Texas Secessionist: 'Texit' May Be Closer Than You Think

Amid escalating tensions with federal authorities over border control, the concept of Texas seceding from the United States, commonly referred to as "Texit," is gaining attention.

On Wednesday, Newsweek reported that one such man pushing to separate Texas from the Union is Daniel Miller, president of the Texas Nationalist Movement.

Speaking on his "Texas News" podcast Tuesday, Miller argued that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is "standing up for our rights, the law, and our sovereignty."

"It's interesting times we live in, folks," he added. "And I think that we're heading to a place where this is beyond a constitutional crisis."

On Jan. 22, the Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 verdict that the Biden administration can remove razor wire at the southern border.

Miller later added to Newsweek, "The current border issue has done two things. First, it has turned a significant number of undecided voters into 'yes' voters. It seems to have also had the effect of activating a significant number of independent voters and is pushing them to support a vote on TEXIT."

Critics of Miller shrugged off the idea as flights of fancy. James Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin, told Newsweek that a seceding of Texas is "divorced from reality."

"Texas nationalists calling for something akin to a Texit represent some combination of fantasy and symbolic gesture, each divorced from reality ... The GOP party apparatus has become the favored dwelling place of extreme and esoteric elements, where such factions are treated much more seriously than they are among the general public," he continued.

"In some areas, they sometimes succeed in moving the center of the party to the right and in attracting attention to ideas and proposals that have little relation to reality — like the idea of an independent Texas."

• Texas GOP Pushes for Referendum to Secede
• 'Texit': State Rep. Seeks Vote on Secession From US