Yes. It's far more than "a little weird". It's how you breed nationalists.

It depends on where and when in the US. In areas that are Democratic (the more liberal party) it doesn't really happen much anymore, but in areas that are Republican (the more conservative party) it still happens at the start of every single school day.

And the custom of doing this was started by a salesman trying to sell flags and magazine subscriptions. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Bellamy#Pledge_of_Allegiance

it’s an anachronism from the red scare in the 50’s.

Growing up, for a time my folks were way into the evangelical thing and I attended a totally batshit religious school where we recited 3 pledges back-to-back every morning. To the U.S. flag, the Christian flag and the Bible. Then had to recite entire chapters of the Bible we had per force committed to memory that week. Failure to do so was grounds for savage corporal punishment. No other experience in life so inoculated me against authoritarianism and organized religion. It also let me know at that tender age that sadists existed.

My wife used to work for a company that had a morning stand up and daily affirmation. I told her it sounded like she was in a cult. She agreed.

but how can you pledge allegiance to two separate entities?

scenario A: if texas ever attempted secession then you’d have to break one of your pledges.

scenario B: Texas always remains loyal to the US, which makes the texas pledge superfluous. you pledged allegiance to the US which includes texas.

That's so weird to me. I grew up in an area of Texas that is very red today. We quit both pledges in the 3rd or 4th grade. It's weird that we did it at all, but that was back when they also taught that freedom of the individual was super important and if you didn't like what someone else was doing you could always just look away because it wasn't your fucking business. So they didn't make us do it at a certain point because it was counter to the other shit they said. That was in the years leading up to Ann Richards being voted as governor so that may inform outsiders of what was happening at the time.

There's a lot of problematic shit that happened when I was a kid. Don't get me wrong. But at least they seemed to be headed the right direction at the time with the info we had (that's a whole other ball of garbage that I'm not picking at today...ask me another time when it's not 3am). I had forgotten about both pledges as an adult until someone reminded me a few years ago that it was a thing.

Texas has gotten way more idiotic over the last 30 odd years.