A loud minority of Texans call for Independence, which is not really possible as far as I know, BUT could the Rest of the USA just kick another state (Not necessary Texas) out? Or is this also not possible?
The US Constitution currently has no mechanism to break any individual State out of the Union. Throughout our history, this has been interpreted as a sign that the Union is perpetual, and not able to be dissolved. This got put to the test in our Civil War, where a bunch of states up and said “We’re Leaving” and the Federal Government said “You can’t just do that”. They fought a war over it, and the Federal Government won, proving its position correct by force.
With that said, the US was founded as a government of the People, and so if the people want to carve out a way for States to leave, they must first establish a mechanism via amending the Constitution, which requires a 2/3 vote in both houses of Congress (or a Constitutional Convention) coupled with 3/4 of State Legislatures ratifying it.
There is a provision, though, to make States out of other States. Maine and West Virginia were both formed out of land that belonged to Massachusetts and Virginia.
Wonder though, does that mean states can combine?
Actually, yes, but that has never happened.
Yeah, because you’re giving up federal power for… a bigger state budget? Not really a great trade.
Until captain planet.
“By your
powersstates combined, I am Captain Planet!”
Make the MIMAL voltron.
Megasota
It’s laid out very explicitly in the COTUS (Article IV, Section 3, Clause 1):
New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new State 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.
The funny thing is that during the civil war, West Virginia seceded from Virginia, and Congress voted to allow it and they were accepted into the union. There are a lot of people who argue that when that happened it was unconstitutional. However, it has never been tested, as far as I know.
That’s a new word. We have POTUS, FLOTUS, SCOTUS and now COTUS.
That would almost imply the Confederacy had legally left the USA, and Wrst Virginia legally left the Confederacy and joined the Union. Basically you could say none of this was un constitutional if the Confederacy was not a part of the USA at the time.
I would be doing it a disservice to try and explain it myself, but there were a lot of legal theories on how they could justify WV without justifying the Confederacy leaving the union. It’s an interesting topic.
Seems like it’d be easier, more honest and less “Jump through hoopy” to just say they left and we reconquered them. Unless you really don’t want think states leaving is legal when it probably is.
You’re mistaking the fact that I recognize a limitation of myself with something else.
If what I said wasn’t fairly accurate, there’d be no need for legal arguments so arcane you don’t feel capable of describing them accurately.
You could just pass an amendment…
But specifically for kicking a state out I don’t think the bar is that high. If the legislature and executive agreed then it could be done very quickly.
Oh, but there are all sorts of details to work out…
- are citizens of the state no longer US citizens?
- if so, what happens to their Social Security? Medicare? I don’t want to keep paying for those freeloaders
- if they treat it like renouncing citizenship, they make those people pay taxes on all their assets and 401(k) holdings before leaving
- Do armed forces members from those states now get kicked out of the US armed forces and go to the new state’s armed forces?
- Does the new state get to take over any military bases and Federal buildings?
- Can the rest of us build a wall on the border and make them pay for it?
There’s a lot to iron out. The Brits got screwed with Brexit, and they weren’t even leaving a country.
it was worse than that and even dumber the UK was a founding member and had extra perks. That other EU members didn’t get and they threw all that away. Even if they do join back they will never get that deal again.
Even if they do join back they will never get that deal again.
and yet it’s still the most logical thing for them to do, security, trade and otherwise. it’ll hurt a bit, that sting is pride lol… but it’d still be the best thing for both the UK and EU.
otherwise eventually I see Ireland unifying and Scotland going to the EU lol.
Presumably those have been worked out in the bill Congress passed.
No lol your second statement is literally just wrong. The only way to do anything like this would be through an Amendment, which equated to literally changing the rules bc the current rules do not allow for it.
Is there something specifically saying you can’t?
No?
Question answered.
“Just” passing an amendment requires more than 75% of states to ratify the amendment. So even if all of Congress decided nuts to Delaware, we’re moving them out, it would still go to the state of legislatures to be formalized
Oh no the amendment is for if a state wants to leave. Since there’s no standard around kicking a state out at all, it defaults to 50+1 votes in Congress and a President willing to enforce it
This is literally just wrong dude
Why? How?
I expect at the very least you’d also need scotus to agree, though if legislative and executive are both willing to ignore them then …profit?
Yeah that’s the checks and balances. SCOTUS literally has no power without Congress or the President.
Yeah, but it wouldn’t be “legal” unless scotus agreed it was, even if it happened anyway.
No. SCOTUS does not have to agree to everything. In fact there’s no Constitutional power for them to take a law up for review without a case. They gave themselves that power.
Eh. They just leave. Not being prohibited to do so isn’t the same as not being allowed to, that’s why they had a war last time. There is a very strong argument that Abraham Lincoln was a war criminal, he just wasn’t philosophically wrong and also won.
What are you trying to say?
I was perfectly clear
CalExit was a russian disinfo plot to weaken the US, and Texit knows that, but they love russian disinfo.
Anything is possible with a constitutional amendment.
To further add, there is nothing in the Constitution which allows for having a state leave and the Constitution is where that process would be to be laid out. So, if a state wanted to leave and the rest of the country agreed, you would need a constitutional amendment to spell out that process.
Given the high bar required to amend the Constitution, having a state leave would need to be very popular politically.
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Dems suggest texas can texit if the GOP drafts it.
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GoP doesn’t want to blink, crafts it in a way that gives Texas power when it leaves, to please the howling magats
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Dems say "cool. These 31 states on both coasts are seceding. Using the process laid out, each coastal block will reorganize into its own group.
Now the red states are booted. Miller time.
There is no “gives Texas power” about that. If Texas were to leave, the big bargaining issues would be on water rights and what to do about social security.
There’s no legal way for Texas to leave the union. If Texas did, it’d be treason. No bargaining, only civil war.
It’s Insurrection not treason. Treason is very narrowly defined as giving Aid & Comfort to a foreign power. People misuse treason way too often.
I was only speaking to if the method of leaving the union was to be approved.
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Aka, it’ll never happen since one side consistently torpedoes their own bills when the other side agrees with them.
That would require Congress to be functional.
Or if most of the population just decides to ignore the constitution. But how likely is that?
If you poll half the population, they don’t even know what the Constitution says. They could be ignoring it now.
Except for denying a state equal representation on the Senate without its consent; the Constitution explicitlyforbids that.
And yet that provision is itself still part of the constitution so really an amendment just needs to have an initial sentence to override that limitation first. If there’s actually support for a change, anything can be changed.
If it were really so easy to bypass that restriction, then what was the point of putting that sentence in in the first place?
Because Congress has wide latitude to set its own membership by passing laws to that effect. The size of the House, for instance, used to increase on every Census, until Congress passed a law to fix it at 435. (A huge mistake, IMHO, and part of the reason why our politics are so wacky today.)
This ensures that the Senate can never re-make itself to be anything other than the body with equal representation among states, unless the affected states also agree.
This ensures that the Senate can never re-make itself to be anything other than the body with equal representation among states, unless the affected states also agree.
Yes, that is exactly my point: if this restriction could itself be eliminated through the amendment process, then it effectively does not exist.
No, you don’t get my point, if that specific clause weren’t in the Constitution then Congress could enact a law to change how the Senate is constructed. The clause serves a purpose, even if it can be itself changed via amendment.
If the purpose of that clause were to restrict the kinds of laws that Congress can pass instead of the kinds of amendments that are allowed, then why does it appear in Article V, which relates to amendments, rather than Article I, which relates to Congress?
Because it’s not easy to amend the Constitution.
Sure, but once there is enough determination to deprive a state of equal representation in the Senate that there are sufficient votes to amend the Constitution once in order to do this–which, as you have pointed out, is a very high bar–then it is no harder to go through the amendment process twice in order to first drop that sentence.
Indeed, the limitation in what can be amended is in practice totally powerless. I think of it as a rhetorical flourish to emphasize the importance they placed on representing states rather than people. For what it’s worth, I advocate for the full abolition of the Senate. It’s an anti-democratic institution. There’s no way to fix it without making it a clone of the House so let’s just do away with it entirely.
Indeed, the limitation in what can be amended is in practice totally powerless. I think of it as a rhetorical flourish to emphasize the importance they placed on representing states rather than people.
It isn’t worded as a “rhetorical flourish”; it is worded incredibly clearly and explicitly as a prohibition:
Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.
In fact, taking your reasoning a step further: are you likewise arguing that when the prohibition against banning the slave trade prior to 1808 was included here, that it was also understood to be a “rhetorical flourish” with no teeth behind it? If so, then why did they go to so much trouble to put it in? It seems like a lot of wasted effort in that case.
Any amendment to the Constitution to show secession or for a state to be removed would obviously change that, too.
Sure, but obviously in that case it would no longer matter whether that state had Senators or not because it would no longer be subject to the laws of the U.S. government.
If it gets to that point, I think its more likely to declare the state in insurrection or rebellion and send in the army to passify it, rather than trying to expunge it.
Pacify*
yes, sorry, I am what you would call catastrophically sleep deprived so its a miracle i’m as legible as I am.
There’s some pretty valuable infrastructure in TX and many other states. They’d definitely take it back and give the idiots who are responsible for the trouble a token fine and gentle slap on the wrist. It’s an American tradition. They’ll probably execute the derps doing the actual funding though.
Pros:
Lots of land
Natural resources
Coastal access
Cons:
Shitty power grid
Rednecks
Consensus:
worth fighting to keep, but if we’re going to do that, take the opportunity to cleanup the more vocal of the rednecks.
Honestly Texas just needs to split into five states. Not everyone in the state holds the same beliefs as the people who live in north and east Texas. The Houston and Austin areas are far more progressive and liberal.
Can you imagine how gerrymandered those state borders would be?
can a state be named after interstate 35?
Yeah and then those states can break into states and factions and — oh we got Mad Max, nice.
Luckily I’m not Texan, or even American.
Then also split California and Illinois and New York and Georgia and Florida
Texas: the new Yorkshire
That’s too long. We should shorten it to New York.
It would’ve made sense if Yorkshire was a city, which, it isn’t.
No, what I was actually meaning was that Yorkshire was one of the historical counties of England. However, when you look at the administrative/postal counties, there’s actually 4 of them all called Yorkshire, one of them has an even longer name: “the East Riding of Yorkshire”.
So basically, if Texas want to split itself up, it should, just for shits and giggles, adopt the Yorkshire strategy, hence, the new Yorkshire.
Try counting the amount of times I’ve said “Yorkshire” in this reply.
With enough approval, the US could do anything. It’s either Constitutional or it would be Constitutional after an amendment is passed and approved.
If it is by the consent of the rest of the states, then yes. I’m not aware of any existing legal process, but a constitutional amendment could fix that.
Such a thing is unlikely to ever happen. Territory means people, infrastructure, and resources, so it’s almost always better to hold onto it, unless you can’t defend it.
It isn’t. Until suddenly it is.
Most countries borders fluctuate during history.
The US border has fluctuated through its short history, but only by growing (as long as you only count states and not other claimed territory)
I suppose it’s possible but it would never happen unless that state basically committed an outright act of war against the rest of the US. At that point they probably would have left the US on their own though.
And even in that scenario the US government would probably send in the military to forcibly take that state back before they just give up and force them to leave.
It’s not possible legally or Constitutionally; it’s possible in that they can secede by amending the Constitution, or by winning a war of secession, but that’s it. They can’t leave and they can’t be kicked out.
Though they could be divided into or amongst other, smaller States.
Technically winning a war of secession would have to end with an amendment to the constitution too, unless it ended with the eradication of “the USA”
Yeah. If Congress did it and the federal government just enforced it there’s not much anyone could do about it.
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Except with red states. Most are running in the negatives.
Texas is one of the few red states not running in the red.
Texas benefits enormously on federal spending. The reason it’s not in the red: f35, helo, rocket and other mil/space production that wouldn’t occur in “The United Counties of Texas”. Also subtract some of the largest mil installations on the planet - fort cavazos and fort bliss - plus dozens of other sites like Lackland/JBSA and Carswell/NASJRB ft worth and more… shittons of federal dollars going to texas.
Take it away - poof, texas is a lot of cattle and some windmills.
Sorry for the confusion, but “in the red” in this regard is a measure of how much the Fed spends in Texas vs how much (the people of) Texas sends to the Fed. Texas is one of the few red states not in the negative.
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Texas is one of the few red states not in the negative.
dude. that’s my premise:
The reason it’s not - fed spending. take that away? texas becomes a cattleocracy.
I think you are missing a ton of Fortune 500 companies Headquartered in Texas… Dell, Oracle, Tesla, Exxon, HPE, Charles Schwab, Texas Instruments… No state has more Fortune 500 HQ’s than Texas.
Texas is a bunch of big blue cities surrounded by cattleocracy.
Sooooo Alabama?
A loud minority of Texans call for Independence, which is not really possible as far as I know
I’m a history illiterate so maybe I’m wrong but I’m sure lots of countries thought that before an insurrection. Not that I think Texas would rebel but literally why couldn’t they?
There is no provision that allows a state to vacate or get kicked out. The beatings will continue until morale improves.
If states fail to provide a representative government to their citizens, then the states has walked back some of the steps required to become a state. A serious SCOTUS could potentially block Senators and Representatives from a state that really gerrymanders or denies people the right to vote. In my opinion.
There is currently a challenge to remove 10% of WI representation because they removed ten percent of voters from the rolls.
The district of columbia is not a state so it’s probably an easier place to start.
