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In reply to the discussion: Texas Could Vote to Secede From U.S. in 2023 as GOP Pushes for Referendum [View all]SpankMe
(2,957 posts)It's possible for a state to secede, I presume, by doing the opposite of Article IV, Section 3, Clause 1 of the constitution. This section outlines the requirements for admission. It requires approval by the legislatures of the states involved, plus the approval of congress. It's doable.
Since a majority of the state legislatures today are in Republican hands, I would hope that they would be sympathetic to Texas and vote to allow them to leave.
If congress was in Democratic hands, they would be more likely to allow Texas to leave since that would throw congress even more firmly into the Democratic camp since the Gerrymandered supermajority of Republican representatives in Texas would be removed from the legislative branch.
If Republicans were in charge in congress, they would never let Texas go for this same reason.
Article IV, Section 3, Clause 1 of the constitution is at a pretty high level. I think that some amount of federal legislation that defines the detailed process for secession would need to be written and passed and reviewed by the judicial branch before any real secession could take place.
Frankly, I think this is inevitable. The far-right Pandora's box has been opened with Trump. America as a whole is now marching backwards in everything from race, to LGBTQ+ rights, to women's rights, to violence as a resolution to problems, to minority rule, to totalitarian government behavior. There's no way we survive as a 50-state "union" much longer.
As I've pointed out in other posts, 87 million eligible voters did NOT vote in 2020. In the county I live in, the voter turnout for the recent primary election was 32% of registered voters - even though mail-in ballots are sent to every voter by default so that no one would have had to go to a polling place. The mother fuckers had hours and hours to spend on social media bitching about government not working. But none could find the 15 minutes or so to sit at their kitchen table with their mail-in ballot and make a few decisions.
Non-voters are, by definition, assholes.