Rep. Walter Hudson and Rep. Ben Bakeberg talk with colleagues in a House Chamber alcove before a House floor session in April, 2024. Photo by Michele Jokinen/House Public Information Services.
Rep. Walter Hudson, R-Albertville, on Wednesday denied that he is advocating for overthrowing the government, despite recent remarks in which he said that “when a system of government becomes tyrannical, the people have not just the right, but the duty to change their form of government. Doesn’t say anything about waiting for two years for the next election.”
A viral clip was published by the left-leaning site Heartland Signal Tuesday, though it’s just a snippet of a 45-minute speech Hudson gave on Oct. 18 to attendees of the Word of Life Ministries church in Princeton. The church’s Faith & Freedom group holds regular meetings about the intersection of religion and politics.
Hudson was recently hired by the Minnesota Republican Party as outreach and engagement coordinator.
Before Hudson spoke, a Faith & Freedom organizer invited attendees to a training session in November about how they can “assert the Constitution” by writing formal petitions to elected officials to protest what they deem unconstitutional actions. Afterwards, Hudson gave a 45-minute talk criticizing the policies passed by the Democratic-majority Legislature over the past two years, including protections for abortion and the creation of a statewide paid leave program.
Toward the end of his remarks, Hudson told group attendees that when “unconstitutional things happen, they are not binding — not morally, not really legally either.” He then said that “what you’re going to hear in November” — at the group’s constitutional training class — “is a methodology for attacking that, for saying, ‘No, you have broken trust and it’s time for the people to set things right.’ One of the things you’ll likely hear in November is reference to in the Declaration of Independence, it says that when a system of government becomes tyrannical, the people have not just the right but the duty to change their form of government.”
“Doesn’t say anything about waiting for two years for the next election. It doesn’t say anything about waiting until the next Supreme Court justice retires or passes away. Whenever. We have the right and the duty to change it. So … I’m glad you guys are going to be looking into that,” Hudson said.
The Shays rebellion of early 1787 was a key catalyst for writing and ratifying the U.S. Constitution, which empowered the government to put down rebellions, constitutional historians say.
Hudson on Wednesday told the Reformer that he was not advocating for the overthrow of the government or political violence. He said he was giving attendees a “teaser” for what they could be hearing next month during their constitutional training class.
“Placed in context, those remarks that I made have no connection to (overthrowing the government) whatsoever,” Hudson said. “That said, obviously there’s an ongoing conversation about how we ought to do politics. Should it involve folks trespassing on property, either public or private? Should it involve acts of violence and disrupting the peace? And my answer to that is a flat ‘no.’ It should not. We should have orderly processes that make reference to the rights we have enshrined in our constitutions, and that’s what this process that (Faith & Freedom will) be educating themselves on in November is meant to affect.”
After the Heartland Signal clip went viral on X.com, the DFL Party sent out a press release calling on the Minnesota Republican Party to disavow Hudson’s remarks about “overthrowing the government.”
Before mentioning the Declaration of Independence in his speech, Hudson spent over 10 minutes blasting the DFL’s bill codifying abortion rights into state law. He falsely stated that the new law allows the killing of a child after birth; it states that an infant upon birth is recognized as a “human person,” which makes killing the child illegal.
Hudson called Democrats “demons” for turning down multiple Republican amendments to change the abortion bill. Hudson frequently portrays his Democratic colleagues this way in speeches and on social media.
“I can see (Democrats’) body language and their facial expressions and how they reacted to truth being told, and I have to tell you, I don’t expect to ever know what it’s like to be in Hell and to watch demons rise, but I imagine that what I often saw on House floor is very similar,” Hudson said during his Oct. 18 speech.
“When you confront evil with light, there’s a reaction and that’s what I saw on the House floor,” Hudson said.
Hudson closed his remarks by encouraging attendees to vote for Republicans, and said that he’s excited for Gov. Tim Walz to return to Minnesota to see the state flip red for Donald Trump.