Texas GOP Senator Bryan Slaton, who wants Texans to vote on whether the state should investigate seceding from the United States of America, filed on Monday a bill that could set up a referendum to investigate the possibility of independence.
If the bill H.B. 3596 – officially titled the ‘Texas Independence Referendum Act’ or ‘Texit’ for short – passes, it would place a referendum for Texas’ secession from the US on the 2024 ballot.
The referendum on whether the Lone Star State should reassert its status as an independent nation will be scheduled for November 7, 2023.
Pointing out that under the Texas constitution, all political power resides in the people, Slaton wrote in a statement released on Twitter that it is time to let the people of Texas make their voices heard after decades of continuous abuse of our rights and liberties by the federal government.
Slaton claims the Texas constitution does allow for secession despite the United States Supreme Court’s 1868 ruling in the case of Texas v. White, that states do not have the right to unilaterally secede.
He also included in the post a petition supporting Texit’s passage, noting that it’s not a bill that would be a full-on vote for or against secession, but one that would explore and discuss the concept.
Texas Republican filed a similar bill in 2021 along with fellow GOP Kyle Biedermann and Jeff Cason, but that proposal failed to receive a hearing and died, as Slaton recalled.
Cason, however, cautioned at the time that the bill only intended to start a “dialogue” on the idea and was not one for secession.
Calls for Texas’ independence have remained constant throughout its history as an independent republic, then annexed territory-turned-state. In 2022, Lone Star State’s Republican convention called for a referendum similar to the one proposed by Slaton despite the clear-cut laws surrounding the territorial integrity of the US.
Slaton’s bill was welcomed by the Texas Nationalist Movement which urged Texans to contact their representatives to support it, promising that it could open possibilities that Texans have never even dreamed of.
Yet, not all Republicans are on board with Slaton’s idea, including Rep. Jeff Leach who slammed the bill as ridiculous and a very definition of hypocritical and seditious treason.
Texit, on the other hand, comes in light of the “national divorce” call the prominent Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene made in February underscoring that the US needs to separate by red and blue states.
Apart from Texas, Alaska, California, Hawaii, New Hampshire, and Vermont, among others, all have their own secession movements that are vying for independence.
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