Will Texas Secede? Why Political Scientists Are Taking the Idea Seriously

On any given weekend, you can see the lone star on everything in Austin, including coffee mugs, truck tailgates, and forearm tattoos. Texas has always made a big deal out of its identity, which includes a certain myth: that the state is unique, that it arrived on its own terms, and that it could depart on the same. That is untrue, according to the majority of constitutional attorneys. It hasn’t prevented the concept from surviving every significant effort to suppress it.

Under the direction of Daniel Miller, an East Texas native who leads the Texas Nationalist Movement out of Nederland, the movement known as Texit—short for Texas Exit, using the framework of Brexit—has been quietly growing for more than 20 years. Miller has devoted years to gathering signatures, submitting petitions, and making the case that Texans ought to have the opportunity to vote on whether or not to stay in the Union. What was once easily written off as fringe theater has developed into something that now demands attention, if not respect. Support for secession is motivated more by identity and grievance than by economics, according to a 2025 survey cited by Fort Worth Magazine. This finding should probably worry people more than it does.

On paper, the legal barrier is unchangeable. In Texas v. White, decided in 1869, the U.S. Supreme Court provided the clearest response to the question in court history. Lincoln’s former treasury secretary, Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, wrote that Texas “entered into an indissoluble relation” when it joined the Union and that the secession ordinance enacted during the Civil War was “absolutely null.” Up to 750,000 Americans lost their lives in the Civil War, which had already made the political case in blood. The legal one came next. According to Eric McDaniel, an associate professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin, the Civil War is the reason why the federal government has the last word. It’s not a subtle point.

And yet here we are in 2026, with Lubbock-based Speaker of the Texas House, Dustin Burrows, leading a legislative committee to examine the economic and legal ramifications of Texas absorbing counties in eastern New Mexico. The Permian Basin, shared oil culture, and what Burrows called “shared values” are all part of the stated justification.

House Speaker Javier Martinez of New Mexico responded with a two-word statement that cannot be printed in its entirety. Nevertheless, Burrows got exactly what he wanted from the episode: headlines, a bold appearance, and support from the conservative base, which has long confused swaggering talk of expansion with moral leadership. According to Cal Jillson, a longtime observer of Texas politics at Southern Methodist University, Texans like the notion that they may have the right to secede or reclaim lost territory. Something in the state’s perception of itself is tickled. The question of whether it shows serious intent is quite different.

As you watch this unfold, you get the impression that the conversation about secession has changed. It used to be the domain of Richard McLaren types. McLaren was a Republic of Texas leader in the 1990s who ended his campaign with a hostage standoff and a state prison sentence after persuading supporters to stop paying their mortgages on the grounds that debt was unconstitutional. It is not the same as the current version. It originates from party platforms, legislative proposals, and elected officials. In 2022, the Texas Republican Convention approved a platform calling on the Legislature to hold a referendum to reaffirm Texas’s independence. In 2023, Bryan Slaton, a former state representative, submitted a formal resolution. These are not outsiders working out of a compound in the Davis Mountains.

Ryan Griffiths, a professor at Syracuse University who has researched secessionist movements around the world, says it all boils down to two words: politics and polarization. When a Democrat is in the White House, the calls become more intense. When a Republican is in charge, they somewhat retreat. This pattern implies that the movement is more of a pressure valve than a true independence project, a means of expressing dissatisfaction with federal authority without committing to the massive practical chaos that would result from actual separation. The list of federal entanglements that would need to be untangled, including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, military installations, border infrastructure, and interstate highways, is astounding, and the majority of Texit supporters haven’t given it much thought.

Whether any of this transcends cultural performance into actual political danger is still up for debate. Despite being thoroughly and repeatedly refuted, the myth that Texas has a special right to secede—based on a misreading of the 1845 annexation resolution—remains. Texas was able to divide into five states thanks to the resolution. Nothing about exiting the Union was mentioned. When a screenwriter questioned Justice Antonin Scalia about constitutional ambiguity in 2006, he responded to the question directly. No was the response. No has always been the response. However, the belief’s tenacity and the politicians’ willingness to support it reveal something genuine about the current state of the nation and about a state that has always, in some way, felt that its story is more important than anyone else’s.