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.
On this page
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.
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.
Fig. 1 · The spine of a national defense · Texas Military Department, combined strength of its three branches.
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 $3.7 trillion today; by the Historical Benefits method, which weighs the debt against what each part of the country actually received from it, it rounds toward zero.
By the fair method, Texas's share rounds to zero.
Fig. 2 · Texas's share of the federal debt · Federal debt $40.4 trillion, split per capita versus the Historical Benefits method. More in the FAQ on the federal debt.
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.
Sources & further reading
The four baskets
- The four areas of post-vote work: constitutional, statutory, international, and negotiated with Washington
- The Montevideo Convention (1933) and Article 1, Sections 1 and 2 of the Texas Constitution
- HB 1056 (2025), gold and silver as legal tender in Texas
- The Organization of American States charter (cooperation and non-aggression)
On the federal debt
- Texas’s share is contested, and by the Historical Benefits method it rounds to zero; see the FAQ on the federal debt
The full treatment
- Daniel Miller, TEXIT: Why and How Texas Will Leave the Union
Questions this page answers
- What will happen immediately after a TEXIT vote?
- Do we have to vote on a President before we TEXIT?
- How long would the transition take?
- Who would negotiate the terms of separation with Washington?
- How did Brexit actually work, step by step?
- How did U.S. territories like Palau and the Marshall Islands become independent nations?
- Will Texas have its own currency?
- Would Texas need its own trade negotiators?
- All questions
Read next
What this week means for Texas, and what to do about it.
Every week, Daniel Miller picks the two or three stories that actually moved Texas independence, tells you what they mean, and names one thing you can do about it. Short enough to finish in one sitting. No press releases, no filler. Add your name.
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