Kason Huddleston: From the Pulpit to Policy | Texas Unreeled

COVID revealed what was truly happening. That was a good thing from COVID. It got me motivated to get involved in government. It also revealed what was going on in education, Islamic indoctrination, LGBTQ, every leftist you could think of, and parents were shocked. People say, what's the fight on social studies? Well, social studies prepares a person for civic life. If you can shape the way a student thinks, that will produce what they do in the future when cannot remove faith from American history. It's not neutral. You cannot read our founding documents and say we're not a country founded on faith. Pastor Kasson, thank you for being here today. It's been an honor for me to work with you and to get to know you. I found out about you when you were getting involved in local races and getting your church involved in local races to get good Republicans, faith-based candidates elected in Rockwall, Rowlett, that area. I think I was a county chair back then. I came to your church. We chatted for a while, and I was so impressed. Tell me about your journey. A lot of pastors stay within the four walls of the church, but you decided the real fight is outside. Tell me about that. Chairman, thank you for having me today and just for being my friend and inviting me to not just this show today, but just to lead the party previously as a chaplain. It's been a journey getting to know you. How I got involved, it was a little thing back in 2021, I remember, called COVID. When the governor said we could open back up by executive order, we took that. We announced a block party because we were trying to meet people wherever they were at. We wanted to extend grace. If you want to stand away, if you want to hug or whatever, we were trying to just land on the grace towards everybody. It was some tough times. It was very tough. I mean, we were one of the first churches to open back up in Rowlett, which is Dallas County. If I'd have been over in Rockwall County, it'd have been a different story. Once the governor stepped in, then it was out of his hands. We announced we're having a block party, and I got a phone call from our then mayor, and she said, Pastor Kasson, I'm sorry, but you can't do that. I said, well, what do you mean? She said, well, you can't meet. I said, yes, we can. I gave her the executive order number, and she said, well, you have to ask my permission. I'm the emergency manager for the city, and we're under emergency order. I said, no, I'm not going to ask your permission to do that. She said, well, you're actually not having a service. You're having a block party. I said, well, what we're going to do during that block party is when we are bobbing for apples, I'm going to baptize a few people. When we do musical chairs, I'll turn on some worship music and take an offering. We're going to take communion with some cookies and seven up, and then I'm going to preach a little bit outside, so why don't you just come and try to stop us? She never did, and that kind of strained our relationship. A few months later in June, she declared June as Gay Pride Month, and before that, Abraham, she had placed in, against our charter, a brand new commission in Rowlett City Council, funded it with $30,000 to $40,000 of city money called the, guess what, DEI Commission, and then declared June that Gay Pride Month, lit up our tower. I was appalled. We went, I took many pastors. We spoke our little three minutes, but Abraham, nothing changed, and it hit me. We can talk all we want, but until we get Christian conservatives on the other side of that dice, nothing's going to change, so I just started recruiting candidates to run against open seats or just seats that were coming up. They weren't even open necessarily. We started a Republican men's club at my church, and we meet at the church. I'm the president and a couple, three other men, and it's the only Republican men's club in Dallas County, which is sad, but we started recruiting Christian candidates, and we started flipping seats, and to this day, we have a majority conservative board. DEI is completely gone. We have a couple of candidates teed up for May. We're creating a bench. In other words, our club is growing, and that's what got me in it, and for a pastor to be in here, but said, you should stay out of it, but the thing is, if good people are not involved in it, then bad things are going to continue to happen. Right. The culture walked into the church and said, we're taking over, right? I mean, it's basically what happened with DEI. It's basically what happened with the pride months and basically what happened with Black Lives Matter, all these things that happened in the last few, I would say about 15 years or so. We haven't seen this kind of problems until Barack Obama got elected. That started this domino effect, but once he got elected, all of these new ideologies came to the forefront, and then basically the church stayed silent until people like you started talking about it. I see a lot of preachers now talk about it, so I'm thankful that you decided. You're one of the preachers who said, I'm going to take my church to the public square. I'm going to have a conversation with the people that I'm supposed to be talking to anyway and say why we're not going to do what we're not going to do. So, thank you for stepping up. Chaplain's role at the Texas UOP, people sometimes minimize it, but it's a huge role. Yes. It's a statewide role that you're connected to other pastors, SREC members, county chairs. I know you've done a great job as a chaplain. You've connected with people who need care, prayer at times, and you've always been there for me. I've gone through many cycles of, God, why am I doing this? Then you've always been there for me, so I really appreciate that. So, now you're on SPOE. Let's talk about that. Yeah. For people who don't know what SPOE is, let's just set the stage and tell us what it is and what you all do. The Texas State Board of Education is a 15-member board voted on by the members, the constituents in their districts. So, those districts are divided up to about 2 million-ish each district. So, mine, I live in District 9, which is the third eastern part of Dallas County, all the way east to the Louisiana border, all the way down to past Lufkin. So, it's 24 counties. Your more metropolitan areas are smaller, but the population is the same. So, District 9, and it was an open seat, and so I ran for that and won the primary, and I plan on winning in November and taking the seat in January and getting put into that seat where I can actually vote. But the State Board of Education, a lot of people don't understand, and we're unlike Oklahoma and other states. So, our education system basically is three tiers. You have legislators who write the law, and you have the TEA who administers those laws, creates policy, creates, whatever it is, is the administration side. Then the 15 members of the State Board of Education are the executive branch. They're the yes-no vote, not to make law, but, and not really interpret the law, but really to enforce the law that the legislators have passed. So, TEA essentially takes a lot of direction from you all. And the state lawmakers, I know they come to you all before they change law, and even though they don't have to, they kind of work with you. They talk to you and say, yeah, we're making all these changes. But you're also in charge of the curriculum, which is the thing. That's the big enchilada. You're talking about the major part of the school system, public school system in Texas. Where do you draw the line between actual education for Texas kids and the indoctrination, which happens a lot in Texas today? Well, indoctrination is where you're taught a system of beliefs and to not question them. You know, that is indoctrination. Education is you're taught, you're giving information, history, science, math, whatever it is. And then you're taught to process that yourself. Our goal as the educational system is not to pass tests. And that's, everything has been up until this point, you know, just teach to the test. That does nothing for us. We're really trying to switch that. I say we, the state board, it's already in motion. I'm just jumping on the ship in January to move away from teaching to test taking, to actually teaching students to be able to be well-rounded, gifted, supported adults as they go into college or wherever. That's the goal. Someone asked me earlier, you know, what does it mean to graduate from high school? Well, the state board actually determines what it takes to get a high school degree. Right now to get a high school degree, you only have to have an algebra credit. That's the minimum. Now, Abraham, excuse me, chairman. I took eighth grade. I mean, I took algebra one when I was in eighth grade. So one thing people don't like to talk about, we have lowered the standards so much with high school graduates that that has to be, now you can't, you have to raise the tide like a natural thing. You can't just tsunami. I mean, the water go up, but then it destroys. When you raise the tide, you want everything that will float to be able to float. And then what's not, you want to be able to correct it so it will float. And raising the bar for high school students to go into college is a lot. It starts all the way back into kindergarten. And so, and a few years ago, the legislators put in House Bill 1605 and said, hey, we're redoing this. We're going to have, y'all are going to rewrite Texas curriculum. And that's the journey that has, this is a long game. So everybody's talking about social studies right now. They're going through the Texas essential knowledge and skills teaks over social studies right now. They'll do that over every subject. And what happens is once they finalize that, that will not go into print until 2030. So this is a very long game and people have to see that. It doesn't just happen overnight. Like, hey, we're going to do this. It's like creating a law in the house. You have all this prep to it. Then you have first reading amendments. Then you have second reading amendments. And then once that second reading is done, boom, it becomes pushing it. But even there's a process after that. So the indoctrination part, COVID revealed what was truly happening. That was a good thing from COVID. It got me motivated to get involved in government. It also revealed what was going on in our education, the literal trash that our students were being taught. Literal indoctrination, Islamic indoctrination, LGBTQ, every leftist you could think of. And parents were shocked. They cried out to their legislators and the legislators did a huge course correct and said, we can't, you know, we can't weed trim this. We're just cutting it at the root. Texas is going to restart. And that's what we've done. That's caused a lot of backlash throughout. I mean, when I signed up for this and went to my first board meeting, I was thinking this is going to be, you know, just like a school board meeting on steroids, longer, possibly, you know, five days. The day I went that Tuesday to go over to the RPT, that was the day that Governor Abbott declared CARE a terrorist organization. So when I came back from the RPT office, police force had tripled. Dogs were everywhere. And they were having protests. It was a madhouse. And I thought, what in the world? And so that's your indoctrination, right? That's what's happening. Well, let's talk about that. So last week you were there, you invited me, you told me, you gave me the heads up. And I've got a bunch of other emails along with it. I think it was, you know, Fran Rhodes from True Texas Project and a bunch of people just talked about, media has picked up SBOE as a major talking point in Texas and honestly nationally. I saw it in CNN talking about it. We saw CARE there. Let's talk about that. What happened last week and why it become a major thing? It was a major thing because CARE, the terrorist group CARE, which is part of the Muslim Brotherhood, they have been at the SBOE meeting every time for years trying to get as we're rewriting the doctrine, because it was already in there. There were lessons previously, you know, before they did a course correct. And people were, so the lawmakers said, we're going to decide what you can and cannot teach as teachers, which is great because we have control of that then. And the educators, I mean, the SBOE and the lawmakers. And so you just uprooted all of that and now you're rewriting it. Well, they want to get back into that. And so it's funny, the CARE and the far leftists have like pulled together and created this red green alliance, which is so crazy. Yeah, which is not something you would expect. I mean, like if you go to like China, they're not aligned with the Muslims. No. Right. I mean, they don't believe that. But here in the United States, the socialists, the communists and the Muslim Brotherhood, they've kind of come together because they have a common enemy, which is the American people. That's exactly right. And that's what they have tried. And I'll be very clear, it's not in the curriculum right now. So it is not. But they have tried to put the positive influence of Islam in building America and building text. I've sat there, Abraham, and listened to them literally say how Islam helped shape the Alamo. And in my thinking, OK, which one was the Muslim? And then it came out, well, it was the architecture of the Alamo, because it came from Spain and Spain had been conquered by the Muslims that created that architecture. So it was such a far reach. So we have a building that looks similar to a building in Spain who eventually was conquered by Muslims, basically. Yeah, that's the that's the extent. And that's the relationship. And you're saying there's what they're saying is so we were part of the the Alamo. Yes. And they wanted the students to know that is a positive impact of Islam in Texas history. Well, just go a little farther. Every one of those arches, I guarantee you, are somewhere in the Vatican. So what are you going to say that Islam helped shape the Catholic Church? I mean, it's crazy. They even give them enough time. They'll say, oh, well, and the the director from CARE in Austin is there every time she was there last time this last week. The first time I went in November, the DFW president of CARE was there. Both of them were there. And he specifically said that he gave the name of some Muslim that landed one hundred and thirty or one hundred eighty years before Columbus. He was the first one to discover the Americas. And you needed to. I literally thought there's people about to tell us that the world is flat, but that's what they have done. They try to pressure in every which way that you can. And it has failed because we have. It was a good vote on the first reading of social statistics this last week, but it took two days into one thirty a.m. and four thirty a.m. A lot of arguing and and testimony. And in the first five meetings that I went to, only one conservative, Abraham, an eighty three year old grandfather from Austin in February, came and said, you know, board members, what you've done to my grandchildren's education is an abomination. I couldn't believe it because CARE was there. Everybody else, everybody was there. Not 80 to 90 every time. And so many, many people put a call to action out. And Abraham, last Tuesday, we outnumbered the Muslims. Over 100 conservatives showed up in the very chamber, the Rotunda, where I'll watch them have this protest against David Barton in America. And that first Tuesday in November, it was filled with Christians saying, God bless America. And so I'm so thankful that they showed up because, you know, Abraham, people say, what's the fight on social studies? What is the fight? Well, social studies prepares a person for civic life, whether it's history, geography, all those things. So if you can, if you can shape the way a student thinks, that will produce what they do in the future when they become adults. And it's very, very important because I've learned being a pastor how a person, you know, how they're shaped in the early days will determine what they become unless there's some big change in that. And our students and people have been fed a lie, literally, from both ends, trying to put Islam in. Also, here's another fight front, trying to remove faith from our history. And they'll say, well, this is not church. And I know it's not church, but, you know, Abraham, you cannot remove faith from American history. It's not neutral. You have to be neutral. It's really a lie. It's deceptive because you cannot read our founding documents and say we're not a country founded on faith. I think the fight is at the elementary school. It's at the kindergarten and where they start to learn about the history of United States. They start to learn about the kids, understand what Bible is and what the biblical principles are. You know, as in Bible, it says, you know, train the child early on so as he will stay. Right. So, what we've been seeing in Texas and there's a guy named John Gondalo who was here on sitting in your seat. We talked about like, what does Muslim schools teach in their seventh grade? And he had a book that he showed me and, you know, it's in another podcast and I did not know. I mean, I knew there are issues, right? My goal is to get Republicans elected. I don't get involved in a lot of the other things. Like one thing is just get Republicans elected. That's my job. That's the task, right? Then I'm starting to see all of these other issues that we have to be part of. We must be part of, we have to be at the conversation, at the table. Otherwise we're going You can elect bunch of Republicans who doesn't do anything. Yes. Or you can elect good Republicans who will stand for you. That will make a difference for your children and the grandchildren, great grandchildren that you will probably never meet. That's the whole point, right? I mean, the real fight is there. You guys have about 10 Republicans on SPOE. Yes. But once in a while, we get everything we want. A lot of times we don't get everything we want and it's not based on the party's platform or the priorities that we put together at the convention. We've seen that over and over again. I think there's some changes to it. I think there are about four new Republicans that are going to come in. Yes. There's four of us that will be replacing four of the five Republicans who do not consistently vote with the Republican platform party. That's been the problem. And a bigger problem is SPOE has been kind of a hidden siloed until social studies, actually sex ed and blue bonnet, it brought it a few years ago. But outside of that, it's kind of been hidden away. And what's happened, it's gone so far back. Abraham, you look at our campuses and not only high school, but college and how a lot of your Gen Zs and young people don't like this country. Right. Why? Because honestly, they have been taught in the previous system not to be proud of America, proud of Texas. We are the villains. You know, we are the oppressors. Yeah. And so that stuff with that House Bill 1605, they eradicated that cold stock, bam, and us rebuilding it. And our children need that. And when you take a look back and say, well, no wonder you've been taught that we're the oppressors, you know, then then they're going to hate this. It makes complete sense. It really does. So I was talking to someone else recently and they told me this. I said, you know, I've talked to him about what John said and a few of the other conversations that I've had in the past few, few weeks. And I said, why is an FBI on it? Why isn't the Homeland Security on it? Why are we working on a lot of these issues? And maybe they are right. And I actually looked at some of the documents that's publicly available. You can Google it and see it. In many years, FBI's number one threat to America is categorized as the white supremacy. The white men is the threat. And when you teach that in law enforcement school, when you teach that in kindergarten, when you teach that in elementary schools, well, you can't do anything about it because that's what you've been telling them. And they're going to listen to that. Kids are going to listen to their teachers. That's that's normal. Yes. You know, I'm glad there is a change at the SBOE. I'm glad the legislators are looking at it and saying this is a bad idea for our country. This is not going to end well for us. So tell me about your plans. You're you're you're going to get elected and you have big plans for SBOE. You have a lot of work ahead of you. How many years is the term and all that good stuff? So it's a four year term starting in January 27. And as you alluded to earlier, there are three others, ladies across the state that are of like mind. They're going to we're all for especially we need to get Victoria Hinojosa in District 12 in the south across the line. But once we do that, then we'll have nine consistent votes and the game is over, Abraham. It's it changes drastically because up until now, it's been for some reason, let's deal, let's make a deal. And it's like a mini house representatives. This is I get to carry one of one 15th vote. That's a lot of power. That's true. And now we'll have nine and we're going to move the agenda through very quickly. But still, one of my goals is there's no communication. Abraham, I said about silos, everything is siloed that I'm seeing, you know, your SBOE, your TA, your superintendents, school districts, teachers, parents, and then then you have the silo of a child over here. Well, that's the most important real stakeholder. And no one's communicating. And to they just, you know, people will do stuff and try to correct. And so my goal first is, at least in District nine, is to create a strong line of communication between administrators to parents, to stakeholders, you know, grandparents, children. Yeah. With legislators. I've been blessed to have real relationships with about 16 of the 20, 24 legislators that endorsed me. I mean, I know them personally. I've talked with them. So my goal is to to bring that where we can streamline some decisions they're making and listen to what actually boots on the ground teachers and superintendents. So I am pro-public school. I am pro-charter school. I'm pro-home school. I'm pro-child. Right. And that means pro-parent. Yeah. And that's what always going to be with me. One of the main things I'm going to do is right now, you don't know how board members vote. Right. Unless they call a record vote, then it's entered in the minutes. You have no idea. No. So I've already talked to a few setting board members. Brandon Hall is one of them. I said, how about can we get this passed where we have a red light, green light, white light? Yeah. It immediately goes on the board. Shows you exactly where it is. Just like the legislature. Exactly. It should be. We're doing. You realize how powerful the decisions we're making? Yeah. You're representing two million people. Yes. I don't think any legislature is doing that. No, nobody does. No senator does that. You know, the new Jay Sharma on them CD32, he was, man, I got, I think he told me, I think I have 700,000 people, you know, six counties. I said, that's good. I got two million and 24 counties. So no, these are the largest district rates in the state. But that's what I want to do. And I believe, well, I said, well, have y'all not done it? Yeah. Well, we couldn't get the votes last, you know, two years ago or whenever. So we'll rewrite the rules, just like state, when the house comes, they rule the board. So that's what, but you have to vote on it. So we'll have the nine votes. So transparency, so people will know how they vote. And then again, just, we're not writing the law. We're not interpreting the law. We're just making sure that it works well with students, with superintendents, and we're just executing the law. Right. Also, one thing is I want to have relationship with every school board member, every superintendent that would like to have relations. I want to be the sounding board because the way it's set up, I mean, your constituents should come up through the state SBOE member to represent them before the TEA or legislators. And I don't know why SBOE members have not, some may have, but I don't know in district nine, it's not happened. And I'm not judging Kevin Ellis. He's been good. But that's one thing. Those are the big changes. I think one of the things is being like, most people don't know what SBOE was until a few years blue bonnet. You, like you said, like kind of started, people started to talk about it with this care, with the social studies. Now it's, everyone knows there is something called SBOE in these guys are making some decisions about my kids and I want to know what it is. Right. So I think it's going to be a louder or more visible office and well, I'm glad you're there, man. We need more preachers, more pastors who are rooted in the Bible, actually in the public square elected. I mean, you know, Nate Schatzler, mutual friend of both of ours. And I was talking to him and he, I said, my goal is to get as many pastors elected to offices. That I don't have to worry about DEI. I don't have to worry about indoctrination. I don't have to worry about it because they're not only elected to represent the people. They're also held accountable by their church. So there's a next level that I don't have to worry about. You mentioned earlier about the left came into the square. Okay. And I think you said the church left here. Here's the thing. The church hadn't been in the square for so long. They don't even know where it's at. They've been in their church for a while. And, you know, the word, what did Jesus say? You know, Peter, upon this rock, I will build my church. That Greek word is Ekklesia. There was no church at that time. What Ekklesia means is the city square where transactions or where government is held. That's where Boaz put his sandal out for Ruth. I mean, these are the things, that's what took place. And I don't know when, but we have vacated the square, per se, a long time ago. And we need to take that into every area of life. And when you look at the founding of our country, there were a lot of preachers involved. Because here's the thing. It's not political, like Nate has said. This is spiritual. And you said culture came into the church. One hundred percent. Everything you talk about, they'll say it's political. But what's the spiritual issue of LGBTQ? What's the spiritual issue of Islam, false religion? It could just go on down the line. And so when pastors will frame it that way, and some of them don't know what to do, there's so many ministries. Rick Scarborough, Revive America with Nate Schatzline, Bunny Pines Christian Engagement. We and I would love to help connect any of them at whatever level they want to get their churches involved, to get on commissions in their city, to get city councilmen, to get mayors, to even, I would have never thought I would be running for the State Board of Education. But again, when you say, here I am, Lord, send me, I really mean that. It started with you calling me to be the chaplain. I was like, I don't, are you sure? And just when you say that the power of yes, and that's what I just, I really pray that pastors will do that. That you'll say yes to be in the lot and then your people will follow. So when you get elected to the state chairmanship, you have a bunch of people around you who got you there. They did the campaign for you. They counseled you through all the issues. And a few of my friends came to me and said, hey, you need a chaplain. Here's the list, right? Great pastors, awesome people, very famous people in Texas and all of that stuff. And then I said, yeah, any one of them would be great. Then I was driving back and I said, how about Kasson? Kasson actually did the work. The rest of them are talking about it. I want that guy because he's going to be a fighter. We have a state to save. And then I called you and you were like, no, I'm not sure. But I think you prayed and God spoke to you and it was amazing that you did that. And you came in and changed, made a huge difference. A lot of people talk about it. Very few people actually do it. It's very easy to talk about it and not do it. And you've done it and you're still doing it and you're doing it at the next level. I can't wait to see you at the SBOE board and what the difference you're going to make. I hope you will be there when they do my swearing in. Oh, I'll be there. That's right. So are you going to the convention? Oh, yes, I am. Okay. Well, great. My wife's coming with me. Oh, nice. And we're bringing a strong, we're going to pack, I think in Rockwall County, we have 62 delegates. We'll load down there. That's right. Well, that's great. Welcome and speak to the platform committee and to the priorities and make sure you, I mean, now you're an elected official. You have, I think they will listen to you more because you're actually going to be fighting for them at the dais, right? I mean, you're going to make a difference and they would want to hear from you so. I'd love to. Appreciate you coming down and meeting with me and thank you. Yes, sir.