Despite what would appear to many to be insurmountable precedents against the plan, a Texas lawmaker wants a citizens’ vote in his state to determine whether it should leave the United States.
Unlike other regions that were territories and such, Texas was its own nation before joining the United States.
But now, according to a report from Daily Wire, Texas state Rep. Bryan Slaton this week proposed a plan to the legislature that would have Texans vote in the next general election on becoming its own independent nation, again.
His Texas Independence Referendum Act proposes a referendum asking residents whether lawmakers should set up a commission to research that option.
In the past, the idea has been a nonstarter.
The Daily Wire said, “Just before the Union readmitted the state back into the country, the U.S. Supreme Court declared in the 1869 case Texas v. White that efforts for individual states to unilaterally secede from the Union were “absolutely null.”
And the late Justice Antonin Scalia concluded, “If there was any constitutional issue resolved by the Civil War, it is that there is no right to secede.”
Despite those conclusions, there have been several movements for Texas to secede in recent years.
The people of Texas “deserve to have an opportunity to make their voice heard about the future of Texas,” Slaton told the Daily Wire.
One of the larger efforts has been led by what is known as the Texas Nationalist Movement, which includes more than 400,000 Texans, who have wanted “TEXIT,” or independence from the federal government. It has been growing in strength since 2005.
Spokesman Daniel Miller said, “At the end of the day, the people of Texas want that right of self-government. They do not feel like they’re 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.”
If the legislature adopts the plan, a committee would be set up to address the long list of issues, ranging from statutory matters to treaties to “negotiations” with the feds in Washington, who would be unlikely to look favorably on the loss of the massive tax revenue from the state.
But Miller said the sentiment is there: “Texans 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. Texans want the ability to govern themselves, and they believe that the best people to govern Texas just happen to be Texans.”
Texas became a republic in 1836, before becoming part of the U.S. nine years later.
During the Civil War, it was part of the Confederacy, rejoining the U.S. after that war ended.
via wnd
