The piñata wore a blue suit and a red baseball cap. It held a sign that read "F— ICE." Students at Contra Costa College in San Pablo, California took turns swinging at it until the head came off — while a faculty member celebrated alongside them.
That faculty member is a counselor. At a taxpayer-funded community college. Where Hispanics comprise just under 50% of the student body.
The video surfaced last week, though the event reportedly took place a few months earlier. It shows Lorena Gonzalez — a counselor involved in the school's La Raza Studies and Ethnic Studies programs — visibly delighted as students performed what The College Fix described as a "decapitation" of the Trump effigy.
White House spokesperson Davis Ingle didn't mince the response. "Anyone who engages in or endorses political violence or assassination culture must be condemned in the harshest terms possible," Ingle said.
Watch the moment happen
Greg Magarian, a professor at Washington University School of Law in St. Louis, waved it off. "That's what effigies are. It's a form of speech that goes way back," Magarian said. Just speech. Nothing to worry about. A mock beheading of a sitting president by students while a college employee cheers — ancient tradition, really.
Samuel Marcosson, a law professor at the University of Louisville, offered a more clinical dodge. "The government would have to show that it was intended as a threat, not just that it was perceived as a threat by other people," Marcosson said. So it's not a threat unless the people swinging the stick pinky-promise they meant it.
The legal question is a sideshow. Nobody's asking whether a piñata constitutes a federal crime. The question is whether a faculty member at a public institution — someone whose salary comes from the state of California — should be celebrating a simulated execution of the President of the United States on school grounds. And whether any college administrator will say so out loud.
Gonzalez, for her part, had previously described comedian Tony Hinchcliffe's 2024 joke about Puerto Rico as worth protesting — calling it "an extension" of broader disrespect toward Hispanics. A joke at a comedy show required moral outrage. A mock beheading on a college campus required a party.
Remember early 2017, when someone hanged a Trump effigy and the entire media apparatus treated it as a sign of dangerous political radicalization? Three years later, the same treatment applied when an effigy of Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear was strung up by protesters. Both incidents drew universal condemnation.
Contra Costa College hasn't issued a public statement. Gonzalez still holds her position. The students who participated haven't been identified or disciplined.
It's a form of speech that goes way back.