This week on Late Night Coffee Talk, Daniel Miller spent most of the hour on the legislative session, and he opened with a bill that should worry anyone who posts online. Dade Phelan, the state representative whose district the TNM sits in, has filed legislation to penalize manipulated images in political advertising, prompted by a mailer that Photoshopped him hugging Nancy Pelosi. Miller’s read is blunt. The language is broad enough to criminalize ordinary memes, and the enforcement arm is an already out-of-control Texas Ethics Commission that the political establishment is busy weaponizing to expand what counts as political speech. He doubts the bill survives a constitutional challenge, but warned that litigating it would cost millions, so the smart move is to kill it in the cradle and tell your legislator it has to be dead on arrival.
The deeper thread of the night was strategy. Pressed on how a referendum ever reaches a vote when House leadership keeps it bottled up in committee, Miller was candid: filing the bill is easy, passing it is not, and the block has come from leadership under both Phelan and Dustin Burrows. The fix is the primaries, not a doomed floor fight on speaker-selection day. Add roughly fifteen more reps and the math changes. In the meantime, he argued against a singular fixation on the referendum. TEXIT is the whole process, and the work right now is closing the gap between the status quo and a self-governing Texas so that the day after an affirmative vote requires as little scramble as possible.
That framing ran through his answers on legislation like the gold-depository bill and Phil King’s Senate Bill 707, which builds a framework for Texas to refuse to enforce federal directives it deems unconstitutional. Bills like that, he said, functionally and operationally move Texas toward independence whether or not the referendum has happened yet. He also teased a major announcement coming within the week tied to transition issues, and answered viewer questions on security, military service, and how a free Texas would protect what it wins.
Questions answered in this episode
- What do you think of Dade Phelan’s bill to regulate manipulated images and memes in political advertising, and would it survive the Texas Constitution?
- Does the TNM have attorneys working on the legal issues of pushing independence forward and on the transition itself?
- Is there an up-to-date list of which reps and senators support or oppose a vote on Texas independence?
- How do we ever get a referendum to a vote when the legislature won’t move it out of committee?
- What is Senate Bill 707, and is it meant to placate independence supporters?
- How many Texas First Pledge signers are currently in office?
- How would federal DOGE budget cuts affect mass transit across Texas cities?
- How can you guarantee the same socialists who corrupted Washington won’t hijack a new Republic of Texas, and what are the safeguards?
- How would an independent Texas affect international and American security against rogue states and terrorism?
- After TEXIT, would Texas require mandatory military service for men and women?
- What is the movement doing right now to help Texas and grow support?
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