By STEVEN MONACELLI, TEXAS OBSERVER
Earlier this year, pistol-packing pastor Troy Jackson, a former strategist for the Republican Party of Texas and current candidate for vice chair of the Texas GOP, beamed as he welcomed a dozen conservative activists into a flag-adorned meeting room at New Beginnings Church in Bedford. The attendees included the founder of Citizens Defending Freedom, a Tarrant County GOP official, the founder of the local John Birch Society, and a representative from the far-right group Turning Point USA. They were gathering as the Remnant Alliance, a coalition of Christian nationalist groups working to educate, train, and mobilize conservative Christian congregations to influence the outcomes of local elections — especially school boards.
“Even if I don’t have kids in school, I’m showing up at school board meetings and testifying that you’re not going to teach our children this smut,” Jackson told the group. “You’re not going to sexualize these children, because, even though I may not have children in the school, it affects the entire community.”
Jackson’s heated rhetoric echoes the talking points deployed by state-level Republican lawmakers, big-dollar political action committees (PACs), and well-connected Republican consulting firms that have descended upon local school board races in recent years — and helped install majorities that have taken books off library shelves and rolled back protections for LGBTQ+ students.
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