Texas Republicans want the state's citizens to vote on seceding from the United States.
The Lone Star State's GOP members, at last week's convention in Houston, adopted a party-platform measure demanding a vote on secession in 2023.
"Pursuant to Article 1, Section 1, of the Texas Constitution, the federal government has impaired our right of local self-government," the platform states under a section titled "State Sovereignty," Newsweek reported.
"Therefore, federally mandated legislation that infringes upon the 10th Amendment rights of Texas should be ignored, opposed, refused, and nullified."
The platform says that state Republicans want the Texas Legislature to pass a bill in its next session "requiring a referendum in the 2023 general election for the people of Texas to determine whether or not the State of Texas should reassert its status as an independent nation."
However, the U.S. Constitution makes no provision for states to secede, Newsweek said, and in 1869, the Supreme Court ruled in Texas v. White that states cannot unilaterally secede from the Union.
"If there was any constitutional issue resolved by the Civil War, it is that there is no right to secede," the late Justice Antonin Scalia once wrote, Newsweek reported.
Republican State Rep. Kyle Biedermann last year introduced a bill that called for a "Texit" referendum, which was endorsed by state Republican Party Chair Allen West. The bill ultimately failed.
The legislation was criticized by lawmakers in both major parties, with Republican Rep. Jeff Leach branding it a "disgrace to the Lone Star State" and the "very definition of seditious."
In November, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said that although he did not support the idea of Texas independence, he understood why some people believed it was in the state’s best interests.
"If the Democrats end the filibuster, if they fundamentally destroy the country. If they pack the Supreme Court, if they make D.C. a state, if they federalize elections, if they massively expand voter fraud, there may come a point where it's hopeless," Cruz told a student at a Texas A&M appearance.
The Texas Nationalist Movement's website claims more than 427,000 Texans support its work to "make Texas an independent nation again."
Texas declared independence from Mexico in 1836 and spent nine years as its own nation before becoming a U.S. state. Texas then seceded from the Union in 1861 before being readmitted in 1870 following the end of the Civil War.
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