They would have 40 electoral college votes in 2024.
If they secede, that would also mean losing 2 Senators and 38 Representatives, changing the balance of power in the House and Senate.
Don’t threaten me with a good time!
Edit I also want to see Ted Cruz’s face when he learns he’s not a Senator anymore because Texas seceded.
He would just move to Florida
Cancun.
Which he thinks is in Florida
Oh no. Democrats would need to find two additional no votes to block anything progressive.
If they secede, that would also mean losing 2 Senators and 38 Representatives, changing the balance of power in the House and Senate.
Losing 2 Senators, yes, but the loss of 38 Reps would be temporary. The size of Congress is permanently fixed by legislation to 435, and in the hypothetical case where a state simply goes poof, and 38 Representatives disappear, those seats would be reapportioned to other states after the next Census.
There is precedent for this, when Alaska and Hawaii were added as States, they were each given 1 Representative right away, temporarily increasing the size of Congress to 437, until 2 seats were removed in the next apportionment.
While there is no guarantee on where Texas’ seats would go – it would depend on the next Census after secession – it is plausible that the new seats would be from less conservative districts than their current makeup.
So nowhere in the article is it mentioned that the supposed “Texas right to secede” is actually bullshit, and a complete misunderstanding of the actual right that they have, which is to be broken up into five separate states.
Except even that is bullshit, because it was talking about the Texas Territory, which was larger than modern day Texas.
The constitution clearly says that;
New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new States shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.
So yes, Texas could request to be broken up, but congress still needs to okay it.
Now, as to the “right to secede”, that bullshit was settled with the Civil War, States do not have the right to secede, not even Texas.
Republicans like to pretend the Civil War never happened, and want a repeat, I guess.
That’s true, though to be fair most secessions are illegal and are settled by violence.
My thoughts exactly
Counterpoint: The UK isn’t allowed to leave the EU. There’s no mechanism.
That’s not a counterpoint. The EU is not a country. The EU is an economic and financial understanding between many different countries in order to collaborate on things like currency, trade, tariffs etc. Even if the EU was a country which, I can’t stress this enough, it isn’t, the EU agreement has clear rules for leaving it. Unlike the US Constitution, which isn’t like the EU agreement in very many ways at all.
Having no mechanism and being specifically legislated against are two different things. Brexit is the former, this sounds like the latter.
There’s a difference between having no official mechanism, and having the largest military in the world knock on your door to tell you that you can’t do something.
If Texas really truly tried to leave the United States, it would be war, and they would not win.
To clarify:
Even if an unambiguous majority of Texas would say “we’d like to turn Texas into an independent country”, you’d rather force them to stay by force of arms?
You don’t get to steal hundreds of thousands of miles of land from a country and wander off. War would happen. Would I like it? No, war is terrible.
Plus, they wouldn’t survive. Let’s say we didn’t retake our land. The inevitable embargo would destroy them. War is war. Financial war is also kinda war.
Cool country with cool rules. Wait, no the opposite.
A 5-year war wasn’t fought in Europe over whether or not the UK was allowed to leave the EU.
And you can smoke pot and get abortions in texas because they’re legal in Illinois. No the US actually has been tested on whether or not states have the right to secede and the answer is no, we had a civil war over it
lol. Please 🙏
GOP would not win the presidency for 20 years at least
It would also reduce the number needed to win.
538 EC votes / 2 = 269. 50%+1 for the win so 270.
Texas drops out, so now it goes from 538 to 498. / 2 = 249. 50%+1=250 to win.
And suddenly 270towin.com needs a new CNAME.
Just playing around with what something like that might look like:
Texas is not the swing state…
Yeah, Texas is a reliable GOP vote. Which means losing it would be a massive blow to GOP electoral chances.
Not all of us, just need more of y’all to move here and water down their vote. Problem is the germandering makes populated places less impacting than the uneducated rural areas.
There’s enough of us here to do it already, we just need to actually go out and vote and we can win the state-wide and presidential elections here. In 2020 Biden received more votes in Texas than in New York. The metro area populations of Houston, Austin, Dallas, and San Antonio are more than half the state population. If Harris County’s efforts to expand mail-in voting (by sending mail-in ballots to all ~2.4M registered voters in the county) Biden may have won the state, as he only lost by ~620k.
I vote every time and post in the Austin community as much as I dare to encourage others. That’s about all I can do.
Gerrymandering has a very limited effect on presidential elections, which is what was mentioned.
Voter suppression and other unequal access to voting make a big difference. For instance, the “one drop off box per county” bs they schemed up, inadequate in-person facilities in urban areas leading to long lines, and how people don’t get voting day off work. Not to mention the fascist chuds planning to stand around with guns at voting facilities to “monitor”.
It still has a big indirect impact. People are less likely to vote if they feel like their vote doesn’t matter as much, and someone in a heavily gerrymandered state does in fact have their vote matter less, at least locally. Turnout would probably be measurably higher if the districts were fair or competitive.
There are other indirect effects too - there are plenty of states where Republicans are only able to pass voter-suppressing policies because of the legislative edge they hold thanks to gerrymandering.
That’s why removing it will have such a big impact
Yeah, but a lot of conservatives would probably migrate.
To Texas? Please and thank you! I’d start a GoFundme to help them get their faster.
OMFG I hope they do. They could no longer bus immigrants to other states and would have no other choice but to police their border with Mexico entirely on their own without any federal support. Fucking dumbasses.
we really shouldn’t act like Texas was the only one doing that.
It’s the only state I’ve heard of doing it. Were there others? Source?
Florida/DeSantis did it at least once last year. Although Texas was seemingly heavily involved in that too…
One of the top questions asked by Texas residents during their last succession vote was if social security checks were still going to be delivered. I hope they do vote to leave, I want to see the realization sink in and the chaos that ensues.
lmao literal FAFO
A Texas independence would not only violate the Constitution, it would sink the GOP in the remaining states due to the loss of Texas’ electoral votes, thus ensuring a Republican president would never be elected again. This is the biggest reason Texas will never secede, regardless of the state’s conservative nativism.
it would sink the GOP in the remaining states due to the loss of Texas’ electoral votes, thus ensuring a Republican president would never be elected again
So you’re saying we should forget the constitution just this once?
But they’re republicans. They’ll demand to vote anyway because of some stupid made-up rule like, “Well, we’re touching the rest of the US, so we get to vote!” A /notheonion statement by Cruz if I ever heard one.
I thought this about roe too. Conservatives are really into catching the tire and not knowing what to do afterwards nowadays…
I’m always baffled by how people point out succession as illegal as if it’s expected or common otherwise that bits of a country can break away whenever they feel like it.
Would an independent Texas care if there was never a Republican president of a country they had left? Or would the see it as just rewards for those that those to stay there?
TIL I support succeeding from the US (as long as I can still move there afterwards)
Please, for Christ’s sake, just leave. Have the plebiscite. Take it to Congress. Let them release you on the condition that all Americans in Texas be allowed to emigrate, fully compensated, and all wannabe Texans are allowed to immigrate, fully compensated, for the next 6 months.
Oh, and we keep the military equipment. I’m sure their ‘well-regulated militia’ will be enough for them.
We’ll leave it there for convenience when we invade since they will be an unstable oil rich nation in need of freedom.
Ugh, no, let them stay out. We don’t need a Resource Trap country to try nation-building on, pretty sure we already tried that one.
Not 80s-90s era ‘nation building’, 40s era reconstruction. If nazi germany is salvageable we can probably figure texas out with the correct level of commitment.
Sounds like a good way to start getting us off that oil teat to be honest.
Also we’ll build a wall at the Texas-US borders, but not because we think it’ll be effective, just because it’ll be hilarious
ITT: A bunch of people who don’t realize Texas is nearly purple, but gerrymandered to hell. There are millions of us who are blue.
Are you looking for credit for almost being a state governed by sane politicians? Almost doesn’t count for much against fascism.
Texas is certainly not the only state with this problem but you’re also not the only state that’s close to giving Republicans the boot. Until it happens the rest of the country has every right to talk trash on the ridiculous bullshit that passes for political discourse there.
People who say stuff like this don’t understand how anything works. Sure, talk trash about policies, the GOP and politicians. But it’s shitty and counterproductive to say the progressive voters of Texas didn’t try hard enough. Why don’t the people of North Korea raise up and oust the regime? Would you say it’s because North Koreans don’t want it bad enough and so they deserve whatever they get?
Deserving and being responsible for are not necessarily the same thing. You can dress it up however you like but at the end of the day it is the citizens of Texas, voters and non-voters alike, that decide the political direction of the state. You may not like it but enough of your neighbors do that it doesn’t matter. Deflecting blame and feeling sorry for yourself isn’t going to solve that problem.
Are you looking for credit for almost being a state governed by sane politicians? Almost doesn’t count for much against fascism.
Democrats care about people, unless those people are in red states.
It’s a stretch to twist my words in that way but if it makes you feel better about the shitty people you share a state with you go right ahead.
It’s a stretch to twist my words in that way
Not much of one. Look at how much “just fucking leave” sentiment there is in this thread. Not one bit of consideration for the victims of Republican policy, because the victims have committed the sin of being outnumbered. Yeah, we all deserve the results of Republican policy because our misery exists to give you something to look down on.
The only time the national party gives a shit about Texas is when a progressive is running against a centrist in the primaries.
I think it’s mostly just the fatigue talking. It’s been a long 5/10/20/40 years of almost constant attacks and bullshit. It wears down the compassion.
Texans get the same attacks and bullshit you do. Except we get to be directly impacted by Republican policies and simultaneously blamed for them.
You assume I don’t live in a red state
Then you know what it’s like.
Y’know, if Texas secedes, we won’t have to change the flag and remove a star if we make Puerto Rico a state. Just sayin’.
Let’s make Puerto Rico a state regardless. And D.C.
Agreed! Oh jfc, I keep forgetting D.C. isn’t a state.
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Don’t let the door hit you on the ass on the way out.
I’m not sure Texas is thinking this through. We’d build a wall and make them pay for it…
Oh yes please. The next hurricane that hits we won’t have to pay for, and when they freeze or melt because their electrical grid collapses we can just watch.
Texas is one of the few financially functional red states so that wouldn’t be a concern. No clue whether they’d maintain their finances if they seceded.
How financially functional do you think they’ll be when they lose all the trade agreements of the US and the ability to freely trade with the other states?
Do they still have lots of oil?
That’s a fairly widely traded commodity so probably would help buffer against impacts on other industries of trade instability. Though they might have to consider higher tax on oil or something.
Does Texas have lots of oil, or do oil companies have lots of oil that happens to be located in Texas?
I have no clue, and anyone on the internet who says they do is dubious at best. It’s an incredibly complex question.
It didn’t go so hot after Brexit, I can’t imagine why we should expect Texit to go better.
New year new secession bill to fail big whoop.
These people killed hundreds because they couldn’t keep the lights on. This state would die from people fleeing before the ink dried on the bill even if it passed…
if I had the money to leave here I would
If you have the money to live there, you have the money to leave.
I think that’s a very naive opinion. Moving is expensive. Even if you don’t have much, coming up with deposits for rent and utilities can be very difficult for the 60 percent of Americans living pay check to pay check.
Not to mention you have to have a job wherever you’re moving to or you’ll be out on the street pretty quickly.
3rd time is the charm!
