Secession Speakeasy #182: The Eastern New Mexico Counties That Want to Join Texas

Released March 23, 2026, before the Texas House hearing on the question that September.

Professor Wall (Grant M. Dahl) and the Secession Minstrel take up House Joint Resolution 10, a proposed New Mexico constitutional amendment from state Reps. Randall Pettigrew and Jimmy Mason. It would let three or more contiguous counties leave New Mexico for an adjoining state subject to a two-thirds vote in each county and the consent of Congress, among other steps. It never got a committee hearing before the session ended in February.

Wall recalls that Texas claimed the land east of the Rio Grande, including what is now eastern New Mexico, until the Compromise of 1850, when it gave up the claim for $10 million toward its debts. Wall reads the repeated proposals, the third in five years by his count, as a sign of real local support, and notes that Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows has welcomed the idea. The Minstrel calls the line with Santa Fe “a fake border” and describes “a magnetic pull from the oil field.”

Wall’s main point: bills in Santa Fe will not do it alone. “Where’s the organization on the ground?” Wall asks, urging a Greater Idaho-style campaign in the counties, ready to act if Santa Fe keeps refusing: “We’re done asking for permission.” The Minstrel wants the organizing to start at the county level, where small-town grudges matter less. Daniel Miller later took up HJR 10 in the Texas First Podcast episode on the New Mexico hearing.

Also in this episode

• Wall’s view that rising oil prices could give investors a reason to back a boundary change
• The 2024 split Wall reads from the Dallas Express: Lea County gave Donald Trump 80.1 percent, Santa Fe County gave Kamala Harris 73.3 percent
• Wall’s advice that supporters contact Daniel Miller and the Texas Nationalist Movement
• John Locke and Ludwig von Mises on self-determination, and the Minstrel’s idea of “moving your border instead of yourself”
• The Minstrel’s closing proposal: a monument on the old line, like the surviving pieces of the Berlin Wall, for “the border worshipers”

Secession Speakeasy is an independent program produced by Grant M. Dahl. The views expressed are those of the host and guests and do not necessarily reflect those of the Texian Partisan, Texas Nationalist Enterprises, or the Texas Nationalist Movement. Featuring an episode is not an endorsement.