The Trump Administration Favors This Right-Wing Alternative Kids' Programming Over PBS

Last month, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting announced that it would shut down after Congress voted to strip over $500 million of federal funding from the organization. The announcement threatens the life of local PBS and NPR stations around the country that have provided news and educational content for kids for nearly 50 years.

Coincidentally, last month, the White House also debuted a new educational partner at its launch event for the new Founders Museum exhibit, PragerU, a nonprofit organization specializing in creating right-leaning educational short videos for adults and children. As part of the new exhibit, PragerU created AI-generated videos of figures like John Adams delivering far-right talking points.

Now hold on, it gets so much worse, unfortunately.

Department of Education Secretary Linda McMahon (AKA a walking red flag) introduced the partnership, followed by PragerU CEO Marissa Streit.

Since its founding in 2009, PragerU, which is not a credentialed university at all, has become quite the phenomenon in the conservative educational media space, with its videos reaching millions of followers across social media. Their popular videos elevate problematic narratives such as climate denialism, Islamophobia, and “misleading” rhetoric about slavery.

One particularly alarming PragerU clip that has gone viral on social media includes a modern-day child meeting Christopher Columbus after the child tells Columbus that he’s heard negative things about the explorer.

He says, “You have to judge me by the standards that were true at the time.”

Columbus says that slavery is “as old as time.” Columbus also adds that “being taken as a slave is better than being killed, no? I don’t see the problem.”

In another clip, kids are taught that abolitionist and former enslaved person, Frederick Douglass, would have agreed with America's choice to prioritize white supremacy over ending slavery.

“And certainly not okay with slavery, but the founding fathers made a compromise to achieve something great,” a cartoon version of Fredrick Douglass says. Yes, PragerU decided to put those blasphemous words inside the mouth of the most important leader of the movement for African-American civil rights in the 19th century.

PragerU, founded by Dennis Prager, a longtime conservative radio host from Los Angeles, said the idea to start a "university" came from Prager's wealthy fans on a cruise he held with radio listeners. He started small, with just short videos online. Soon and fast, PragerU grew immensely.

In 2022, tax records show, PragerU pulled in more than $65 million in donations.

While PragerU’s partnership with the Department of Education is their biggest collab yet, it’s not the first time the conservative content mill has partnered with the government.

Prager U has partnered with states and superintendents throughout the country to make their educational material widely available to public school children and teachers. Yes, this stuff is in classrooms already.

Remember when we wrote about Oklahoma Superintendent Ryan Walters announcing that teachers applying to Oklahoma schools from New York and California must take a new “America First” certification exam? Yeah, that “exam” was developed by PragerU.

And Walters is all for having PragerU programming in OK schools. “You’re not gonna lie to kids about the influences Christianity had on American history,” Walters told the New York Post. “We want you to teach history appropriately.”

Right now, PragerU is offered in eight states, including Florida, Louisiana, Texas, and, of course, Oklahoma.