Six Pages to Independence: Inside the Referendum Bill Headed for the Texas Legislature

Daniel Miller spent most of this Late Night Coffee Talk doing something he rarely gets to do on camera. He put the actual Texas Independence Referendum Act on the screen and read it. The draft has gone to Legislative Council for sign-off, sent over by state representative Brian Slaton, and Miller walked through it line by line so supporters could carry it to their own legislators and explain exactly what it does and, just as important, what it does not do.

The bill is short. Six pages, most of them consumed by the list of transitional questions a committee would have to answer. It does two things. It puts one question on the ballot at the November 7, 2023 constitutional amendment election, “Should the State of Texas reassert its status as an independent nation,” and it stands up a legislative committee that meets only if the vote comes back yes. Miller called the design deliberate strategy to strip away every excuse a legislator could reach for. Holding the vote on an existing election day makes it revenue neutral and kills the fiscal note. The committee mirrors the one the Legislature already built for its Article V convention call, so no one can call the mechanism novel or unconstitutional. This draft also reverts the ballot language that Legislative Council had quietly changed on House Bill 1359 last session, the bill Kyle Biedermann filed before running out of clock.

The committee step, Miller argued, is what turns a non-binding referendum into a binding one. He estimated that roughly 10 million Texans voting yes would be the largest mandate any issue has ever received in the state, and that a Legislature dragging its feet afterward would be voted out at the next election. He thanked Slaton for signing the Texas First Pledge, which commits a signer to file the referendum bill every term until a vote is held. He also gave an update on the Facebook lawsuit, postponed because the judge had COVID, and apologized for a week of app outages the dev team traced to patches that broke login, the activity feed, and private messages.

Questions answered in this episode

• How did the federal government allow the current Texas Constitution to keep the right to alter, reform, or abolish government in Article 1, and why is Section 1 arguably the more radical clause?
• What is the best way to answer the fear argument that corporations would flee an independent Texas back to U.S. territory to avoid taxes?
• What does Brian Slaton actually commit to by signing the Texas First Pledge?
• What documentaries, films, and books does Miller recommend for understanding the case for independence?
• Will the Texas Nationalist Movement publish a reading and study list with conversation tactics for talking to others?
• What went wrong with the TNM mobile app, and is the login and loading problem fixed?
• After independence, how would Texas deal with the World Health Organization, the World Economic Forum, and similar bodies?
• Would an independent Texas have its own navy?
• Why does the organization call itself nationalist rather than something softer?
• Should supporters send the draft bill directly to their own state representatives and senators?
• If the federal government is wrecking the economy, why has Texas not already moved to leave?