Why does the case for independence hold under any president?

Because the problem is the size and distance of the federal government itself, and that does not change with the party in power. The movement was here before the current administration, and it will be here after the next one.

The case is structural, not partisan

Texans send hundreds of billions of dollars to Washington every year and watch a shrinking share come back with strings attached. The federal debt climbs past anything that can be seriously repaid. The decisions that shape life in Texas are made farther and farther from Texas. A new president does not shrink the debt, return the money, or move the decisions closer to home. The federal government grows the same way regardless of who holds the office.

Taking turns in Washington has not worked

The promise of the federal system is that you get your turn: win the right elections and Washington will work for you. Texans have run that experiment for generations, under presidents of both parties, and the federal government grew under all of them. When your party holds Washington, the spending and the centralizing do not stop. They get aimed at different targets. You cannot vote your way out of a system in which Texas is permanently outnumbered.

Independence is about self-government, permanently

The point of Texas independence is to put the decisions that affect Texans in the hands of Texans for good, so the answer to “who governs Texas” stops depending on an election held mostly in other parts of the country every four years. That goal does not expire when a term ends. A Texan who wants independence no matter who is in power has understood the argument.

The bottom line

Texas should govern Texas, and that holds whether the president has an R or a D next to the name. The federal government is too big and too indebted to fix from the inside, and that is true every January no matter who takes the oath.