WASHINGTON — Taking decisive action to curb the spread of partisan content, the White House announced this week that it supported Congress’s move to claw back over $500 million in federal funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a decision that will shutter the long-running organization and cease operations for its local PBS and NPR affiliates.
To fill the impending educational void, the administration has already identified a preferred alternative, debuting a partnership last month with PragerU, a nonprofit media organization officials believe is better suited to provide balanced, non-ideological content to the nation’s children.
The partnership was unveiled at the White House’s own Founders Museum exhibit, where Department of Education Secretary Linda McMahon introduced PragerU’s contribution: a series of AI-generated videos of the Founding Fathers. In one such video, a digitally rendered John Adams informs the viewer that “facts do not care about our feelings,” a sentiment historically attributed to 21st-century conservative pundit Ben Shapiro.
PragerU was founded in 2009 by conservative talk show host Dennis Prager and screenwriter Allen Estrin with the express goal of countering an education system they viewed as “too liberal.” The organization’s popular videos, which have helped launch the careers of figures like Candace Owens, have been noted by critics for elevating narratives described as climate denialist, Islamophobic, and “misleading” about slavery.
This focus on providing a corrective to the historical record is a key feature of PragerU’s educational materials. In a video addressing criticism of Christopher Columbus, the explorer explains to a group of modern children that it is important to judge him by the standards of his time. Other videos seek to minimize the role of slavery in the American story in order to focus on what the organization terms more “uplifting ideas.”
The White House’s federal partnership follows a series of successful state-level adoptions. Eight states, including Florida, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Arizona, have already approved PragerU materials for classroom use.
In Oklahoma, State Superintendent Ryan Walters has embraced the partnership with particular enthusiasm. He recently announced a plan to use PragerU’s content to evaluate teachers moving from blue states to ensure they are not bringing “indoctrination from the left” with them into Oklahoma’s schools.
According to Laura Meckler, a national education writer for the Washington Post, these developments are part of a consistent worldview. The administration, she explained, is engaged in a broad “effort to stamp out what they would call ‘woke ideology’” by using the power of the government to “diminish or change institutions that are not ideologically aligned.”
