Gallup just measured American patriotism at its lowest level since the question was first asked in 2001.
Now the media voice who helped create that problem just went on CNN and said something remarkable.
What she confessed on CNN is the one thing conservatives have demanded the Left say for twenty years.
CNN Admits Schools Abandoned Civics Education and Patriotism
Lulu Garcia-Navarro is a contributor to CNN and co-host of the New York Times podcast The Interview – not exactly a conservative mouthpiece.
On CNN's The Arena, she handed conservatives twenty years of vindication in one sentence.
"We are raising a generation, especially in schools, where we do not teach them the value of civics, we do not teach them the value of engaging in a sense of patriotism," Garcia-Navarro said on air.
She wasn't finished.
"I do think we've lost that sense of unity and that sense of pride around the flag," she added.
Garcia-Navarro didn't stop there – she told her CNN colleagues the Democrat Party "writ large, has stepped away from the rallying around the flag" and handed Republicans ownership of patriotism as an issue.
She said if you see an American flag today, "you are going to assume that that person is a Republican."
Host Kasie Hunt pushed back – "Are we really there?" – and Garcia-Navarro answered without hesitation.
"Yes, we're really there."
Gen Z Patriotism Has Collapsed and the 1619 Project Explains Why
Garcia-Navarro read the data out loud because she had no other choice.
Gallup's most recent survey found that just 58 percent of Americans call themselves "extremely" or "very" proud to be American.
After September 11, the number hit 90 percent.
Today, among Gen Z, it collapses to 41 percent.
Among Democrats, only 36 percent said they were extremely or very proud to be American, down from 62 percent the year before – a 26-point collapse in a single year.
The civics knowledge numbers explain exactly how it got this bad.
Fewer than one in ten Americans can name all five freedoms protected by the First Amendment.
Nearly one-third cannot identify the three branches of government.
Roughly four in ten college students believe violence can be justified to stop speech they disagree with.
Federal funding for civics education plummeted from around $150 million per year in 2010 to less than $5 million by 2020 – the exact window when schools traded the Declaration of Independence for the 1619 Project.
The New York Times pushed the 1619 Project into thousands of classrooms to teach children that America was founded not on liberty but on oppression.
Garcia-Navarro co-hosts a podcast for that same New York Times.
The Times spent years gutting civic pride from the curriculum and now its own contributor can't explain why kids can't name the three branches of government.
Trump's Patriotic Education Initiative Is Rebuilding What Democrats Destroyed
Conservatives have sounded this alarm for twenty years, and the left called it hysteria.
Reagan warned that freedom is "never more than one generation away from extinction" and must be "fought for, protected, and handed on."
He was right, and the left spent the next four decades proving it.
Education Freedom Foundation founder Erika Donalds said: "You cannot defend what you do not know."
Trump didn't wait for another CNN admission to act.
His administration partnered with the America First Policy Institute and more than 40 conservative organizations to put patriotic civics curriculum back in classrooms across all 50 states – the founding principles that government schools spent a generation ripping out.
Twelve states currently have no civics requirement whatsoever – California among them.
Those are the same states that put the 1619 Project in classrooms and now produce college graduates who can't name a single freedom the First Amendment protects.
Garcia-Navarro is an immigrant who remembers her swearing-in ceremony as "an enormously prideful moment."
She knows exactly what was stolen from this generation and who stole it.
The Democrat Party chose grievance over the flag and replaced civics with identity politics.
On America's 250th birthday, even their own media voices can't pretend otherwise.
Sources:
- Ian Hanchett, "CNN's, NYT's Garcia-Navarro: 'Especially in Schools,' Kids Aren't Taught Value of Patriotism," Breitbart, July 4, 2026.
- "CNN's Garcia-Navarro: Democrats Have Ceded the American Flag to Republicans," The Washington Times, July 4, 2026.
- "New Poll Highlights Generational Divide in Patriotism as Civics Education Debate Grows," WLOS/National News Desk, June 2026.
- "Declining Patriotism Signals a Civic Education Crisis – But Reform Is Possible," American Enterprise Institute, July 2025.
- "Restoring Civics Education to Revitalize Our Republic," America First Policy Institute, February 2026.
- "When and Why Did America Stop Teaching Civics?" O'Connor Institute, 2024.