New Hampshire lawmakers rejected the latest push for the state to secede from the union and become its own independent nation on Thursday, despite a growing number of Republicans in favor of secession.
The state’s House voted against a proposed state constitutional amendment that would require the state to leave the United States if the country’s debt reached $40 trillion. It also rejected a bill that would form a committee to examine the “economic, legal and sociological aspects of New Hampshire exerting its sovereign state rights.”
If the proposed amendment had succeeded, it would have gone to voters, who would need to approve the amendment by a two-thirds majority. One in 5 voters said they would consider secession in a poll by the University of New Hampshire, according to Newsweek.
“In general, the talk of secession across the states is mostly just that, talk,” Nicholas Creel, a business law professor at Georgia College and State University, told Newsweek. “We’re in a highly polarized period where the parties are very far apart ideologically, making compromise difficult. These sorts of calls for breaking up the union are deeply unserious, supported by only those who don’t fully understand what secession would entail.”
Creel added that secession itself is against the law and would require “political violence” in order to make it happen, which he said the U.S. was not prepared for.
The vote comes as a similar movement heats up in Texas, fueled in part by the border crisis. The movement has 619,000 active members and is the third-largest party in the state, behind Republicans and Democrats, according to the Texas Nationalist Movement.
“This [border] crisis directly affects the lives of Texans right here and now, prompting our independence debate even more,” Daniel Miller, the party’s president, said. “So much so that the question at hand is not if Texas will achieve independence, but when.”
New Hampshire Republican state Rep. Jason Gerhard, who sponsored the latest New Hampshire amendment, said his state would have an alliance with Texas if both seceded from the union.
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“Freedom is not an abstract notion, it is a way of life, and the federal government continues to overlook the freedoms of both Texas and New Hampshire,” Gerhard wrote to the Texas Nationalist Movement in a letter Wednesday. “We believe that the shared principles, desires, and plights of Texans and Granite Staters highlight the importance of maintaining a relationship with one another. As New Hampshire makes its efforts to secure independence, it promises to strengthen the voices of both regions.”
Although discussion surrounding secession has been popping up for years, no serious attempt has been made since the Civil War.
