Question After Correspondents’ Dinner Shooting: Is California an Incubator for Leftist Violence?

Following the attempted assassination of President Donald Trump over the weekend, some Americans have begun to posit a connection between the alleged shooter’s actions and the incubation of radical beliefs in California’s education system.

On Monday, Cole Tomas Allen, a resident of Torrance, California, was charged with attempting to kill the president after being taken into custody following the incident at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in Washington, D.C.

The suspected shooter graduated from the California Institute of Technology with a mechanical engineering degree, interned at NASA, and was a part-time teacher in California at the time of his arrest. A review of his social media posts reportedly reveal Allen compared Trump to Adolph Hitler and encouraged detractors of the president to buy guns.

“[Cole Tomas Allen is] a product of a very sophisticated indoctrination platform that is ubiquitous in the realm of higher education,” Lance Christensen, vice president of government affairs and education policy at the California Policy Center, told The Daily Signal.

“It’s almost a given that every public college and university in California, and across the nation, is the bastion of left-wing radical intellectuals,” he said. 

Federal Election Commission filings indicate that Allen donated $25 to ActBlue, a left-leaning political action committee. In resurfaced posts brought up by a user on X, Allen allegedly compared Trump’s 2024 presidential win to “Nazis getting elected.” 

In response to a photo of Allen being recognized as teacher of the month at the California school where he worked, former Babylon Bee Managing Editor Joel Berry said on X, “It’s likely that the majority of public school teachers you leave your kids with all day agree with this guy.”

In an email to The Daily Signal, Defending Education President Nicole Neily also noted a connection between academia and radicalism.

“The teaching profession today is a far cry from what it was when many of us grew up,” Neily said. “Rather than partner constructively with families to help students thrive, far too many educators now view their role as one of ‘reprogramming’ children away from their families’ values and closely held beliefs towards progressivism.”

“Our 2024 report ‘CorruptED‘ explored how colleges of education center critical race theory, queer studies, decolonization, white supremacy, and equity into their degree programs—so it’s little wonder that America’s teachers now view themselves as social justice warriors, rather than the educators they were hired to be,” she added.

Allen is not the first college-educated Californian to attempt to assassinate a right-leaning politician. Nicholas Roske—who identifies as Sophie Roske—was a California resident who attempted to murder U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in June 2022.

Roske stood outside Kavanaugh’s Maryland home with a gun, ammunition, knife, hammer, duct tape, zip ties and other tools. Before committing the act, he received a call from his sister who convinced him to back away from the crime. Roske is now serving an eight-year sentence for attempted murder.

Roske was a substitute teacher at the time, having graduated from California State University, Northridge with a degree in psychology. According to NBC News, Roske’s reason for the attempt came down to Roe v. Wade.

“Roske allegedly told investigators that she decided to target Kavanaugh because she was angry about the possibility that the Supreme Court would overturn Roe v. Wade and about the deadly school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. She said she thought Kavanaugh would loosen gun laws,” the outlet reported, citing the complaint.

Jack Posobiec, TPUSA contributor and the senior editor of Human Events, also made a connection with public education, posting on social media that he’s not surprised “a teacher opened fire on the White House press dinner.”