Spectators Don’t Win Independence: A Coffee Talk on the Stakes Before the Session

This Late Night Coffee Talk landed in the long shadow of the November 2024 election, and Daniel Miller spent it answering viewer questions while refusing to name the things that strategy says you keep quiet. Who will author the Texas Independence Referendum Act and how many will co-sign it. He would not say, and he told the story why. Years ago state representative Leo Berman agreed to file the TEXIT bill, then called from the road to back out. The reason, Miller learned later, was that Speaker Joe Straus had summoned Berman the moment TNM left his office and warned that filing the bill would get every other bill he carried killed that session. That is the Austin machine Miller keeps describing, a house where the speaker picks winners and losers, and it is why he will not crow about an author until the ink is on the paper and the bill is filed in triplicate.

He walked the timeline plainly. The pre-filing window opens around November 11, the bill would be filed then, and the next legislature takes it up in January. He was blunt that waiting until January, or even until November, to get involved is showing up late to a storm that is already here. On the courts, he argued self-determination is a non-justiciable political question, not a constitutional one, which is why TNM is so dogmatic about process: give the opposition the least possible room to veto the result under color of law. And he addressed the petition wound directly. Those signatures did get TNM onto the March primary ballot, and former Republican Party of Texas chairman Matt Rinaldi violated the statute to keep it off, shafting every Texan who signed. The consolation, he noted, is that the new RPT chairman is a Texas First Pledge signer.

The heart of the night was a call to stop spectating. Reading a young supporter’s farewell as he left to serve in the National Guard, Miller turned a twenty-dollar super chat into a sermon on participation. He quoted Sam Houston on the men who fly like recreants from danger, cited the 60 percent desertion rate in the texian army before San Jacinto, and made the math personal: twenty dollars is four more yard signs or roughly twenty new registered supporters, and multiplied across everyone watching, the thing is done. TNM is organizing 30 to 40 counties, recruiting polling-place volunteers to build election-day experience for the eventual referendum, and spinning up citizen legislative advocates. Spectators are friction, he said. Participants propel.

Questions answered in this episode

• Are there legal protections and safeguards if TNM is targeted by a January 6th style false-flag operation meant to make it look like the villain?
• Who is going to be the state representative who authors the TEXIT bill, and how many will co-sign it?
• What happens to Social Security and other federal benefits after Texas leaves the federal government?
• I got my early-voting ballot and there was no TEXIT on it. What happened to the petition we had enough signatures for?
• Every good military plan includes a defense against a counterattack. Will the counterattack to TEXIT come from the federal courts, and are we prepared?
• Is the bill on the voting docket yet, and if so on what date?
• When will the next TNM classes start?
• What is Greg Abbott doing abroad, what is going on in Austin, and what are your thoughts?
• Do we have a plan for what we will do if the elections are sabotaged?
• What will become of current FBI and other federal police investigations in Texas after independence?