Leach Backpedals on Treason, and the One Petition That Could Flush the Legislature

After a long stretch on the road, Daniel Miller opened this Late Night Coffee Talk with a frank accounting of the gatekeeper problem. CallHub, one of the vendors TNM used to reach supporters by text, pulled the plug because, in their words, the movement’s values did not align with theirs. It lands alongside the active lawsuit against Facebook, a threatened suit against TikTok, and the steady reality of emails getting dumped into spam folders. Miller’s takeaway was practical, not self-pitying. The single hardest job since 2005 has been simply keeping a line open to supporters, which is why he kept pointing people to the TNM mobile app and its push notifications as the one channel no platform can switch off.

The legal news was the meat of the night. In the defamation suit against State Representative Jeff Leach, who accused independence supporters of treason and sedition on social media, Leach’s attorneys have responded ahead of a hearing set for early next month. They want the case dismissed, the plaintiff sanctioned, and attorney’s fees paid, calling it frivolous. But Miller flagged the admission buried in that filing. To escape the suit, Leach is now arguing he was using hyperbolic language and never meant the accusations literally, which is to say a sitting attorney and lawmaker has effectively conceded in court that advocating for Texas independence by peaceful political process is not actually a crime. On the Meta suit, Miller expects movement within a week or two, either a ruling on Facebook’s bid to move the case to California or a decision in the NetChoice case at the Supreme Court that touches the Texas statute TNM is suing under. He made clear he would welcome being deposed. Both fights run through defendtexit.com, where contributions go straight to the attorney’s trust account rather than to TNM.

Then the centerpiece: the relaunched petition campaign at texaspetition.com. Miller walked through the narrow exception in the Texas Election Code, section 172.088, that lets registered voters place a question on a party’s primary ballot, the one crack in a state that otherwise has no statewide initiative. The goal is roughly 100,000 valid signatures on the Republican petition and about 55,000 to 57,000 on the Democrat petition, all collected inside a 180-day window and turned in by around December 1. Signatures from any prior campaign do not carry over. He pushed back hard on the emailers who think 100,000 names should be easy, leaning on a Sam Houston line about men who fly like cowards from danger, and then laid out the math that makes it worth the grind. Independence referendums draw an 85 percent turnout worldwide. Applied to Texas that is 8.6 to 9.2 million pro-TEXIT voters, a larger bloc than the votes cast for any candidate for governor last cycle. Put the question and pro-independence candidates on the same primary ballot, he argued, and the people gain the leverage to flush out every legislator who stood in their way.