Rightwing nonprofit PragerU is making inroads with the White House and has spent tens of millions of dollars to expand their reach on Facebook and Google

The Trump administration has eliminated over $1 billion in funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which plans to shut down by next year. For decades the CPB has funded hundreds of public media stations, including the Public Broadcasting Service, known as PBS, that launched in 1970 and made shows like Sesame Street and Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood childhood staples for youth across the nation and in many other countries.

The White House recently held a launch event for a new Founders Museum exhibit with content created by PragerU. The partnership was introduced by Department of Education Secretary Linda McMahon.

A recent story by 404 Media based on a thread on Bluesky by Professor of history Seth Cotlar first reported that the White House had partnered with PragerU to create AI-generated videos of the founding fathers.

Vox later reported that the White House may have a preferred alternative to PBS – the rightwing network PragerU.

Department of Education Secretary Linda McMahon introduced the partnership, followed by PragerU CEO Marissa Streit. For the White House exhibit, PragerU created AI-generated videos of the Founding Fathers delivering patriotic accounts of the Revolution. In one, an AI-generated John Adams borrows a catchphrase from conservative pundit Ben Shapiro and tells the viewer, “Facts do not care about our feelings.”

The Founders Museum virtual exhibit appears to be a few pages on the White House website, with some sections that say coming soon. PragerU uses AI to animate old pictures of historical figures and they put fake words in their mouths. In this video Declaration of Independence signer Joseph Hewes says “I died in service, far from home, worn down by the work.” Unless someone at PragerU can transcribe from the afterlife, this is one more example of the Trump administration rewriting history.

PragerU claims in their 2024 annual report that their content is offered in schools in 9 states: Arizona, Florida, Idaho, Louisiana, Montana, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Texas. The content offered varies by state, from books to online videos. In some cases, such as in Texas, the claim that PragerU curriculum was approved was later refuted.

The 2024 annual report impact section says that PragerU releases over 40 pieces of unique content each week, the website reaches 21 million visitors, they reach 14.5 million social media followers, 650,000 text subscribers and 8.2 million email subscribers. They go as far as claiming that one in three Americans has watched at least one PragerU video. Whether or not their impact is as large as they claim, it is clear that under the Trump administration they are likely to continue to grow.

In 2023 I published this story on ‘Financial highlights of PragerU – the nonprofit behind controversial right-wing propaganda videos recently approved for Florida schools’ and revealed the largest funders of PragerU from 2018 to 2022, as well as the largest vendors PragerU had paid during that period.

Following are some highlights from my prior reporting and new reporting on how PragerU has spent their money in the past couple of years showing that the largest recipients by far are Facebook and Google.

An overview of PragerU, which is a nonprofit, but is not an accredited university or accredited to award educational degrees

PragerU, also known as Prager University Foundation, is a 501(c)3 non-profit co-founded in 2009 by Dennis Prager and Allen Estrin.

Dennis Prager started out as a Fellow at Columbia University’s School of International Affairs. He taught Russian and Jewish history at Brooklyn College and the Hebrew Bible at American Jewish University. He was a nationally syndicated radio host and columnist before co-founding PragerU with Allen Estrin, who has been a screenwriter, producer, director and author.

In 2011 Dennis Prager and Allen Estrin brought in CEO Marissa Streit, an Israeli-American former Jewish day school principal, who had served in an intelligence unit of the Israel Defense Forces. Dennis Prager’s son, David Prager, is the Chief Development Officer of the organization.

Dennis Prager, Allen Estrin, and Marissa Steit have built PragerU into a rightwing educational juggernaut. However, a footnote on the PragerU website is a reminder that the organization is not accredited:

PragerU is not an accredited university, nor do we claim to be. We don’t offer degrees, but we do provide educational, entertaining, pro-American videos for every age.

A 2018 Buzzfeed article provided a prescient deep dive look into the strategy that propelled PragerU to grow significantly and expand its influence. And the piece captured the divisive and extreme nature of PragerU content.

Scrolling through its 300-odd videos yields a survey of almost every divisive national issue in the United States today: racism, sexism, income inequality, gun ownership, Islam, immigration, Israel, police brutality, and, of course, speech on college campuses.

The PragerU nonprofit, powered by conservative funders, aims to push its highly controversial and child-friendly far-right content out to youth across the country. It may only be a matter of time before the Trump administration builds a bigger – and more dangerous – partnership to promote the PragerU curriculum.

According to PragerU, white men put an end to slavery and slave owners were almost without exception Democrats

A few years ago the Orlando Sentinel highlighted one of many reasons why PragerU has generated controversy for pushing propaganda and far-right views:

One video features a cartoon version of Christopher Columbus telling kids that, while slavery might not be great, “being taken as a slave is better than being killed.” Another tells students that one of the most important things kids “need to know” about slavery is that “White men led the world in putting an end to the abhorrent practice.”

PragerU has content specifically tailored for children of all ages, from kindergarten through high school and college. They have 5-Minute Videos for older students and the montage below provides a good sampling of their so-called “educational” material.

In a PragerU video called “The Plantation: Then and Now” narrator Candace Owens says slave owners were almost without exception Democrats and explains that Democrats are now modern day plantation owners.

“In the first half of the 19th century four million blacks worked as slaves, imprisoned on plantations in the American South. They were prevented from learning how to read, their families were forcibly broken up, and if they tried to escape, they were severely and brutally punished. The owners of these plantations were, almost without exception, Democrats.” (Candace Owens for PragerU)

One of the more unusual items I reported in 2023 was that the conservative nonprofit Turning Point USA, founded by Charlie Kirk, made several large donations to PragerU ($350,000 in 2019 and $150,000 in 2020). Candace Owens was the communications director of Turning Point USA until she stepped down in 2019 after she controversially said that Hitler was OK until he tried to go global. That same year Candace Owens was paid $445,626 by PragerU and she also co-founded her own nonprofit called BLEXIT with Brandon Tatum. BLEXIT and Turning Point have since merged and right-wing donor and Cambridge Analytica funder Rebekah Mercer is a BLEXIT board member as of their most recent 2023 filing.

PragerU has been largely funded by the ultra-religious Wilks brothers, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation and the Marcus Foundation

The largest early funding for PragerU came from ultra-religious brothers Pastor Farris Wilks and Dan Wilks, who made their fortune in 2011 by selling their fracking business for $3.5 billion to a consortium led by Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund Temasek Holdings. Since 2015 Prager University received at least $6.5 million from the Wilks family and $50,000 from the Heavenly Father’s Foundation run by Dan Wilks and his wife. Farris Wilks later gave over $4.7 million to start the right-wing Daily Wire website co-founded by Ben Shapiro.

Another large funder of PragerU is the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation.

My 2023 story revealed that the largest donor from 2018 to 2022 was the Marcus Foundation, which donated $6.5 million to PragerU. The Marcus Foundation was founded by Home Depot co-founder Bernard Marcus who donated $7 million to support Donald Trump for president in 2016. He founded the Job Creators Network, which pushed Trump to approve the use of hydroxychloroquine for treatment of COVID-19, and the group filed a lawsuit in 2022 to stop Biden’s student loan debt relief program.

New reporting on PragerU financials based on their 2023 and 2024 990 filings

Following are some key highlights from the PragerU financial filings that show their significant growth and some of the key vendors they are working with.

A review of Prager University Foundation’s IRS 990 forms for the seven year period from 2018 to 2024 shows that total revenue (990 row 12) grew significantly from under $20 million in 2018 to just under $70 million in 2024.

The vast majority of the revenue comes from contributions and grants, with a small amount of revenue coming from program service revenue, investment income and other sources. Total revenue from 2018-2024 was just under $340 million and total expenses were just under $230 million for the seven-year period.

Independent contractors

The largest expenses for PragerU were for advertising and promotions, followed by salaries, other compensation, benefits and taxes. Some of the expenses for advertising and promotions are broken out in the independent contractor section of the 990 (part VII section B).

The 990 only lists information for the top five contractors, but the chart below shows the number of contracts that received over $100,000. Some of the data for Dennis Prager’s Kansas & Brooklyn came from the section on ‘Business Transactions Involving Interested Persons’.

A few highlights:

• From 2018 to 2024, Facebook has received over $44.5 million in revenue from PragerU.
• From 2018 to 2024 Google has received over $38 million in revenue from PragerU.
• Fox News Network has received over $3 million from 2020 through 2023. It is likely they have received more, but were not included in the top 5 contractors in other years.
• And in 2024 X Corp appears for the first time in the top 5 contractor section with over $1.5 million in revenues.

Note: the table below is best viewed on a desktop, but scroll right to view all data in the table below on mobile.

It is notable that in 2020 when Prager University paid Facebook over $3 million and Google almost $4 million – the nonprofit received a PPP loan of approximately $705,000 that was later forgiven in full.