Pack the Hearing: Prepping TEXIT Testimony and a Texas Supreme Court Ruling That Cuts Our Way

House Bill 3596, the Texas Independence Referendum Act, has landed in the State Affairs Committee. That is exactly where the bill stalled last session, when then chairman Chris Paddie refused to schedule it. This time the committee has a new chairman in Todd Hunter, and Daniel Miller laid out why the odds of an actual hearing are far better. State Affairs is meeting on Wednesdays, the notice will likely come only a few days out, and when it does the job is simple and enormous: pour as many Texans as possible into that room to testify in support.

Most of the night was a working session on how to do that well. Committee testimony runs about three minutes, so Daniel walked through the structure he uses. Open with your name and city so the bill cannot be dismissed as a rural, urban, or regional issue. Establish who you are, state your position on HB 3596 plainly, and give one well-chosen reason you want it passed instead of a scattered list. Then make it personal: say what it would actually mean to stand in a voting booth and decide whether Texas reasserts its status as an independent nation, and close with a direct call to action. Write it out, read it aloud, time it, and rehearse it before you reach the Capitol. He also set the bar. Last session the movement ran its own virtual video testimony that played back to back for 24 hours, and with roughly 400 people signed up that same day to testify on school vouchers, his goal is to make HB 3596 the most-testified bill in Texas legislative history. Anyone willing can register at tnm.me/testify, and the Academy’s Legislative Action Workshop includes a “Learn to Testify” lesson.

He closed with a Texas Supreme Court decision from a few days earlier. In a case over a San Antonio ballot proposition (No. 23-0111, written by Justice Bland), the court refused to pull the measure off the ballot, holding that it would not unduly interfere with an election and that any defect could be challenged after voters had their say. Daniel’s read: that guts the opposition’s favorite line that a TEXIT vote could simply be struck down before it happens. If the legislature enables a vote by statute and puts it on the ballot, the state’s highest court has signaled it will let the people vote first and sort out objections later.