If you want to use an underscore template in jade you need change to template to look like this:
script(id='template-action1-thing' type='text/template')
| <tr>
| <td class="action-td" style="width: 10%;">
| <button id="do-remove" data-id="<%= obj.id %>">X</button>
| </td>
| </tr>
Or you could look at using jade templates instead of underscore templates.