The Convention They Couldn’t Spin: Two TEXIT Planks and a Media Meltdown

Days after the largest political convention in the world, Daniel Miller used this late-night coffee talk to explain what actually happened in Houston. The Republican Party of Texas adopted not one but two planks touching Texas independence: Plank 33, which invokes Article 1, Section 1 of the Texas Constitution to declare that the federal government has impaired Texans’ right of local self-government, and Plank 224, which urges the Legislature to require a referendum in the 2023 general election on whether Texas should reassert its status as an independent nation. Miller walks through why that second plank’s wording matters: it is, almost verbatim, the question the Texas Nationalist Movement has fought to put on a ballot.

He sets it in context. The TNM launched in 2005 when support for independence polled in single digits. He traces the arc through the 2016 convention floor-vote that the party chairman stole, Plank 65 in 2020, Kyle Biedermann’s House Bill 1359, and a petition drive that gathered more signatures than Greg Abbott collected to run for governor. The point: this convention was a milestone in a long plan, not a stunt, and TNM volunteers carried the resolutions from county and senatorial-district conventions all the way to the floor.

Then there is the press. Miller reads aloud from the Newsweek pieces and the law-professor quotes, and dismantles them one by one. The arguments shift from “impossible” to “unlikely,” nobody can cite the law that supposedly makes secession illegal, and the fallback is always Texas v. White or a threat of war. He notes the same outlets that fly Ukrainian flags are comfortable suggesting Washington would answer a Texas vote with force. He is blunt about the local Texas media that recycled a debunked Texas Tribune piece without ever calling the organization driving the story.

In this episode

• What Plank 33 and Plank 224 actually say, and why neither is an outright declaration of independence but a demand to let Texans vote.
• How the language in Plank 224 maps onto the referendum question from the Texas Independence Referendum Act.
• The TNM’s history from 2005 single-digit polling to majority support, including the 2016 stolen floor vote, Plank 65, and HB 1359.
• Why the Republican Party of Texas is where this fight plays out, and a nod to the Libertarian Party of Texas being first to call for a vote.
• A point-by-point takedown of the academics Newsweek quoted, and the demand that anyone claiming secession is illegal produce the actual law.
• Why the establishment’s meltdown is itself evidence they are afraid the question could win.
• The “would you vote to join the union today” framing and why no one says yes.
• Why TNM’s name was absent from the coverage despite press outreach, and a call to hold those outlets accountable.
• What comes next: pre-filing after the November election, pressure on incoming legislators, and a call for 1,000 new volunteers by August 1.