The University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center recently conducted a survey that found 35% of Americans can’t name the three branches of government: executive, legislative, and judicial.

This is an amazing indictment of our education system, but it also raises questions about our national discourse.

For instance, virtually everyone has an opinion about politics, and many people these days seem to think that they are experts in the topic. How is that possible when a third of Americans lack basic civics knowledge?

Campus Reform reports:

35% of Americans cannot name all three branches of government: SURVEY

A new survey found significant gaps in Americans’ basic civic knowledge, including that more than one-third of U.S. adults cannot name all three branches of government.

The University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center found that just 65 percent of respondents correctly named the executive, legislative, and judicial branches. The survey, conducted Aug. 6-9, included a nationally representative sample of 1,034 U.S. adults and had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

The survey also examined Americans’ ability to identify the rights protected by the First Amendment.

Seventy-three percent of respondents named freedom of speech as a right protected under the First Amendment, while only 43 percent named freedom of religion, 31 percent named freedom of assembly, 29 percent named freedom of the press, and just 12 percent named the right to petition the government.

Only 9 percent could name all five protections, while 24 percent could not name a single one. Moreover, 25 percent of respondents mistakenly said the right to bear arms, protected under the Second Amendment, is a First Amendment right.

“Ignorance is costly. You can’t protect and cherish rights that you don’t know you have,” Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director emerita of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, said.

Maybe we should conduct this same survey with members of Congress.

Does anyone believe that every member would pass the test?

The post Academic Survey Finds 35 Percent of Americans Can’t Name All Three Branches of Government appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

The shaheed-Geran drones have morphed into much faster and deadlier jet-propelled weapons.

Ever since the back-and-forth missile and drone strikes between Russia and Ukraine began targeting economic assets, the MSM has disproportionally featured the effects on Moscow’s oil and gas production.

The effect of this has disrupted diesel prices all over the planet, to the point where US President Donald J. Trump has pressured Kiev regime leader Volodymyr Zelensky into stopping it.

However, like everything else in this war, Russia’s economic strikes have been far more destructive.

Beyond disrupting power-generation and energy-distribution facilities, these attacks target shopping malls, warehouses, and distribution centers, disrupting companies including major Ukrainian retailers, publishing houses, pharmaceutical groups, and Nova Poshta, the country’s biggest private postal carrier.

Supermarket shortages in Kiev have also begun to appear, though sporadic at this point.

We also reported that the steel industry to the point of annihilation, as you can read in ‘As of Today, Ukraine Doesn’t Have a Steel Industry Anymore’: Mining CEO Reveals How Russian Strikes Are Destroying Kiev’s Economy.

ArcelorMittal Says It Can’t Restart Ukrainian Operations After Missile Strikes https://t.co/oGI1V7YCv6

— WSJ Business News (@WSJbusiness) September 25, 2026

And, as we anticipated, the steel giant ArcelorMittal said yesterday (25) that the strikes killed five employees at its plant in Ukraine, and forced it to cease operations in the country, leaving it facing a $1bn impairment charge.

Financial Times reported:

“The Luxembourg-based company said on Friday that its plant in Kryvyi Rih, about 400km south-east of Kiev, would be shuttered after being targeted by numerous missile attacks in recent weeks ‘resulting in fatalities, injuries and extensive damage to production facilities’.

[…] ‘The facility has been bombed four times in five weeks — you reach a point where it is neither safe nor economically sustainable to continue’, said a person close to the company.”

‘This is the first time in a century that Ukraine no longer produces steel.’

“ArcelorMittal’s facility, which includes production of long steel rods and beams for construction as well as an iron ore mine, is Ukraine’s biggest operational steel plant. The country lost control of Azovstal and Ilyich, formerly its two largest steel plants, to Russia during the 2022 siege of Mariupol.

Russia has specifically named Kryvyi Rih as a target in several government Telegram posts over the past month. The city is also the hometown of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.”

In the onslaught that Russian forces are unleashing on Ukrainian targets, a new modification of the by-now famous (or infamous) Shaheed-Geran drones is playing a prominent role.

Kiev’s own numbers show that the Russians were able to bombard Ukraine with thousands of jet-powered attack drones — a weapon that was rare just a year-and-a-half ago.

Remarkable footage of a Russian Jet powered “Geran 5” drone striking another Ukrainian locomotive behind the lines

These lethal drones have again changed the game, behind the lines particularly, as Ukrainain forces struggle to intercept them.

No civillians were injured. pic.twitter.com/760rthR5fX

— Chay Bowes (@BowesChay) July 20, 2026

Business Insider reported:

“Col. Yuriy Ignat, the main spokesperson for Ukraine’s air force, told national broadcaster TSN on Wednesday that the Kremlin has launched 7,700 turbojet drones into Ukraine so far.

The bulk of these appeared over the summer, surging from 350 jet-powered drones in June to 1,500 in July, before leaping to 2,850 in August, he said. Russia has launched 1,900 of the faster, more advanced drones so far this month.”

Russia torments Kyiv with new ‘horror’ jet drones.

Flying several kilometres in the air and close to the speed of a commercial plane, Moscow’s new long-range jet-powered drones are causing havoc for Kyiv’s stretched air defenceshttps://t.co/fSEdpKpXQ9 pic.twitter.com/dYul9QbKPg

— AFP News Agency (@AFP) September 9, 2026

By now, it is estimated that half of all Russian long-range drone attacks are made with these new weapons.

“Jet-powered drones have posed a particularly acute problem for Ukraine’s air defenses, with the country still scrambling to find cheap, mass-producible countermeasures.

A novelty in the war’s earlier years, the drones drew wider attention at the start of 2025, when Ukrainian war observers began reporting increased sightings of Shahed drones equipped with jet engines. Their surge in production this year indicates that Russia has greatly expanded access to vital components that Ukrainian intelligence has repeatedly said Moscow can only procure on the global market.”

Read more:

TRADE OVER WAR: Turkish Leader Erdogan Tells Ukraine’s Zelensky That Black Sea Attacks Are ‘Inexplicable’

The post As TGP Anticipated a Week Ago, Ukraine’s Largest Steel Plant Shuts Down Production, as Russian Jet-Powered Geran Drones Become the Main Threat of the War appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

PETA has spent three years telling its donors that the “lights are out” on Harvard neurobiologist Margaret Livingstone’s cruel infant-monkey lab, but federal records say otherwise.

A new notice of funding, thanks at least in part to an Obama-appointed judge reversing President Donald Trump’s Harvard funding freeze, came just sixteen months after PETA toasted “the end of Margaret Livingstone’s career as tormenter of baby monkeys.”

NIH RePORTER still lists Livingstone as the contact principal investigator on a National Eye Institute award at Harvard Medical School with an award notice dated September 11, 2026, fiscal year 2026 funding of $850,148; a budget period running September 1, 2026, through August 31, 2027; and a project end date of August 31, 2028.

Livingstone was also awarded a new grant on April 17, 2025, with fiscal year 2025 funding of $576,474; a project start date of May 1, 2025; a subsequent award notice dated June 1, 2026, for fiscal year 2026 funding of $576,201; and a project end date of April 30, 2029.

PETA’s May 27, 2025, release claimed a “massive victory” and said funding for the baby-monkey experiments “has been terminated.”

A PETA news post updated May 28, 2025, said “the lights have finally gone out on Margaret Livingstone’s dark experiments on baby monkeys” and that the work was on Harvard’s list of canceled federal grants.

PETA2 told younger readers the same week, “the lights are finally out” and “NIH just pulled the plug.

NIH itself posted on May 29, 2025, that it had “terminated funding at Harvard University for studies that included sewing the eyes of young monkeys shut.”

NIH has terminated funding at Harvard University for studies that included sewing the eyes of young monkeys shut.

Under @POTUS’s leadership, we’re ending cruel, wasteful, and taxpayer-funded animal experiments—from baby monkeys at Harvard to cats and dogs in military labs.

Read… pic.twitter.com/2bpDTDt8m9

— NIH (@NIH) May 29, 2025

Then, a Boston judge gave the money back.

On September 3, 2025, U.S. District Judge Allison D. Burroughs, an Obama appointee, granted Harvard summary judgment, vacated the administration’s freeze orders and termination letters, and barred the government from giving those letters any force.

The NIH termination letter dated May 6, 2025, was among the letters she set aside. The judgment vacated “all freezes and terminations of funding to Harvard made pursuant to the Freeze Orders and Termination Letters on or after April 14, 2025.”

The Daily Caller reported this week that taxpayer money is still moving through multiple Livingstone grants, including the new $850,000 award posted this month and a multi-year grant running through 2029.

PETA’s own description of the “maternal deprivation” horrors in Livingstone’s lab includes infant macaques taken from their mothers, some raised with only a cloth surrogate, some fitted with vision-distorting goggles or strobe-like conditions for months, some with eyelids sewn shut, some implanted with electrode arrays, and many later killed and dissected.

Former NIH Director Francis Collins privately called related maternal-deprivation work “third-rate,” according to the Daily Caller.

The Daily Caller reports:

The Livingstone lab has inflamed advocates for the humane treatment of animals for years. The late famed primatologist Jane Goodall was among its critics.

Twelve years ago, former NIH Director Francis Collins acknowledged privately that so-called “maternal deprivation” experiments on baby monkeys were “third rate” and outdated with modern methods, even while externally arguing they were indispensable. Collins’ closest aide warned him that terminating any NIH research project would set a “dangerous precedent.”

Asked by The Gateway Pundit how a live $850,148 award notice squares with “lights out,” PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo sounded either in denial or like she was covering for the program.

Guillermo claimed, “After years of campaigning to end Margaret Livingstone’s sickening atrocities, including ripping newborn monkeys from their mothers, forcing them to wear vision-distorting goggles, or subjecting them to hours of strobe lights, PETA verified in 2025 and again today that NIH has pulled this vile woman’s funding and her ability to continue this torture.”

PETA is the deceptively named group that Gateway Pundit has long called out for its ineffectiveness, lying about President Trump, killing pets, and stealing credit for others’ work.

Back in 2021, Guillermo was heavily criticized for exactly that during Dr. Fauci’s BeagleGate scandal: heinous biting sand fly experiments in Tunisia that White Coat Waste uncovered and The Gateway Pundit first exposed.

When sent follow-up questions about how they explain the September 11 award notice, the open budget year, or Burroughs vacating the Harvard terminations, PETA did not respond.

PETA did not explain why RePORTER still names Livingstone as project leader on an active Eye Institute line.

PETA also did not respond to questions about how they “verified” that information or where it came from.

The lights PETA said were out appear to still be glaring, at a cost of $1,426,349 to taxpayers.

The Gateway Pundit will update this article if PETA provides additional details, clarification, or response to our questions.

The post PETA Appears to Run Cover for Brutal Monkey Torturer After Obama-Appointed Judge Reverses Trump’s Harvard Funding Freeze appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Taking Back Our Votes: Trump’s Executive Order Has Election Officials Terrified

By Jack Gleason

If you read media headlines about the Supreme Court’s September 14, 2026, ruling on the Post Office’s handling of mail-in ballots, it’s easy to think the effort to secure our national elections was completely stopped.

Pundits, activists, and state officials claimed total victory. They pointed to federal district court injunctions issued by Judges Indira Talwani and Carl Nichols, arguing that because the High Court didn’t lift those stays, Executive Order 14399 is permanently dismantled. They want you to believe federal oversight was turned back, leaving local election practices completely untouched for the midterm cycle.

Don’t buy it.

To understand why this mainstream narrative is wrong, let’s look beyond the media hype with legal history and statutory text.

On March 31, 2026, EO-14399 was issued to enforce citizenship verification and administrative integrity in federal elections. The U.S. Postal Service finalized regulations requiring uniform envelope designs, standardized Intelligent Mail barcodes, and mandatory state voter-list uploads to a centralized Federal Ballot Mail Portal. USPS was instructed to hold or return ballot envelopes that lacked proper tracking or failed verification.

Using the Postal Service to stop mailing ballots to dead addresses, vacant lots, and unverified locations was a brilliant idea that eliminates potential fraud before it starts.

A coalition of Democratic attorneys general and election officials sued, arguing that Article I, Section 4 of the Constitution gives states—not federal agencies—authority over election rules.

The timing was by strategy. They didn’t act when the EO was signed on March 31, but waited until late summer when Postal Service rules were finalized and mail-in ballots were about to be printed. This let plaintiffs invoke the “Purcell principle,” a judicial rule against changing election procedures close to Voting Day.

By the time the administration appealed, the Supreme Court had no time for full arguments. On September 14, SCOTUS issued an emergency hold to avoid disrupting active election preparations, but left the broader legal merits undecided.

The press immediately touted this as a shattering defeat for election integrity. But focusing strictly on whether a postal worker scans a barcode misses the true power of Executive Order 14399. Key provisions remain untouched.

The biggest impact from EO14399 wasn’t at a post office, but the personal risk calculation of every local official and poll worker handling our ballots.

For decades, a major vulnerability in election administration was the lack of direct personal accountability. Loose local practices, informal rule-shaving, and gray-area procedures were routinely accepted. If a local worker accepted non-compliant ballots, ignored statutory deadlines, or skipped signature verification protocols, the worst they faced was a polite warning or a routine post-election review.

That dynamic is over.

Buried beneath headlines about postal stays is the core enforcement framework established in Section 1 and Section 3 of the order, which explicitly instructs the Department of Justice to prioritize direct criminal investigations and prosecutions of state and local officials who issue federal ballots to ineligible individuals or violate election laws.

What does this mean? Suppose an election administrator mails absentee ballots to deceased voters, or to addresses known to be vacant or invalid. In the past, officials hid behind “poor list maintenance” or “administrative backlog.” Now, if the DOJ proves an official knowingly violated election rules, that official faces severe federal criminal statutes:

• 18 U.S.C. 241 (Conspiracy Against Rights): A federal felony statute making it a crime for two or more people to conspire to injure, threaten, or intimidate any person in the free exercise of a constitutional right—including diluting valid votes with bad ballots.
• 18 U.S.C. 1341 (Mail Fraud): A federal statute carrying heavy prison time for using the U.S. Mail system to execute any scheme to defraud.
• 52 U.S.C. 20511 (Criminal Penalties for Voter Fraud): Explicit federal penalties for anyone—including election officials—who knowingly procures, submits, or tabulates materially false or fraudulent ballots.

When a local bureaucrat realizes that turning a blind eye to procedural violations no longer results in a slap on the wrist, but instead brings personal legal fees, a federal investigation, and potential prison time, the incentive structure flips. Their approach changes from “what can we get away with?” to “we’d better follow every statute strictly by the book.” This creates a self-policing mechanism at the lowest levels of administration, where decisions are made.

Federal court stays can temporarily pause specific operational mandates imposed on postal workers, but no district judge can grant local election workers or election boards immunity if they break federal criminal law.

The emergency Supreme Court stay is a temporary procedural hold for the current election cycle. It continues the status quo while full appeals proceed through the federal judicial system. SCOTUS hasn’t issued a final ruling on the constitutional merits of the Postal Service regulations.

Most importantly, this stay applies narrowly to Postal Service operational rules—such as portal uploads and barcode scanning requirements. The broader executive enforcement framework, including federal criminal oversight under Title 18, remains fully active and operational.

Take back your votes! If you spot election rules being broken, notice local irregularities, or witness staff ignoring statutory mandates, you can take direct action:

1. Document Everything Clearly: Record exact dates, times, precinct locations, and names of officials involved. Keep precise written notes and preserve any physical evidence.
2. Notify Local and State Authorities: Report procedural violations directly to your county board of elections or your state election division. For verified guidance on finding local contacts, refer to the National Association of State Election Directors.
3. Report Potential Crimes to Federal Law Enforcement: When statutory violations occur—such as deliberate mailing of ballots to known fake addresses—report them directly to federal authorities:
   • Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI): Call 1-800-CALL-FBI (1-800-225-5324) or submit details online via FBI Tips.
   • DOJ Civil Rights Division: Report direct voting rights violations or intimidation to the S. Department of Justice Voting Section at 1-800-253-3931.
   • S. Attorney’s Office: Contact the designated Election Day Coordinator at your local district’s U.S. Attorney’s Office.

It’s easy to get discouraged reading headlines claiming court after court is striking down election integrity measures. But when you look past media framing and examine the actual mechanics of law and human behavior, the truth is clear.

The postal barcode rule was a strong operational concept, but it was always secondary. The real heart of Executive Order 14399 was re-establishing the rule of law and personal accountability for the people running elections.

That accountability framework hasn’t been struck down. It’s active, potent, and changing the behavior of election officials right now. When the people handling your ballot know they’re personally accountable to federal law, game-playing stops—and every lawful, legitimate vote gets the protection it deserves.

Election Integrity isn’t dead, it’s alive and well. Your vote will count, and election officials are on notice to follow the law or else. Share this article with your friends and bring five of them with you to the ballot box on November 3rd.

Jack Gleason is a conservative, common-sense, political consultant at the municipal, state, House, Senate, and presidential level since 2009. If you have story ideas or comments, his email is JackGleason9@protonmail.com, and his always-free Substack is jackgleason.substack.com

The post Taking Back Our Votes: Trump’s Executive Order Has Election Officials Terrified appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

This article originally appeared on WND.com.

Guest post by Bob Unruh

‘It is turning every mailbox in America into a Planned Parenthood clinic’

Mifepristone, the drug the abortion industry sells to Americans, “causes hundreds of thousands of chemical abortions of unborn children,” according to a new report at the Washington Stand.

And it “sends one of every 10 women who take it to the hospital emergency room with serious, potentially fatal medical complications.”

As such, it should be banned, according to Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo.

Mifepristone, in fact, is the American abortion industry’s new savior, as surgical abortions are declining. It can be prescribed over the phone or online, it can be delivered by mail even into states that bar abortions, and the industry claims it’s safe and effective.

“The abortion drug is not safe, it’s not safe for the babies it kills almost every single time and it’s not safe for the mother either because in more than one in 10 cases, the mother who takes that pill is sent to an emergency room with a life-threatening condition,” Hawley said at the Family Research Council Action’s Pray Vote Stand Summit Thursday.

“And the pharmaceutical companies who make that drug, they lie about it because they make money on abortions. The more abortions there are, the more money they make. We have more abortions in this country now than we did when Roe v. Wade was the law of the land because of the abortion drug. It is turning every mailbox in America into a Planned Parenthood clinic. We cannot allow this to go on, we need to ban it.”

The senator continued, “Congress needs to ban the abortion drug in the United States of America. I have introduced legislation to do that, and I am challenging my Republican colleagues and everybody who is running for office, if you are pro-life, you cannot be for the abortion drug.”

His plan is the Safeguarding Women from Chemical Abortion Act.

Family Research Council chief Tony Perkins said, “What’s happened is this policy that was put in place by the Biden administration, it’s been kept in place by the Trump administration, it has allowed the abortion industry to adopt an Amazon business model, and mailboxes across America have been turned into the instruments of abortion.”

He went on, “As a result, we have more abortions today than we did before the overturn of Roe v. Wade [in the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson U.S. Supreme Court decision], about a 21% increase in the number of abortions and about two-thirds of those are done with the abortion pill. Even in pro-life states — many of you come from pro-life states, I’m from the pro-life state of Louisiana, it doesn’t matter — we now have more abortions in Louisiana than before Dobbs because of this abortion pill and it’s got to be stopped.”

Other PVSS speakers included former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Dr. Ben Carson, former Congresswoman Michelle Bachman, who is now chairman of the FRC board of directors, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall (R), and many others.

Actually, the use and promotion of the drug currently is under review in several federal courts.

Hawley’s wife, Erin, who was a member of the ADF team that argued for the Dobbs case before the Supreme Court, as well as in the present proceedings, explained that mifepristone drug companies have standing in court for one reason: money.

She said they “absolutely” are making money.

“They make less money if they sell less drugs that kill unborn children,” she said.

Hawley noted, “The primary maker of the abortion pill is a company called Danco that you will be shocked to learn I am sure was initially funded by George Soros. It’s also funded by a whole bunch of people with an entity called the Population Council. These are hard leftists who think that humans are ruining the planet, that the fewer children we have, the better — the human race essentially is a parasite on this planet.”

He said Danco “is based in the Cayman Islands in the Caribbean. Their entire board of directors is private. All of their paperwork, all of their financials, their books, they won’t release any of it. They are trying to avoid regulation. But, as Erin just said, they are making billions of dollars every year because they only make one product, the abortion drug. Their entire business, their entire industry, is based on killing American babies, and they don’t even want to be subject to regular Food and Drug Administration (FDA) oversight. This has got to change. We need to ban this drug.”

Copyright 2026 WND News Center

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