TEXAS — Last month, the Lone Star State’s go-it-alone bravado was challenged when the state’s independent power grid failed during an unusually cold winter storm, leaving millions without power, heat, and water. More than 70 deaths have been linked to the storm, and tens of thousands of Texans are still without running water, three weeks after the snow melted.

One would think Gov. Greg Abbott’s request for help from the Federal Emergency Management Agency would be enough of a humbling to quash any notion of Texas’ ability to break off from the United States, a call that has now become a nearly annual event. 

Instead, as Texans living in houses ill-equipped for temperatures in the low teens were burning bedframes to keep warm, former Gov. Rick Perry insisted Texans were doing just fine with their independent grid.


What You Need To Know

  • The independent power grid’s failure was seen by some as a trial run for the Lone Star State’s independence movement

  • Supporters of a “Texit” say the need to examine the feasibility of independence is still necessary

  • A bill in the Texas House proposes a referendum for Texas voters to decide if the state should go it alone

“Texans would be without electricity for longer than three days to keep the federal government out of their business,” Perry was quoted as saying in a blog posted on the website of Kevin McCarthy, the House Minority Leader. 

Meanwhile, a bill filled in the Texas Legislature this session proposes a referendum on whether Texas should consider separating. The bill filed by Rep. Kyle Biedermann, a Republican from Fredericksburg, is the most significant bill on secession since the Civil War. The Republican Party of Texas has thrown its support behind the bill, saying Texans should have the right to vote on the issue of a “Texit.” 

“Now is exactly the right time to consider this bill,” Biedermann said in an interview a week after the winter storm started. The East Texas lawmaker’s home outside of Fredericksburg had been without power for six days. 

As he described how the challenges of the storm had brought neighbors and friends together to help one another, a Central Texas Electric truck pulled up and told him it could be another month before power was fully restored. 

Despite the hardships the storm and power outage had put on Texans, Biederman said he believes his bill still has  “a lot of support.”

Biedermann said the bill isn’t a vote for secession. Instead, it’s calling for a referendum that would allow Texans to voice the opinion on if Texas should secede. If the vote were in favor, it would then set into motion the creation of committees to examine how such a formation of an independent Texas nation could work. 

“I think people will vote yes because Texans know that Texas can take care of Texans better than the current federal government,” he said. 

Most analysts say that, even if the bill makes its way through a committee, it’s unlikely to pass.

But if it did, what would an independent Texas nation look like? Is it even possible, outside the optimism of Biedermann and the state’s most vocal independent movement, the Texas Nationalist Movement? 

“Right off the bat, you can just slash 20% from the state’s budget revenues, which is what the state gets from the federal government,” said Todd Curry, a political science professor at the University of Texas in El Paso. 

Consider the things that the federal government provides, which Texas would have to create its own version of to be a nation-state. 

Federal insurance programs such as Medicare and Medicaid would end, creating millions of more uninsured Texans in a state that already has some 21% of its population living without health insurance, the highest rate in the country. 

There’s also the issues of border control, maintaining the sections of the federal highways that crisscross across the state, and developing and outfitting a Texas military. Like other states, Texas has a national guard funded by the federal government. Their planes, guns, and other hardware belong to the U.S. government.

Education, particularly higher education centers, would lose funding for Texas universities and colleges, a source of pride for the state.

And what about Texas’ independent power grid, the focus of so much attention as the state continues recovery efforts in the aftermath of the devastating power crisis? That, too, would need significant investment to connect those parts of Texas not currently on the Texas grid, including parts of the Panhandle, parts of eastern Texas, and El Paso. 

Supporting an independent Texas nation-state would likely do the one thing most supporters of the idea would hate: Raise the tax rate, Curry said. 

“It's one of those things, where saying it out loud, ‘Hey, should we think about leaving the U.S.?’ doesn't sound horrible,” Curry said. “But when you get down to the numbers, Texas doesn't have the economic capacity or the institutions to administer all these things we’d have to build from scratch in a large number of areas.”

Texas secessionists face the biggest hurdle in the legal arena. The federal Constitution does not have a mechanism by which a state can leave the United States, Curry said. Recalling that the first time a state tried this, there was a Civil War. 

Seceding from the United States would require amending the U.S. Constitution. Two-thirds of each branch of Congress would have to approve the amendment, with ratification by 38 states – making any effort highly unlikely.

Biedermann said he and supporters of a so-called “Texit” are not naive about the complications secession would create. It’s precisely why his bill is so important now so that it would trigger a thorough feasibility study, he said.  

It might turn out that Texas is better off staying in the U.S., Biedermann said. 

In the last 60 years or so, 140 new countries have been developed that were once part of other countries, he pointed out. If they can do it, why can’t Texas, with all of its natural resources and economic might?

“This shouldn't be so scary to talk about,” he said. “We love America, we just don't like the federal government because it's so inefficient. If we don't do something now, when will we ever start discussing these things?”

Another thing Texas would have to forgo if it decided to break off on its own: help from FEMA in the event of a hurricane or what’s on every Texans mind these days, another power and water crisis caused by a brutal winter storm.

“Texas' rugged individualism is an attractive way of life and the reason why many of us moved here,” said Matt Williamson, 54, a software developer in Austin. “But in reality, the first thing we did was ask the federal government for help when we needed it.”