Could the President nationalize the Texas National Guard before independence is final?

This is a transition question, not a settled one, and we will treat it honestly. The short version: under federal law as it stands, the President does have statutory authorities to call the National Guard into federal service in certain situations, so this is a real factor to plan around during the period after the vote but before independence is final. It is a negotiation and contingency question, and the deeper answer is that the politics make a hostile call-up far less workable than the statute alone suggests.

Be straight about the federal law

We are not going to pretend the law says something it does not. Several federal statutes let the President bring the National Guard, including Texas's, into federal service without a state's agreement in defined circumstances. There is a call-up authority used to enforce federal law or respond to rebellion or invasion, where orders are to be issued through the governors of the states. And there is the older Insurrection Act, which provides separate pathways for the President to use the military domestically, and which in two of its three pathways does not require a state's request or consent. Whether and how those authorities could be stretched to an independence transition has never been tested, and reasonable lawyers would fight hard over it. Honesty requires saying that plainly rather than inventing a guarantee.

This is exactly why the process is built the way it is

The Texas Nationalist Movement has always insisted on a lawful, peaceful, democratic path for precisely this kind of reason. The strength of Texas's position is not a clever legal trick. It is legitimacy: a free, fair vote of the people of Texas, conducted through the Texas Legislature under Article 1, Section 2 of the Texas Constitution. A peaceful, democratic mandate is the worst possible target for a federal show of force, because using troops against millions of Texans who simply voted would be a political and moral disaster for Washington, not a tidy legal maneuver.

The deeper limit is the people who would have to carry out the order

Here is the fact the statute does not capture. More than 200,000 Texans serve in the United States armed forces, and the Texas Guard is made up of Texans. An order to turn those forces against the lawfully expressed will of their own state and their own neighbors is an order whose execution is, in practical terms, deeply doubtful. A Zogby poll reported in Forbes found that 42 percent of members of the armed forces, and 41 percent of those with a family member serving, agree that secession is a right. And under Article 1, Section 22 of the Texas Constitution, a Texan who took up arms against the lawfully elected government of Texas would be committing treason under Texas's own law. Statutory authority on paper is one thing. Getting it carried out against Texas is another.

It is a negotiation problem, and negotiation is the expected path

The transition after a yes vote is, by design, a negotiated process between Texas and the United States, the way every modern separation is handled. The far likelier course, and the one history points to, is that both governments sit down and work out an orderly transition, because a calm, negotiated separation serves Washington's interests, keeping trade flowing, the border stable, and American credibility intact, far better than a confrontation does. The call-up authorities are a factor Texas would account for and negotiate around, not a trump card that ends the matter.

What we will not do is overstate it

We are not going to tell you this is legally impossible, because that would be dishonest, and Daniel does not put fabricated certainty in front of Texans. What we will tell you is the truth: the authorities exist on paper, they have never been applied to anything like this, the politics run heavily against using them on a peaceful democratic vote, the people who would have to obey such an order are themselves Texans, and the entire process is built to reach a negotiated result instead of a confrontation. That is the honest picture.

The bottom line

Could the President attempt to federalize the Guard during the transition? Under current statute, the authorities exist, and any responsible plan treats it as a real contingency to negotiate around rather than a closed question. But it has never been tested on anything like an independence vote, the politics and the loyalties run hard against it, and the expected path is a negotiated, peaceful transition, not a clash. We address it openly because the strength of Texas's case does not depend on pretending the hard questions away.