GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley recently argued that we can “Texit” if we want to. (She later backpedaled.) And one Russian official posted on X late last month that his country would be prepared to aid said split.
The ongoing standoff between Gov. Greg Abbott and the Biden administration at the southern border has some conservatives salivating over secession. Our dear state’s Republican Party has embraced the idea of sending the matter to a referendum.
But some Texit supporters may not fully grasp the implications of such a monumental move.
Exhibit A: In a post that went viral last week, a commenter in a social media group titled “Texas Patriots for Secession” asked: “If we secede, do we still get our Social Security monthly checks?”
This is the funniest thing I’ll read all day pic.twitter.com/VBXQlTQlw3
— Matt Campbell (@BlueHogReport) January 29, 2024
Another popular X post by an Illinois Democrat running for U.S. Congress claims that if Texas broke free from the rest of the nation, we would miss out on more than $68 billion in federal aid.
Texas was, once upon a time, its own country. That doesn’t mean reverting to the old days would be easy.
Mark Hand, assistant professor of political science at the University of Texas at Arlington, explained that Texas joined the Union before committing to the Confederacy. After Texas' side lost the Civil War, we came crawling back to our ex: the good ol’ U.S. of A.
“None of that was foreordained — there was plenty of debate about whether to let Texas into the US at all, in the 1840s,” Hand wrote via email. “But the Civil War and the 1869 Supreme Court case Texas v. White settled the question pretty clearly: states cannot secede without congressional approval. Texas might be able to split itself into five states without congressional authorization, but that’s untested.”
Worth noting: The Southern Poverty Law Center has pointed out that certain secession groups are inherently racist and anti-immigrant. Many Texit supporters deploy the same “invasion” rhetoric used by the 2019 El Paso Walmart shooter.“A military would only be one of the many basic governmental functions Texas would have to add.” – Dr. Mark Hand, UTA
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To make good on any independence goals, we’d either need a green light from the feds or have to duke our way out, Hand said. Neither option is likely. Texas is a boon to the nation with an economy that ranks No. 8 in the world.
Some major changes would be headed our way, though, if we did somehow succeed in breaking up with the U.S.
Hand explained that, in addition to creating its own social security program, the state would need to need to figure out health insurance for older and/or low-income Texans. An estimated one-third of the state’s budget is made up of federal dollars, according to one think tank. Texas would either need to ditch such federally funded programs or tax residents to cover the costs, Hand said.
"Texas doesn’t have income taxes, of course, so it’d probably have to come from higher property taxes or sales taxes,” he said. (We all know how much Texans love ponying up property taxes.) “And then it’d also have to raise enough money to build up its military ... What currency that would be in would have to get sorted out, too. Dollars? Pesos? Bitcoin? Gold?”
As many folks are well aware, the state has its own electric grid. But Hand noted that the U.S. would then have a way to crash it without hurting any of the other states’ power provisions: “And it would have a clear list of obvious military targets.
“A military would only be one of the many basic governmental functions Texas would have to add,” he continued.
Texas leaders have recently taken aim at Commander-in-Chief Joe Biden and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Yet we’d now have to hammer out new trade agreements with those two countries, Hand said. Sadly for millennials, iPhones and avocados would likely be in short supply for a time.
Texas would need to lock down cell service as well, Hand said. Sure, AT&T is headquartered here, but Texas the Country™ would need to secure treaties to import items like phone chargers and wireless routers and — well, you get the point.
“Texas’s Secretary of State would also have to figure out how to print passports and negotiate visa regimes with the US and Mexico, too,” Hand said. “Until that happened, Texans would have to cross the border illegally to visit family in Louisiana or escape the heat next August.”
Crossing the border illegally, huh? Ah, the irony.
