As children across the country head back to school this fall, some will encounter a new curriculum in their classrooms. PragerU, which, despite the name, is not a university but a nonprofit media company with a mission “to promote American values through the creative use of digital media, technology and edu-tainment,” has been approved as an educational resource in 10 states — Arizona, Texas and Florida among them. And PragerU intends to add more to that list: “We are pursuing every state in America,” CEO Marissa Streit told the Washington Post.
PragerU offers its content for free, and educators in partner states aren’t required to use it. But for those who are considering it, a glance at its videos makes it clear that PragerU provides a distinctly right-wing depiction of America, past and present. Its content echoes the Trump administration’s efforts to shape how American history is presented — efforts that have been condemned by prominent historians. In fact, the administration is explicitly partnering with PragerU for its celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (more on that below).
PragerU claims to be providing an accurate view of America and its history to counter the left-wing indoctrination it says young people are exposed to every day. “Young Americans are being fed poisonous lies about the greatest country on earth by our media, culture, and especially our education establishment,” reads a passage from the organization’s 2024 Annual Report. “PragerU is medicine for the mind, educating young people with the truth about America’s unparalleled liberty, endless opportunities, and moral goodness.”
But a look at the organization’s backers — which include fossil fuel billionaires, Christian nationalist interests, and right-wing foundations and DAFs — raises questions about where that medicine is coming from and whose interests it reflects.
Who funds PragerU?
PragerU was cofounded in 2009 by Dennis Prager, a conservative radio host and writer, and screenwriter Allen Estrin. Since its founding, the nonprofit has grown rapidly. It’s an example of how the right has pulled ahead in the race to utilize new media. PragerU claims to attract 5 million views per day, and it pulled in close to $70 million in revenue last year. As an in-depth report by the Hollywood Reporter put it, “Key to that success have been high-profile video hosts, aggressive marketing and enlisting Hollywood production talent who, according to PragerU’s leadership, are fed up with the industry’s wokeness.”
Right-wing supporters large and small have also played a role. Last year, Streit told the Washington Post that the nonprofit she helms has about 350,000 donors, but declined to name or confirm them. Still, the names of at least some of PragerU’s backers are available in public records, and they include many major figures in conservative funding circles.
Dan and Farris Wilks, fracking billionaire brothers from Texas, were early funders; according to a 2023 report in The Guardian, they contributed at least $8 million to PragerU over the last decade.
Farris Wilks also provided $4.7 million to get The Daily Wire, a conservative news website, off the ground. The Daily Wire was cofounded by commentator Ben Shapiro, who is a frequent PragerU guest. By supporting PragerU and The Daily Wire, the Wilks brothers were “creating infrastructure capable of broadcasting messages denying or dismissing the climate emergency to millions of people,” according to a 2022 Vice report.
Farris Wilks also has helped build what ProPublica called “the most powerful political machine in Texas.” The Wilks brothers are both pastors; they contributed to efforts to overturn Roe v. Wade through their funding vehicles, the Heavenly Fathers Foundation and the Thirteen Foundation, as IP’s Philip Rojc reported in 2022.
The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, which supports a range of right-wing causes, is another PragerU backer. It provided financial support to many of the “Stop the Steal” efforts to challenge the results of the 2020 election, as the New Yorker reported. The foundation, which also backs education vouchers and the climate countermovement, has provided a number of six-figure contributions to PragerU.
Betsy DeVos, who was secretary of education in the first Trump administration, has also supported PragerU through her family foundation. DeVos has been a longtime advocate of education vouchers and school privatization. The Dick and Betsy DeVos Family Foundation has provided several large donations to PragerU in recent years.
PragerU has also received funding from conservative donor-advised funds, which allow contributors to remain anonymous. PragerU has received funding from the National Christian Charitable Foundation, which isn’t well known despite its size; it ended 2023 with over $5 billion in assets. Funders have also funneled money to PragerU through DonorsTrust, which Rojc dubbed “The Right’s Favorite DAF.” A 2023 episode of the DonorsTrust podcast commented approvingly on PragerU’s content and encouraged donors “interested in sharpening students’ critical-thinking skills and providing factual content to counter the prevailing messages American public school students are being spoon fed these days” to open a DonorsTrust account.
Robert Shillman, an electrical engineer who founded the Cognex Corporation, provided funding for a PragerU video titled “What’s Wrong with the 1619 Project?” Shillman created the Shillman Fellows program at the conservative David Horowitz Freedom Center. The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro was a Shillman Fellow; so was British far-right activist Tommy Robinson. According to Vice, Shillman has donated to Geert Wilders, a far-right Dutch politician, as well as to the failed 2020 congressional campaign of influencer and Trump whisperer Laura Loomer.
It’s difficult to say what, if any, impact these funders have on PragerU’s content, or if they simply share the nonprofit’s views. We reached out to PragerU for comment but did not receive a reply.
How PragerU incorporates right-wing messaging into its “medicine for the mind”
Venturing onto the PragerU website provides an experience that will be familiar to anyone who has spent time consuming right-wing media. The tone is one of grievance aimed at a vaguely defined but malicious and powerful “left.” Countless strawmen — including anything related to DEI, climate change, trans rights or political protest — are propped up and quickly mowed down.
Some examples of PragerU’s videos for adults include “Multiculturalism: a Bad Idea,” “The Good News About Climate Change” (which features a long-time climate science denier), “Girling the Boy Scouts,” “DEI Must Die,” “Minnesota School Shooting: Is Trans Terrorism Real?,” “Is U.S. History Being Twisted to Make America Look Evil?” and “How to Not Raise a Leftist.” PragerU also offers a number of videos championing Israel and underscoring its value as an American ally; titles include “Is Israel a Liability?” and “If You Hate Israel You Are No Friend of the Jews,” hosted by Dennis Prager himself.
The grievance is toned down in PragerU Kids videos, which are pastel colored and friendly, but a number present a distorted view of history. “Leo & Layla’s History Adventures,” an animated series in which children use an app to go back in time, has received the most criticism. In one episode, Leo and Layla chat with Christopher Columbus, who tells them that slavery has always existed. “Being taken as a slave is better than being killed, no?” he asks. “Before you judge, you must ask yourself, ‘What did the culture and society of the time treat as no big deal?’”
In another episode, the pair meet former slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass. In PragerU’s rendition, Douglass contends that the founding fathers opposed slavery, when in fact many held slaves themselves and only some of them seriously opposed the institution. “Children, our founding fathers knew that slavery was evil and wrong, and they knew that it would do terrible harm to the nation,” Douglass says. The video also implies that Douglass would have opposed the Black Lives Matter protests.
Another PragerU Kids video, “Los Angeles: Mateo Backs the Blue,” also criticizes those protesting police violence, and appears to question whether police abuse even exists. In “Redistribution: Does It Work?,” the answer is a resounding no; the video conveys the message that inequality is an inescapable fact of life.
PragerU seems to find discussing the darker side of U.S. history not just unpatriotic but dangerous — even when it comes to historical fact.
PragerU and the Trump administration
This is also the lens through which the Trump administration views the nation’s history, including how it is presented at the Smithsonian museums (Trump has said the museums focus too much on “how bad slavery was”) and why the administration is working to rewrite that history.
This sanitation of history is on display at The Founders Museum, an AI exhibit PragerU created for the administration’s celebration of the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Education Secretary Linda McMahon unveiled the exhibit when it opened in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building right next to the White House, calling it “a place where every American can connect with the courage and conviction that built our nation.”
Seth Cotlar, a historian at Willamette University who writes the Rightlandia newsletter, brought the exhibit and PragerU’s partnership with the White House to the attention of 404 Media in July. The exhibit features short videos of the nation’s founders (which 404 Media calls “AI slop”), in which the founders come to life and speak while uplifting music plays in the background.
The videos gloss over or even distort the less-flattering aspects of the founders’ lives. For example the video of William Whipple, a lesser-known Declaration signer, presents him as an opponent of slavery; he brags about willingly freeing his slave, Prince. But Cotlar points out that Prince had to petition for his freedom, and that Whipple, who engaged in the slave trade himself, took years to grant it.
In at least one case, a founder hops aboard a time machine and quotes a contemporary right-wing pundit. In his video, John Adams announces that “Facts do not care about our feelings,” putting a slight spin on a well-known quip by frequent PragerU host Ben Shapiro; it is also the title of Shapiro’s book.
Cotlar identified numerous historical inaccuracies on PragerU’s website. “In some of their content, they are just telling absolute, complete fabrications and lies,” he told me in a recent interview. “I don’t make that accusation lightly; for historians, it’s a pretty major sin to make stuff up.” (Cotlar lists some of those inaccuracies in his newsletter).
State partnerships, petitions and teachers’ tests
The 10 states that now have education partnerships with PragerU include Florida, Texas, Oklahoma, Montana, New Hampshire, Arizona, Louisiana, South Carolina, Idaho and Alaska. According to the PragerU website, many others are clamoring to use PragerU content, too, and the organization has created a petition so viewers can “Tell America You Want PragerU in Schools!”
Ryan Walters, Oklahoma’s controversial school superintendent, has been particularly enthusiastic about the partnership with PragerU. A former history teacher, Walters praised PragerU’s content when he announced the partnership in 2023.
This summer, Walters and PragerU announced that they have developed a Teacher Qualification Test that educators from certain states (California and New York, for example) must pass if they want to work in Oklahoma. “We’re sending a clear message: Oklahoma’s schools will not be a haven for woke agendas pushed in places like California and New York,” Walters said when the test was announced.
There has been some pushback in states that are partnering with PragerU. This summer, Betty Casey, the editor of Tulsa Kids, pointed out Oklahoma’s low education ranking, and implored Walters to address the real issues plaguing the state’s schools, including those related to poverty, mental illness and large class sizes, “instead of spending his time and energy on solving problems that don’t exist.”
Educators and lawmakers in South Carolina also objected when that state’s Department of Education partnered with PragerU last year. State Rep. Jermaine Johnson charged the department with using the collaboration with PragerU to promote conservative ideology in classrooms, according to the South Carolina Daily Gazette. “Stop indoctrinating our children,” Johnson said.
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“Is PragerU the new PBS?”
That is the question that Glenn Beck posed in a recent PragerU video. Beck, answering his own question, concludes that it is not, because PragerU doesn’t take money from the federal government the way PBS has traditionally done. “We won’t take a dollar from the government,” Streit assures Beck. “That’s in our mission.” But potential audiences might be interested in where it does get its money, given its financial dependence on wealthy donors with right-wing agendas of their own.
Whether or not PragerU is poised to take the place of PBS, it clearly has influence in the Trump White House and it appears to be working its way into a growing number of classrooms, as well — acting as a vector for the ideas of right-wing donors and foundations. But as Cotlar points out, PragerU’s scrubbed and slanted version of history may be less troubling than the historical reality but that doesn’t make it true — or anything that schools should be teaching children.
“Sometimes, history doesn’t tell us comforting, happy stories about, say, our presidents,” Cotlar said. “There’s lots of complexity in history and historical figures, and that’s the beauty of it. In a mature democratic society, we should be able to hold in our head the fact that Thomas Jefferson wrote the words ‘all men are created equal,’ that would become the foundation of many of the progressive civil rights struggles in American history. And he was also an enslaver who had children with one of his slaves. It’s important to acknowledge that both are true; otherwise, you are honoring cardboard-cutout, monochromatic versions of who these people were.”
