The Clock Starts, the Speaker Fight Erupts, and Why TEXIT Isn’t Filed Yet

The 88th Texas legislative session had just gaveled in, and Daniel Miller spent this Late Night Coffee Talk doing something the flood of panicked emails in his inbox plainly needed. He explained the calendar. People were demanding a bill number for the independence referendum and asking why nothing had been filed, so Miller walked through Article 3, Section 5 of the Texas Constitution. The first 30 days are reserved for introducing bills and the governor’s emergency items, and the unrestricted filing deadline does not arrive until the 60th day, around March 11. Even a pre-filed bill would sit still until then. There are no committees yet and no first readings. The TNM was still perfecting the language left unfinished from HB 1359 last session. The absence of fireworks on opening day, Miller said, is the calendar, not inaction.

He was candid that the real work happens before the session and after the opening dust settles, not in opening-day stunts the organization abandoned years ago. The TEXIT banner flew over the Capitol again, and mass actions are coming, including one in early March, most aimed at districts, phones, and the app rather than a march on Austin. Miller addressed the contentious start head on, from the Tinderholt challenge to Speaker Dade Phelan to the fight over Democrat committee chairs. His read on the rules debate was that you do not fight the rules now. You elect better legislators, because elections have consequences and the trajectory of this session was set in the last one. That is why the TNM is already recruiting candidates for the next cycle, taking the Brexit lesson that you cannot leave the people who oppose independence in office to manage the exit.

The economic objections got the longest treatment. On the Social Security “let Grandma die in a ditch” scare, Miller noted that recipients can already draw benefits while living abroad under existing federal policy, that Texas overpays Washington by 103 to 160 billion dollars a year against roughly 74 billion flowing back in federal pension and Social Security payments, and that an independent Texas could cover every dollar owed, abolish the property tax, and still come out ahead. He pointed viewers to the free FAQ at texitnow.org, then closed on the “cut and run” slur thrown at independence supporters. By that standard, he answered, the defenders of the Alamo and the signers of the Declaration cut and ran too, and he would take that epitaph gladly.