Texas Republicans Wanting To Leave U.S. Take Fight to Greg Abbott

The leader and supporters of the "Texit" movement who aspire for Texas to secede from the United States want Governor Greg Abbott to act now.

Texit gained momentum recently following the conservative Supreme Court's siding with the Biden administration, voting 5-4 to allow federal Border Patrol officials to cut or remove parts of a razor-wire barrier that the state erected along the U.S.-Mexico border to discourage illegal immigration in well-traversed areas like Shelby Park. The state, which saw migrant encounters decrease drastically from December to January, can continue putting up concertina wire.

Following the high court's ruling, Abbott said Texas was invoking its "constitutional authority to defend and protect itself" against what he described as an "invasion." The governor has received support from conservative governors and attorneys general across the country. But some within his own state feel he hasn't gone far enough.

"At 11 a.m. yesterday [Wednesday] I was joined by a little over 80 Texans from all over Texas—not for a demonstration or a protest or a bunch of speeches, but to be there for what I said we were going to do," Daniel Miller, president of the Texas Nationalist Movement, said on Thursday.

Newsweek reached out to the Texas Nationalist Movement and Abbott's office via email for comment.

The movement has advocated for the state to become its own fully independent nation. Miller wrote a letter to Abbott in January "to honor the wishes of the voters" and to call a special session in the Texas Legislature and "to put the Texas question to a vote."

More than 170,000 signatures have been submitted to Abbott's office in support of secession, Miller said.

The Texas National Movement page on X, formerly Twitter, has continually posted anti-federal government sentiments—ramping up in recent days and weeks following the Supreme Court decision, with one post reading: "The ball is in the governor's court. Let us as voters determine the future of our state."

Another called the federal government a "net negative" to the state and its residents.

Dean Ross, head of security for the Texas Nationalist Movement, said on X that independence is "very much a bipartisan issue" based on both conservatives and liberals signing the petition.

Miller has taken his home state's legislators to task, saying, "The time to fight for Texas' values is now."

"Fear-mongering about what our future will look like without the federal government won't work," he said in another post. "In fact, we quite look forward to it."

Last month, Miller told Newsweek that this movement has been brewing and gaining steam since 1996—harkening back to the Alamo in 1836, and the nine years Texas then spent as an independent state before joining the Union.

The ongoing migrant crisis makes 44 percent of Texans either more likely or significantly more likely to support the state becoming a fully independent country, according to a survey of 814 eligible Texas voters conducted for Newsweek by Redfield & Wilton Strategies between February 1-3.

Another 35 percent said they were "neither more nor less likely" to back Texan independence due to the border situation, while 16 percent of respondents said it made them less likely to back secession from the United States.

Miller's efforts have largely fallen on deaf ears among those in power, notably failing to get a referendum vote on Texan secession on the upcoming Republican primary ballot—in a state where Abbott currently shares about the same level of popularity as the Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump.

But Miller maintains hope that the Texit movement will one day come to fruition.

"I think the trajectory the federal government is on, the trajectory that Texas is on, I think we are headed in that direction so whether by conscious decision or collapse of the federal system in its inability to meet its basic requirements, I think Texas becomes an independent nation definitely inside of 30 years," Miller previously told Newsweek.