One Phone Call From 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue: How the SRC Caved on Rule 44

Daniel Miller spent the heart of this Late Night Coffee Talk on the story his audience had been waiting a week to hear him address. The State Republican Executive Committee had just met at the Capitol to act on the Rule 44 censures of sitting legislators, the disciplinary teeth that 9,000-plus delegates added at the last convention so the grassroots could finally bar party-line violators from filing as Republicans. When the votes came, not a single censured representative was kept off the ballot. Miller, who watched the entire livestream while TNM staff sat in the room, walked through how it collapsed: during an executive session in the middle of the Jared Patterson deliberation, a phone call from a White House official was reportedly put on speakerphone, warning that removals would dry up the party’s money and hurt Trump in the midterms. SRC members folded. Miller’s verdict was that the people who were going to vote for removal and then reversed solely because of that call betrayed the grassroots, and he predicted a reckoning for them at the next convention.

He tied it directly to the larger argument: these officials are Texas First until the call comes from the federal level, exactly the dynamic that makes the case for independence. He carried the same theme through a question on the Texas National Guard being sent to Illinois, arguing the real policy priority is full militarization of the Texas State Guard, the one branch that cannot be federalized, rather than leaning on a National Guard the president can pull off any mission at will. On the cultural front he reacted to reports of a cafe being planned on the Alamo grounds, recalling the TNM’s 2009 fight against commercializing what he calls sacred battleground, and promising to raise the black flag again if it turns out to be a bar and restaurant on the footprint.

Miller also drew his usual hard lines on language. He rejected the term national divorce as inaccurate, because the union is built of sovereign states, not red and blue political tribes, and reaffirmed that Texas votes for Texas while every other state decides its own fate. Pressed on whether Texas government is even fit to steward a free nation, he laid out the referendum math: an 80 percent-plus turnout typical of independence votes, a projected 55 to 65 percent yes, and a filing window that opens within two weeks of the vote, meaning the roughly 9 million who back independence would obliterate any establishment officeholder who stood against them well before the next legislature sits.

Questions answered in this episode

• With big tech increasingly forced to invade user privacy, should TNM members move off Windows, Apple, and Google to Linux and privacy-focused alternatives?
• How does the TNM plan to reach younger voters, the demographic that has proven decisive in recent elections?
• What happened when the SRC declined to remove any censured legislators from the Republican primary ballot, and what was the White House’s role in it?
• If Texas becomes independent, what happens to Medicare and SSDI benefits?
• Why not change the narrative from a Texas exit to simply divorcing California?
• What is your view on the Texas National Guard being deployed to Illinois?
• What do you make of the plan to put a cafe on the grounds of the Alamo?
• Is the term national divorce a good way to describe what the movement is doing?
• After a successful TEXIT, would Texas move to one-day voting, paper ballots, and proof of Texas citizenship?
• Given how incompetent and at times authoritarian Texas government has been, is it actually capable of stewarding a free nation?
• What can a teenager who believes in the cause but is too young to vote or drive do to help?
• Have you considered speaking at a major university to push the cause toward the finish line faster?