Crawl Through Nails for It: The Legal Petition That Puts TEXIT on the 2022 Ballot

Daniel Miller opens this Late Night Coffee Talk with the petition drive front and center and a clock running down to roughly two months and three weeks. He is adamant that this is not an online petition, not a feel-good form you can slacktivate your way through. It is a legal petition under Texas Election Code 172.08, and gathering about 80,000 physical signatures on paper forces the Texas independence question onto the 2022 Republican primary ballot. He walks through both ways to sign at tnm.me/petition: find a certified petition circulator on the directory map, or, if none is near you, register your support, take the training, become a CPC, sign your own petition, and mail it in. His message is blunt. Come one signature short and it was all for nothing, so do not leave it to the next person.

From there he turns to Greg Abbott, who he argues is in more political trouble than he has ever faced. Miller credits the base-energizing bills Abbott signed entirely to the credible primary challengers already in the race, and he names the operation behind the governor: former Republican Party of Texas chairman Steve Munisteri, now Abbott’s right hand, and Karl Rove working the race from an Austin backdrop. He also reports a phone call with Chad Prather, who he says made the strongest pro-independence statements of the three major challengers, treating a vote on independence not as an option but as the option, with Allen West and Don Huffines invited to step up. You cannot pull one piece off the board and call it checkmate, he says, which is why the TNM is running slates of candidates top to bottom.

He spends real time killing myths. The clause that lets Texas divide into as many as five states is a completely separate issue from leaving the Union, and he explains that Texas was annexed by joint resolution of Congress because the annexation treaty was voted down, with the guaranteed-admittance language proving Congress knew a state could sit outside the Union. He also shoots down the claim that Texas needs the consent of surrounding states to leave, and on regaining historic borders he notes that land was sold, the bonds at the heart of Texas v. White were tied to it, and Texas was paid in full.

Questions answered in this episode

• If Texas leaves, does Oklahoma come too, and is independence decided by a single block vote or state by state?
• Does the United States fund terrorist groups and regime change with our tax money?
• Are there any mainstream celebrity supporters, and where do the major candidates against Abbott stand on independence?
• Will Greg Abbott survive 2022, and who is running his campaign operation?
• If we leave the Union, do we have to split into five different states?
• Could an independent Texas regain its historical borders?
• Where do the Hawaiian independence movements stand, and why have they struggled to gain traction?
• How do we get every TNM supporter signed onto the legal petition?