The 49 states of America?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Earlier this week, Texas Rep. Bryan Slaton (R) filed a bill to allow Texans to vote in the next general election on whether to secede from the United States and form its own sovereign nation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAll political power rests in the People of Texas, and they deserve to have an opportunity to make their voice heard about the future of Texas,\u201d Slaton said in an emailed statement to The Daily Wire<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Texas Independence Referendum Act in the Texas House of Representatives would place a referendum on the ballot asking residents to determine the state\u2019s future by exploring whether or not lawmakers should establish a commission to investigate the feasibility of Texas seceding from the Union and provide further recommendations to the state legislature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Texas Nationalist Movement, a group of approximately 440,000 Texans from across the political spectrum, has been leading the charge of the so-called \u201cTEXIT\u201d coalition to gain independence from the federal government since 2005.<\/p>\n\n\n\n President Daniel Miller of the group told The Daily Wire<\/a> that its members represent the Lonestar State more than the Republican or Democrat parties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAt the end of the day, the people of Texas want that right of self-government,\u201d Miller said. \u201cThey do not feel like they\u2019re being represented in a system where they feel crushed under the weight of 180,000 pages of federal laws, rules, and regulations administered by two and a half million unelected bureaucrats.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Should the bill pass the state legislature and voters later this year, a bicameral committee of house and senate representatives will formulate a plan addressing four key issues relating to Texas independence. Such issues include constitutional and statutory matters, international covenants, treaties and agreements, and negotiations with the federal government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cTexans are tired of making decisions here at home and having them overwritten at the stroke of a pen by an executive order or a ruling from an unelected, unaccountable federal judiciary,\u201d Miller said. \u201cTexans want the ability to govern themselves, and they believe that the best people to govern Texas just happen to be Texans.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Miller says the TEXIT movement is different from other attempts to those efforts ignore the underlying issue of a \u201cterminally broken\u201d federal system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou could shift your counties over to a state that feels a little a little bit more representative of where you are ideologically,\u201d Miller said. \u201cBut at the end of the day, it\u2019s still the federal system that\u2019s broken \u2014 and it\u2019s still the federal system that drives so much of the dysfunction that we find in the United States right now.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Efforts to prompt the Lonestar State to secede from the United States have gained traction before but have hit serious roadblocks. Numerous historians argue when the Confederacy surrendered in 1865, states could no longer legally secede from the Union.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe legality of seceding is problematic,\u201d Eric McDaniel, associate professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin, told\u00a0The Texas Tribune<\/a>\u00a0in 2016. \u201cThe Civil War played a very big role in establishing the power of the federal government and cementing that the federal government has the final say in these issues.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n In 1836 Texas became a republic after breaking from Mexico. Nine years later Texas was annexed into the United States as the 28th state. Texans voted to secede from the Union in 1861 after divisions within the nation wanted to expand slavery into western territories. However, nine years later, Texas rejoined the country during the Reconstruction Era after the Confederacy was defeated in the Civil War.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Just before the Union readmitted the state back into the country, the U.S. Supreme Court declared in the 1869 case Texas v. White<\/a> that efforts for individual states to unilaterally secede from the Union were \u2018absolutely null.’\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2006, the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia wrote, \u201cthe answer is clear\u201d concerning the legal basis of secession.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The topic of secession has recently dominated airwaves after pro-Trump Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene called for a “national divorce” prompting support and backlash from both sides of the political aisle. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Fox News Sean Hannity seemed to support Rep. Greene’s idea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
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