The History of the Texas Nationalist Movement

On November 17, Daniel Miller, Lauren Savage, and Charlie Doreck sign a founding charter at a small square table in Daniel's home in Nederland, with his wife Cara present. The Texas Nationalist Movement is born, built to be legal, transparent, democratic, and impossible to criminalize. The mission they commit to paper that day stands unchanged. At the founding, support for Texas independence sits in the single digits.

The movement breaks into the national conversation. At an Austin Tax Day rally, Governor Rick Perry hints that Washington's overreach could push Texas to leave. TNM supporters are in the crowd, and Miller will say Perry would not have raised it without them. A Rasmussen poll that spring finds one in three Texans believe the state has the right to leave, and that September Texas Monthly profiles the movement. The idea that was fringe at the founding is suddenly on cable news.

TNM makes the first candidate endorsement in its history, backing Debra Medina for Governor. Running as a grassroots outsider against Rick Perry and Kay Bailey Hutchison, Medina takes 18.6 percent of the Republican primary, nearly one in five votes. The number shows how much appetite for the movement's message is already in the electorate, years before anyone is talking about a pledge.

Daniel publishes Line in the Sand, his first book, written in twelve days. The argument had to come from the man who had lived it. From that year on, TNM is a regular fixture at the Capitol during every legislative session.

A TNM petition to the White House gathers more than 125,000 signatures, far past the threshold for a response. The Obama administration answers, and the story runs on Hannity, CBS News, and Reuters. Membership climbs 400 percent. For the first time, the modern case for Texas independence reaches a national audience.

A Texas independence resolution falls just two votes short at the Republican Party of Texas convention, proof the idea has penetrated the party far deeper than anyone outside the movement realized. That June, Britain votes to leave the European Union and #TEXIT trends worldwide. The movement takes up the name it had been using internally since the Grexit debates, a clean word that gives the cause a destination instead of a retreat.

TEXIT: Why and How Texas Will Leave the Union is published by Defiance Press. A four-time Amazon bestseller, it becomes the canonical book-length case for modern Texas independence. It is dedicated to Lauren Savage and Charlie Doreck.

The Republican Party of Texas adopts a state-sovereignty plank affirming Texas's right to secede (Plank 65), passed by 93 percent of delegates. For the first time, the dominant party in Texas puts independence in its platform.

On January 26, Representative Kyle Biedermann files the Texas Independence Referendum Act as HB 1359, with Representative James White as joint author. TIRA is the legislative mechanism for a binding vote on Texas independence.

The Republican Party of Texas adopts a dedicated independence-referendum plank (Plank 225, about 90 percent of delegates), calling on the Legislature to put Texas independence to a statewide vote. Nearly a hundred candidates sign the Texas First Pledge, from governor down to constable, and the attacks against signers are tested and fail.

TNM's petition drive for a primary ballot question collects 139,456 signatures, exceeding the legal threshold by more than 42,000, and delivers eleven boxes to Republican Party of Texas headquarters on December 11. The party leadership rejects the petition on a technicality, but the campaign proves the movement can out-organize the threshold.

The 2024 convention reaffirms the referendum plank as Plank 203 and names it a legislative priority. On November 5, ten Texas First Pledge signers win election to the Texas House, five of them by defeating sitting incumbents (Luther, Little, Virdell, Hopper, and Lowe). The 89th Legislature opens with the first real pro-referendum bloc in the chamber.

HB 1056, gold and silver as legal tender, passes the Texas Legislature and is signed into law on June 22, laying foundational sound-money architecture for an independent Texas economy. TNM holds TIRA back this session by design, building the legislative bloc to carry it in the 90th rather than filing it into a chamber that cannot yet pass it.

On March 3, roughly 1.6 million Texans, about three in four Republican primary voters, cast a ballot for at least one Texas First Pledge signer. Don Huffines wins the Comptroller primary outright with 57.4 percent. Steve Toth unseats incumbent Congressman Dan Crenshaw in CD-2. Nine incumbent state representatives hold their seats. 257 officials and candidates have now signed the Texas First Pledge, and the supporter count stands at 635,352 across all 254 Texas counties.

The Texas Independence Referendum Act drive continues, with committed sponsors in place for the 90th Legislature. The political conditions for the vote keep forming. The Republic moves toward recovering her sovereignty.