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The New Guard

High School Teacher Fantasizes About President Trump ‘Dying in Office’

By

Spencer Brown

January 23, 2025

Thomas Padilla, a teacher at Dixon High School in Illinois — Ronald Reagan’s alma mater — published a post on Facebook this week following the inauguration of 47th President Donald Trump stating he is “ready” to experience “a US president dying in office.”

If that wasn’t clear enough, Padilla also posted a list of years in which previous commanders in chief died or were assassinated during their time in office.

“If you were born in 1964 or after, you have never experienced a US president dying in office. I am ready,” read one post from Padilla to an account named “Tombo Allidap” — the teacher’s surname reversed.

Another bizarre post listed 1841, 1850, 1865, 1881, 1901, 1923, 1945, and 1963 — the years in which Presidents William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley, Warren Harding, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy died or were assassinated.

In an email from Dixon Public Schools Superintendent Margo D. Empen obtained by Young America’s Foundation, the education official confirmed that the posts were made by one of their teachers. The message to a concerned parent stated that the district was “made aware” of the posts and is “addressing the situation with the teacher” without offering any specifics.

“I can assure you we also believe this is an inappropriate comment for an educator to make,” Empen added. “Please know that your child is safe while at school,” she wrote.

Padilla later wrote on the Tombo Allidap Facebook account that he was “sorry if I offended anyone with my post about presidents dying” and called his own words “insensitive.”

Physical safety at school is one thing, but the danger of a biased education is another. Educators are entrusted with the growing minds of the rising generation, and an individual who feels comfortable publicly calling for the death of the American president is a tragic commentary on the state of education.

It’s also why Young America’s Foundation established programs for high school students more than two decades ago, and more recently launched programs for middle school students. Too many classrooms are led by those who see it as their job to indoctrinate, rather than educate their students.

The situation in Dixon, Illinois — where Young America’s Foundation preserves the Ronald Reagan Boyhood Home — is just the latest example of what is tragically bound to be a new round of Trump Derangement Syndrome-afflicted educators seeking to poison young minds against conservative principles and those who champion them.

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