In one of the stranger stories we've needed to cover during an already bizarre presidential administration, conditions around the country have apparently deteriorated to the point where six states are currently considering seceding from the union and striking out on their own. Texas is leading the charge, with independence campaigners running advertisements and sending out promotional material encouraging others to get on board. The Texas state GOP included a statement of support for an independence referendum in this year's Legislative Priorities and Platform document. There are similar movements afoot in California, New Hampshire, Alaska, Florida, and Louisiana, so this clearly isn't just a "red state" phenomenon. There is no indication yet as to whether any of these efforts have a realistic chance of succeeding, but the White House should probably pay attention because a lot of people are obviously unhappy with the current state of the union. (Newsweek)

Texan nationalists are coordinating with secessionist campaigners from five other states, who are also interested in breaking away from the United States, according to one of their leaders.

The claim was made by Daniel Miller, president of the pro-independence Texas Nationalist Movement (TNM), on the latest edition of his Late Night Coffee Talk online show that was broadcast on Facebook on June 19.

The past few months have seen a surge in activity from Texas independence campaigners, coinciding with heightened tensions between local authorities and the Biden administration over issues including illegal immigration and education. The Republican Party of Texas included support for an independence referendum in its 2024 Legislative Priorities and Platform document, which was released in June after this was approved by its convention in San Antonio the previous month.

I'm not personally in favor of any states throwing in the towel and seceding from our union, particularly now. Any such action would weaken the nation as a whole at a critical time when we are facing almost unprecedented aggression from bad actors around the globe. But these revolutionary movements in both red and blue states do raise a number of interesting questions and should serve as a reminder of precisely how badly things have gone downhill during Joe Biden's tenure in the White House.

The first question to address is whether or not these states would even be able to secede and, if so, how they would go about doing it. In the 1869 case of Texas v. White, the Supreme Court ruled that the United States is an "indestructible union" and that secession is unconstitutional. But the court also admitted that there was no formal process available to the federal government to prevent a state from seceding, and if the United States either didn't attempt to retake the state by force or if the seceding state defeated the American forces militarily, there wasn't much that could be done about it.

Texas is uniquely poised to lead this sort of movement, assuming it takes hold. When Texas finally joined the union in 1845, it included provisions in its incorporating documents that reserved its right to secede or to split up into as many as five smaller states. Congress approved the agreement the following year. No other state has reserved this sort of independent power for itself. Sixteen years later in 1861, during a convention in Austin, Texas passed an Ordinance of Secession, but did not wind up following through on it. 

As noted above, however, none of that history really matters. The union remains intact as a matter of mutual agreement more than anything else. It may be technically unconstitutional for a state to secede, but if you're planning on leaving the union anyway you're probably not going to be overly concerned about the opinion of constitutional lawyers. In the end, the voters of any state could jointly vote and decide that they are splitting off to form their own nation. They just need to ensure that they are prepared to fight a war to maintain their new independence. If California, Florida, and Texas were all to leave, they would gut out three of the largest pools of electoral votes and congressional seats in the country. The loss of Alaska would drastically reduce the country's total landmass. Louisiana controls one of our nation's largest shipping ports. I'm not sure what the people in New Hampshire are thinking, but they're always kind of weird anyway.

In summary, this would be a terrible idea for America and it would come at one of the worst times imaginable. It would be far better to stick together and fix the issues that may be driving some people to consider seceding. The best thing they could do at this point would be to start by removing Joe Biden from office in November. The country will probably seem far more attractive after he's gone.