By Charlotte Hazard
Updated: March 17, 2023 - 11:51pm
The Texas Independence Referendum Act, also known as "TEXIT," was assigned to committee earlier this week, and the leader of the Texas independence movement is looking forward to public testimony as a platform for the voice of the people to make itself heard.
HB 3596 is "headed to the State Affairs Committee in the Texas House," noted Daniel Miller, president of the 440,000-member Texas Nationalist Movement, "and we're looking forward to having it scheduled for testimony and letting the public speak and say with one loud voice that at a minimum, whether you agree with TEXIT or disagree, Texans should have a vote on the issue."
Introduced by Republican state Rep. Bryan Slaton on the anniversary of the fall of the Alamo March 6, the bill would, if passed, "place a referendum on the ballot during the next general election, allowing the people of Texas to vote on whether or not the State should investigate the possibility of Texas independence, and present potential plans to the Legislature," Slaton wrote on Twitter.
"The Texas Constitution is clear that all political power resides in the people," he continued. "After decades of continuous abuse of our rights and liberties by the federal government, it is time to let the people of Texas make their voices heard."
Texas has attempted to secede from the U.S. on multiple occasions, but the Supreme Court ruled in the 1868 case Texas v. White that states could not unilaterally secede from the union.
"The TEXIT issue has been in the minds of Texans for probably generations, it just wasn't necessarily known as TEXIT," Miller said in an interview Thursday on the "Just the News, No Noise" TV show. "Independence has always been a part of our DNA since our founding."
Miller cited a litany of grievances fueling the Texas independence movement, including runaway federal spending, onerous debt, regulatory overreach, and the breakdown of border security.
"You look at something like the federal debt that continues to ratchet up, that burdens all of us, that is essentially fiscal child abuse because it'll be our children and grandchildren that are going to be on the hook for it when the United States continues [to incur more debt] to the point of insolvency," Miller said. "The people of Texas, much like every other state, we groan under 180,000 pages of federal laws, rules and regulations administered by two and a half million unelected bureaucrats. Every day when we wake up, we have to wonder which one of our rights is going to be under assault by the federal government today. The federal government doesn't shrink, it only gets bigger. It really trashes everything that it touches. All you have to do is look down to our southern border to see an example of how not just mismanagement but malfeasance can lead to severe crises."
https://justthenews.com/nation/states/wkd-texas-independence-referendum-act-headed-state-affairs-committee-texas-house