Move 04 of 4
Secure Independence
The vote opens the door. Securing independence is the work that follows, and it sorts into four baskets, with the institutional specifics left to a free Texas to decide.
Winning the vote is not independence
This is the move everyone skips, and it is where the hard part starts. Winning the vote is not independence. The vote is the political process that opens the door to political, then cultural, then economic independence. Treat election night as the finish line and you lose at the goal line. Britain won its Brexit vote and still spent years without a clean exit, because the people who opposed it stayed in government and dragged their feet. When you are close, pour on the gas.
What independence actually means
Control of our own border and immigration. Our own currency and monetary policy. Our own defense. Trade deals written for Texas businesses, farmers, and workers instead of someone else's rust belt. A foreign policy of friendship and honest trade with all and entangling alliances with none. No income tax. And an end to sending far more to Washington every year than Texas gets back, money that could go toward retiring property taxes at home.
The work after the vote, in four baskets
An affirmative vote triggers a joint legislative committee to do the work, and the decisions ultimately belong to the Legislature and the people of a free Texas. It is real work, and it sorts into four baskets.
1. Constitutional. Smaller than people fear. Texas already runs a constitutional republic with separated powers. Mostly this is aligning the Texas Constitution with the status of a sovereign nation and restoring the powers Texas once handed to Washington, like the treaty power.
2. Statutory. Fill the gaps where Texas never wrote a law because federal law covered it: immigration, bankruptcy, patents, aviation, and the like. Decide which federally run programs to keep, privatize, or end. Stand up a national defense from the Texas Military Department, which already exists. A sovereign currency and monetary policy take shape here too, and Texas laid a cornerstone in 2025 when HB 1056 made gold and silver legal tender. The institutions themselves, what they are called and how they are built, are for the future Texas government to design, not for TNM to fix in advance.
Fig. 1 · The spine of a national defense
Texans already serve in the Texas Military Department, across the Texas Army National Guard, the Texas Air National Guard, and the Texas State Guard. A sovereign Texas does not build a defense from scratch. It starts with one.
3. International. Join the agreements a nation needs and move quickly on recognition. Reopen the Texas embassy in London. Issue a Texas passport. A natural early step is the Organization of American States, whose charter functions as a cooperation and non-aggression pact among the nations of the Americas.
4. Negotiated with Washington. A shorter list: the Social Security credits Texans earned, the disposition of federal property in Texas, the standing of Texans serving in the United States military, and the federal debt. Texas is under no obligation to assume that debt. We may choose to negotiate it in good faith, especially against the federal assets and property sitting inside our borders. By the harshest method anyone proposes, dividing the debt per person, Texas's share would come to about $3.6 trillion today; by the method that weighs what Texas has overpaid into the federal system for decades, it rounds toward zero.
Fig. 2 · Texas's share of the federal debt
By the fair method, Texas's share rounds to zero.
A peaceful, lawful path
If the only thing stopping you is the fear that the federal government would turn violent over Texans exercising a basic right, that tells you everything about who they are and nothing about whether the right is real. This is a peaceful, lawful, legislative path. All political power is inherent in the people. A republic, if we can keep it.