbers actually work?
- Why hasn’t Calexit hit its petition signatures despite all the noise Newsom is making over federal action in California?
- What currency would an independent Texas use, and what is it backed by?
- What are Daniel’s thoughts on SB3 and the THC ban, and what does it mean for Dan Patrick?
- Would an independent Texas be non-interventionist in foreign wars?
- What happens to Social Security income for Texans after independence?
- If Texas can’t even repeal property taxes for seniors, why believe it would govern any leaner once independent?
- Why weren’t Allen West and Daniel Miller on the general-election ballot?
- How does Alberta’s path to an independence vote compare to the path Texas faces?
- Given electronic voting machines and dirty voter rolls, can a secession vote have any integrity?
- Does Texas need to write a brand-new constitution to function as a nation, or can it be done by amendment?
- Would an independent Texas continue in the John Locke tradition of liberty?
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