Nikki Haley returned to the subject of secession on Wednesday, saying Texas has the right to leave the union if it wants to. The Republican presidential candidate—whose campaign lines include "We have a country to save," per CBS News—made the comments in an appearance on "The Breakfast Club" radio show, ABC News reports. Haley had said when she ran for governor of South Carolina the first time that the US Constitution allows states to secede. Asked Wednesday if she still believes that, Haley plunged in, despite taking heat last month for leaving "slavery" out of her answer about the cause of the Civil War.
"If Texas decides they want to do that, they can do that," Haley answered. "If that whole state says, 'We don't want to be part of America anymore,' I mean, that's their decision to make." But that won't happen, she added. Secession has been invoked in the past in Texas and has been again in Gov. Greg Abbott's dispute with the Biden administration over border policies. The Republican governor has used language similar to the text of the state's 1861 declaration of secession, per the Texas Tribune. A secessionist group tried to put the question on a ballot for an advisory vote but was rejected last month by the Texas GOP, per the San Antonio News-Express.
A University of Houston poll released Tuesday shows Haley running 61 percentage points behind Donald Trump in Texas, per the Dallas Morning News. A campaign spokeswoman for Haley, who also said "I believe in state's rights," did not respond to questions about the former UN ambassador's views on the matter, per ABC. Shortly after the Civil War, the US Supreme Court found that whether the people of a state have changed their minds about being part of the US isn't the issue. "When Texas became one of the United States, she entered into an indissoluble relation," the court ruled in Texas v. White. (More Nikki Haley 2024 stories.)
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