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A still from the PragerU Kids video “Poland: Ania(Photo: Media Matters/YouTube/screenshot)s energy crisis,” in which denying climate change is compared to participating in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.
The state has just approved children’s content from an offshoot of right-wing propaganda organization PragerU, reflecting and potentially accelerating the state’s hard conservative turn.
A cartoon Booker T. Washington distorting the history of the Civil War. A narrator explaining that embracing climate denialism is akin to participating in the Warsaw Uprising. An instructional video telling girls that conforming to gender stereotypes is a great way to embrace their femininity. A dramatization of the supposedly civilizing, benevolent era of British colonial rule in India.
These are just some of the episodes of PragerU Kids—an offshoot of right-wing propaganda organization PragerU—that Florida has just approved for use in its public school classrooms, reflecting and potentially accelerating the state’s hard conservative turn.
“The state of Florida just announced that we are now becoming an official vendor,” said PragerU CEO Marissa Streit in a video heralding the news. She claimed that schools have “been hijacked by the left” and “used by union bosses” to pursue an agenda “not for our children.”
PragerU’s infiltration of school curriculum comes as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis wages a statewide offensive against public education at every level.
“We are just getting started—additional states are signing up,” Streit added.
In a Meta ad, PragerU Kids highlighted that teachers can use its materials “without repercussions,” signaling that the organization likely fears parents outside of conservative echo chambers could find the videos offensive and inappropriate for the classroom.
PragerU’s infiltration of school curriculum comes as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis wages a statewide offensive against public education at every level. Florida recently adopted new classroom guidelines that mandate teachers tell students that enslaved people “developed skills” that “could be applied for their personal benefit.” Earlier this year, DeSantis staged a hostile takeover of public liberal arts school New College, installing anti-civil rights activist Christopher Rufo on the board of trustees; the college has recently seen a “ridiculously high” number of faculty members leave the school.
Here’s what Florida’s latest salvo against public education actually looks like.
PragerU Kids videos are a mix of animated and live-action shorts, broken up into different recurring series. Some are more overtly political than others, but the roughly 350 videos on the outlet’s YouTube channel seem largely intended to push a right-wing agenda to one extent or another. Now, any of them could be shown in public school classrooms throughout Florida.
In “Poland: Ania’s Energy Crisis,”—part of PragerU Kids’ “Around the World” series—the titular character learns about climate change in school, only to have her eyes opened by her parents, who are helpfully equipped with decades of climate denialist talking points. Ania soon becomes a denialist herself and is ostracized by her peers, who “barely talk to her any more.”
She finds comfort in history, however, as the video analogizes her situation with one of the most famous antifascist acts of resistance in memory. “Grandfather Jakub tells her about the Warsaw Uprising, when the city’s Jews fought back against the Nazis,” the narrator says.
“Through her family’s stories, Ania is realizing that fighting oppression is risky, and that it always takes courage,” the narrator concludes.
Closer to home, “Los Angeles: Mateo Backs the Blue” is anti-Black Lives Matter, pro-cop propaganda. The video describes a Mexican immigrant family that moved to Los Angeles and had their lives upended by the death of George Floyd, whom the narrator characterizes as “a Black man who resisted arrest.”
“Activists claimed that police were targeting the Black community and purposefully killing unarmed Black men,” the narrator says. “As the false claims of racial targeting spread, so did the anger and violence.”
Mateo develops fondness for his school’s “resource officer”—a euphemism, though one not unique to PragerU Kids—and comes to view the cop as “as a guide, a mentor, and a protector, not how he has seen police characterized in the news, as mean-spirited bullies.”
PragerU Kids has other lessons to teach about the world, often steeped in colonialist apologia and market fundamentalism. In “India: Priya Overcomes Adversity” a narrator explains that under Britain’s colonial rule, “Western influence helped transform the country in many positive ways, but some ancient customs are harder to change than others,” referring to the county’s caste system. The video frames India as a backwards land that benefited from the British, who “spread the influence of Christianity and Western values through India” and “discouraged or even outlawed harmful traditions.” The narrator describes India being “given its independence,” rendering the country the beneficiary of British benevolence, rather than the victor in a struggle to overthrow colonial rule.
The video’s description further reveals the purpose of the narrative—to downplay existing oppression by contrasting it with a distorted version of history. “Young people may think that discrimination is worse than ever, but they'll gain perspective,” the caption promises.
PragerU Kids also finds much to praise in the settler-colonialist state of Israel. In “Israel: Shira Prays for Peace,” the country is presented as “the only country in the Middle East that does not oppress its minority populations.” In fact, multiple human rights organizations and experts have determined that Israel is an apartheid state that systematically oppresses and dispossess Palestinians as a matter of practice and law.
Another entry, “Canada: Marcel Makes a Sacrifice,” is an eight-minute hagiography of the for-profit U.S. health care system, and it repeats the same conservative talking points about the dangers of so-called socialized medicine that have been used for decades.
Another series sees animated characters Leo and Layla traveling back in time to learn from historical figures. In one episode, the pair discuss slavery with a fictionalized Booker T. Washington.
“I hate that our country had slavery,” Layla says. “Mr. Washington, sometimes do you ever wish you could have lived somewhere else? Like a different country?”
“That’s a great question, and I hate slavery too, but it’s been a reality everywhere in the world,” Washington responds.
The overriding theme of Leo and Layla’s adventures—and PragerU Kids in general—is that schools have made white children feel uncomfortable by teaching them about racism, colonialism, and other forms of oppression, and that that anxiety must be alleviated through a rigorous disavowal that the past plays any role in ordering the present.
The fictional Washington then elides the reality of the U.S. Civil War by adopting the passive voice. This flattens the process through which enslaved people freed themselves—alongside the Union Army—into an undifferentiated joint venture of the entire country.
“America was one of the first places on earth to outlaw slavery,” Washington says, getting the timeline completely reversed. “And hundreds of thousands of men gave their lives in a war that resulted in my freedom.”
“When you put it that way, it totally makes sense,” Leo responds.
Washington’s comforting account of history adds up to a conclusion squarely in line with DeSantis’ anti-critical race theory agenda. “Future generations are never responsible for sins of the past,” Washington reassures the children.
“OK I’ll keep doing my best to treat everyone well and won’t feel guilty about historical stuff,” Layla responds, now absolved and innocent.
PragerU Kids’ anti-anti-racism project includes a predictable deradicalization of Martin Luther King Jr., whom Leo and Layla travel to meet.
“My parents… taught me that racism, thinking people are better than or lesser than because of skin color, is wrong and to hate the wrong but never the wrongdoer,” the fictional King tells the kids.
“Wow. That’s so noble,” Layla responds, in an inadvertent but tellingly condescending way.
“My Christian faith directs me to love my neighbors, even when they act in ways I don’t like, and that’s always helped me remain peaceful,” King replies.
Like in the “Around the World” segments, Leo and Layla also have ample opportunities to promote Western chauvinism.
“What’s up with the face?” Layla asks her brother at the beginning of their Christopher Columbus episode. “You look stressed.”
“I’m just doing some research,” Leo responds. “Was today weird for you?”
“Yeah. How’d you guess?” Layla says.
“Columbus Day,” Leo says.
“Or Native American Day, or Indigenous People’s Day—it’s weird, right?” Layla replies.
The kids then discuss how their teachers and peers got into arguments about whether Columbus should have his own holiday.
“The side against Columbus says he was a really mean guy who spread slavery, disease, and violence to people who would’ve been better off if he’d never gone to the new world,” Leo says. “The side for him says he was a really courageous guy who loved exploring, inspired generations, and spread Christianity and Western civilization to people who really benefited from new ways of thinking and doing things.”
When the two kids meet Columbus, he assures them that he was justified in his violence against Indigenous people.
“The place I discovered was beautiful, but it wasn’t exactly a paradise of civilization, and the native people were far from peaceful,” he tells them.
Like the fictional Booker T. Washington, Columbus naturalizes slavery and the slave trade as something that happened everywhere.
“Slavery is as old as time and has taken place in every corner of the world,” Columbus says.
“Well, in our time we view slavery as being evil and terrible,” Layla corrects him.
“Ah. Magnifico! That’s wonderful,” Columbus responds. “I am glad humanity has reached such a time. But you said you’re from 500 years in the future? How can you come here to the 15th century and judge me by your standards from the 21st century?”
As this episode shows, the overriding theme of Leo and Layla’s adventures—and PragerU Kids in general—is that schools have made white children feel uncomfortable by teaching them about racism, colonialism, and other forms of oppression, and that that anxiety must be alleviated through a rigorous disavowal that the past plays any role in ordering the present. If historical wrongs committed by white people in the United States or Europeans must be acknowledged, we must teach that those injustices were undertaken with good intentions. Even more importantly, the past must remain firmly in the past, lest Leo and Layla lose their innocence and be forced to confront continuities of domination.
Another series, called “How To,” instructs kids on the proper ways to conform to society’s expectations of them, or to repress any unease that results from a sense that power is unequally distributed.
“Most gender stereotypes exist because they reflect the way that men and women are naturally different,” a presenter tells the viewers in “How to Embrace Your Femininity.”
“And those differences aren’t bad,” she continues. “Men and women complement each other and create a well-balanced family and community. So don’t let anybody tell you it’s bad to fit stereotypes.”
In “How to Be a Victor and Not a Victim,” students learn that “people all around the world who have encountered great setbacks have gone on to overcome them, whether it’s poverty, disease, discrimination, or all of it combined.”
That, PragerU Kids says, is the mentality of winners. “Victims on the other hand, don’t believe that personal growth is possible,” the presenter—who, it should be noted here, is Black—instructs the kids.
“Or, even worse, don’t believe it’s needed,” he continues. “Victims are often so busy blaming everything and everyone else for their problems that they don’t stop to think about how their own growth can make things better.”
Other conservative media outlets are attempting to expand their footprint to include children’s programming as well. The Daily Wire, one of the most openly pro-violence and virulently anti-LGBTQ outlets in right-wing media, last year announced a “$100 million commitment to develop entertainment for kids that parents can trust.” Also in 2022, Charlie Kirk launched Turning Point Academy, an affiliate of his extremist-aligned Turning Point USA, which similarly targets elementary school-aged children and defines itself as “an educational movement that exists to glorify God.”
PragerU Kids has a head start on these other outlets, and its curriculum reflects the far-right ideology of Dennis Prager, the organization’s founder. Prager has a long history of making offensive comments, including promoting an anti-gay conspiracy theory about the murder of Matthew Shephard, instructing married women to have sex with their husbands even if they don’t want to, and lamenting that he is socially constrained from using a racist anti-Black slur.
Prager’s recent comments about education are also instructive. “If you see a noose on a college dorm of a Black student, the odds are overwhelming that the noose was put there by a Black student,” Prager said in April 2022.
The goal is to render history and its inheritances invisible, inert, and incapable of inspiring young people to seek a more equal and more just world.
“What has any fifth-grader done to have made the world better because he or she is in it?” he asked last September.
Critics tell him, “‘You indoctrinate kids’—which is true,” Prager said this month. “We bring doctrines to children. That’s a very fair statement.”
PragerU Kids is the newest vehicle for that indoctrination, but Prager also seeks to downplay that very project by presenting his curriculum as ideologically neutral, as he illustrated on his radio show in discussing Florida’s adoption of his product.
“To have responsible—it’s not even right-wing, it’s just responsible,” he said, describing PragerU Kids. “Look at our materials.”
Looking at those materials makes PragerU Kids’ mission clear. Discrimination? Oppression? Structural inequality? These forces either don’t exist, or they’re the fault of the individual who hasn’t sufficiently adopted the rise-and-grind mindset that their more successful peers have.
What this all amounts to is painfully obvious, though perhaps not to the Florida children who will be forced to consume this right-wing propaganda while in a public institution. The goal is to render history and its inheritances invisible, inert, and incapable of inspiring young people to seek a more equal and more just world. PragerU Kids is looking to expand that mission to more states. Now it’s the public’s turn to respond.
Sophie Lawton & Jack Wheatley contributed research to this piece.
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A cartoon Booker T. Washington distorting the history of the Civil War. A narrator explaining that embracing climate denialism is akin to participating in the Warsaw Uprising. An instructional video telling girls that conforming to gender stereotypes is a great way to embrace their femininity. A dramatization of the supposedly civilizing, benevolent era of British colonial rule in India.
These are just some of the episodes of PragerU Kids—an offshoot of right-wing propaganda organization PragerU—that Florida has just approved for use in its public school classrooms, reflecting and potentially accelerating the state’s hard conservative turn.
“The state of Florida just announced that we are now becoming an official vendor,” said PragerU CEO Marissa Streit in a video heralding the news. She claimed that schools have “been hijacked by the left” and “used by union bosses” to pursue an agenda “not for our children.”
PragerU’s infiltration of school curriculum comes as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis wages a statewide offensive against public education at every level.
“We are just getting started—additional states are signing up,” Streit added.
In a Meta ad, PragerU Kids highlighted that teachers can use its materials “without repercussions,” signaling that the organization likely fears parents outside of conservative echo chambers could find the videos offensive and inappropriate for the classroom.
PragerU’s infiltration of school curriculum comes as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis wages a statewide offensive against public education at every level. Florida recently adopted new classroom guidelines that mandate teachers tell students that enslaved people “developed skills” that “could be applied for their personal benefit.” Earlier this year, DeSantis staged a hostile takeover of public liberal arts school New College, installing anti-civil rights activist Christopher Rufo on the board of trustees; the college has recently seen a “ridiculously high” number of faculty members leave the school.
Here’s what Florida’s latest salvo against public education actually looks like.
PragerU Kids videos are a mix of animated and live-action shorts, broken up into different recurring series. Some are more overtly political than others, but the roughly 350 videos on the outlet’s YouTube channel seem largely intended to push a right-wing agenda to one extent or another. Now, any of them could be shown in public school classrooms throughout Florida.
In “Poland: Ania’s Energy Crisis,”—part of PragerU Kids’ “Around the World” series—the titular character learns about climate change in school, only to have her eyes opened by her parents, who are helpfully equipped with decades of climate denialist talking points. Ania soon becomes a denialist herself and is ostracized by her peers, who “barely talk to her any more.”
She finds comfort in history, however, as the video analogizes her situation with one of the most famous antifascist acts of resistance in memory. “Grandfather Jakub tells her about the Warsaw Uprising, when the city’s Jews fought back against the Nazis,” the narrator says.
“Through her family’s stories, Ania is realizing that fighting oppression is risky, and that it always takes courage,” the narrator concludes.
Closer to home, “Los Angeles: Mateo Backs the Blue” is anti-Black Lives Matter, pro-cop propaganda. The video describes a Mexican immigrant family that moved to Los Angeles and had their lives upended by the death of George Floyd, whom the narrator characterizes as “a Black man who resisted arrest.”
“Activists claimed that police were targeting the Black community and purposefully killing unarmed Black men,” the narrator says. “As the false claims of racial targeting spread, so did the anger and violence.”
Mateo develops fondness for his school’s “resource officer”—a euphemism, though one not unique to PragerU Kids—and comes to view the cop as “as a guide, a mentor, and a protector, not how he has seen police characterized in the news, as mean-spirited bullies.”
PragerU Kids has other lessons to teach about the world, often steeped in colonialist apologia and market fundamentalism. In “India: Priya Overcomes Adversity” a narrator explains that under Britain’s colonial rule, “Western influence helped transform the country in many positive ways, but some ancient customs are harder to change than others,” referring to the county’s caste system. The video frames India as a backwards land that benefited from the British, who “spread the influence of Christianity and Western values through India” and “discouraged or even outlawed harmful traditions.” The narrator describes India being “given its independence,” rendering the country the beneficiary of British benevolence, rather than the victor in a struggle to overthrow colonial rule.
The video’s description further reveals the purpose of the narrative—to downplay existing oppression by contrasting it with a distorted version of history. “Young people may think that discrimination is worse than ever, but they'll gain perspective,” the caption promises.
PragerU Kids also finds much to praise in the settler-colonialist state of Israel. In “Israel: Shira Prays for Peace,” the country is presented as “the only country in the Middle East that does not oppress its minority populations.” In fact, multiple human rights organizations and experts have determined that Israel is an apartheid state that systematically oppresses and dispossess Palestinians as a matter of practice and law.
Another entry, “Canada: Marcel Makes a Sacrifice,” is an eight-minute hagiography of the for-profit U.S. health care system, and it repeats the same conservative talking points about the dangers of so-called socialized medicine that have been used for decades.
Another series sees animated characters Leo and Layla traveling back in time to learn from historical figures. In one episode, the pair discuss slavery with a fictionalized Booker T. Washington.
“I hate that our country had slavery,” Layla says. “Mr. Washington, sometimes do you ever wish you could have lived somewhere else? Like a different country?”
“That’s a great question, and I hate slavery too, but it’s been a reality everywhere in the world,” Washington responds.
The overriding theme of Leo and Layla’s adventures—and PragerU Kids in general—is that schools have made white children feel uncomfortable by teaching them about racism, colonialism, and other forms of oppression, and that that anxiety must be alleviated through a rigorous disavowal that the past plays any role in ordering the present.
The fictional Washington then elides the reality of the U.S. Civil War by adopting the passive voice. This flattens the process through which enslaved people freed themselves—alongside the Union Army—into an undifferentiated joint venture of the entire country.
“America was one of the first places on earth to outlaw slavery,” Washington says, getting the timeline completely reversed. “And hundreds of thousands of men gave their lives in a war that resulted in my freedom.”
“When you put it that way, it totally makes sense,” Leo responds.
Washington’s comforting account of history adds up to a conclusion squarely in line with DeSantis’ anti-critical race theory agenda. “Future generations are never responsible for sins of the past,” Washington reassures the children.
“OK I’ll keep doing my best to treat everyone well and won’t feel guilty about historical stuff,” Layla responds, now absolved and innocent.
PragerU Kids’ anti-anti-racism project includes a predictable deradicalization of Martin Luther King Jr., whom Leo and Layla travel to meet.
“My parents… taught me that racism, thinking people are better than or lesser than because of skin color, is wrong and to hate the wrong but never the wrongdoer,” the fictional King tells the kids.
“Wow. That’s so noble,” Layla responds, in an inadvertent but tellingly condescending way.
“My Christian faith directs me to love my neighbors, even when they act in ways I don’t like, and that’s always helped me remain peaceful,” King replies.
Like in the “Around the World” segments, Leo and Layla also have ample opportunities to promote Western chauvinism.
“What’s up with the face?” Layla asks her brother at the beginning of their Christopher Columbus episode. “You look stressed.”
“I’m just doing some research,” Leo responds. “Was today weird for you?”
“Yeah. How’d you guess?” Layla says.
“Columbus Day,” Leo says.
“Or Native American Day, or Indigenous People’s Day—it’s weird, right?” Layla replies.
The kids then discuss how their teachers and peers got into arguments about whether Columbus should have his own holiday.
“The side against Columbus says he was a really mean guy who spread slavery, disease, and violence to people who would’ve been better off if he’d never gone to the new world,” Leo says. “The side for him says he was a really courageous guy who loved exploring, inspired generations, and spread Christianity and Western civilization to people who really benefited from new ways of thinking and doing things.”
When the two kids meet Columbus, he assures them that he was justified in his violence against Indigenous people.
“The place I discovered was beautiful, but it wasn’t exactly a paradise of civilization, and the native people were far from peaceful,” he tells them.
Like the fictional Booker T. Washington, Columbus naturalizes slavery and the slave trade as something that happened everywhere.
“Slavery is as old as time and has taken place in every corner of the world,” Columbus says.
“Well, in our time we view slavery as being evil and terrible,” Layla corrects him.
“Ah. Magnifico! That’s wonderful,” Columbus responds. “I am glad humanity has reached such a time. But you said you’re from 500 years in the future? How can you come here to the 15th century and judge me by your standards from the 21st century?”
As this episode shows, the overriding theme of Leo and Layla’s adventures—and PragerU Kids in general—is that schools have made white children feel uncomfortable by teaching them about racism, colonialism, and other forms of oppression, and that that anxiety must be alleviated through a rigorous disavowal that the past plays any role in ordering the present. If historical wrongs committed by white people in the United States or Europeans must be acknowledged, we must teach that those injustices were undertaken with good intentions. Even more importantly, the past must remain firmly in the past, lest Leo and Layla lose their innocence and be forced to confront continuities of domination.
Another series, called “How To,” instructs kids on the proper ways to conform to society’s expectations of them, or to repress any unease that results from a sense that power is unequally distributed.
“Most gender stereotypes exist because they reflect the way that men and women are naturally different,” a presenter tells the viewers in “How to Embrace Your Femininity.”
“And those differences aren’t bad,” she continues. “Men and women complement each other and create a well-balanced family and community. So don’t let anybody tell you it’s bad to fit stereotypes.”
In “How to Be a Victor and Not a Victim,” students learn that “people all around the world who have encountered great setbacks have gone on to overcome them, whether it’s poverty, disease, discrimination, or all of it combined.”
That, PragerU Kids says, is the mentality of winners. “Victims on the other hand, don’t believe that personal growth is possible,” the presenter—who, it should be noted here, is Black—instructs the kids.
“Or, even worse, don’t believe it’s needed,” he continues. “Victims are often so busy blaming everything and everyone else for their problems that they don’t stop to think about how their own growth can make things better.”
Other conservative media outlets are attempting to expand their footprint to include children’s programming as well. The Daily Wire, one of the most openly pro-violence and virulently anti-LGBTQ outlets in right-wing media, last year announced a “$100 million commitment to develop entertainment for kids that parents can trust.” Also in 2022, Charlie Kirk launched Turning Point Academy, an affiliate of his extremist-aligned Turning Point USA, which similarly targets elementary school-aged children and defines itself as “an educational movement that exists to glorify God.”
PragerU Kids has a head start on these other outlets, and its curriculum reflects the far-right ideology of Dennis Prager, the organization’s founder. Prager has a long history of making offensive comments, including promoting an anti-gay conspiracy theory about the murder of Matthew Shephard, instructing married women to have sex with their husbands even if they don’t want to, and lamenting that he is socially constrained from using a racist anti-Black slur.
Prager’s recent comments about education are also instructive. “If you see a noose on a college dorm of a Black student, the odds are overwhelming that the noose was put there by a Black student,” Prager said in April 2022.
The goal is to render history and its inheritances invisible, inert, and incapable of inspiring young people to seek a more equal and more just world.
“What has any fifth-grader done to have made the world better because he or she is in it?” he asked last September.
Critics tell him, “‘You indoctrinate kids’—which is true,” Prager said this month. “We bring doctrines to children. That’s a very fair statement.”
PragerU Kids is the newest vehicle for that indoctrination, but Prager also seeks to downplay that very project by presenting his curriculum as ideologically neutral, as he illustrated on his radio show in discussing Florida’s adoption of his product.
“To have responsible—it’s not even right-wing, it’s just responsible,” he said, describing PragerU Kids. “Look at our materials.”
Looking at those materials makes PragerU Kids’ mission clear. Discrimination? Oppression? Structural inequality? These forces either don’t exist, or they’re the fault of the individual who hasn’t sufficiently adopted the rise-and-grind mindset that their more successful peers have.
What this all amounts to is painfully obvious, though perhaps not to the Florida children who will be forced to consume this right-wing propaganda while in a public institution. The goal is to render history and its inheritances invisible, inert, and incapable of inspiring young people to seek a more equal and more just world. PragerU Kids is looking to expand that mission to more states. Now it’s the public’s turn to respond.
Sophie Lawton & Jack Wheatley contributed research to this piece.
A cartoon Booker T. Washington distorting the history of the Civil War. A narrator explaining that embracing climate denialism is akin to participating in the Warsaw Uprising. An instructional video telling girls that conforming to gender stereotypes is a great way to embrace their femininity. A dramatization of the supposedly civilizing, benevolent era of British colonial rule in India.
These are just some of the episodes of PragerU Kids—an offshoot of right-wing propaganda organization PragerU—that Florida has just approved for use in its public school classrooms, reflecting and potentially accelerating the state’s hard conservative turn.
“The state of Florida just announced that we are now becoming an official vendor,” said PragerU CEO Marissa Streit in a video heralding the news. She claimed that schools have “been hijacked by the left” and “used by union bosses” to pursue an agenda “not for our children.”
PragerU’s infiltration of school curriculum comes as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis wages a statewide offensive against public education at every level.
“We are just getting started—additional states are signing up,” Streit added.
In a Meta ad, PragerU Kids highlighted that teachers can use its materials “without repercussions,” signaling that the organization likely fears parents outside of conservative echo chambers could find the videos offensive and inappropriate for the classroom.
PragerU’s infiltration of school curriculum comes as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis wages a statewide offensive against public education at every level. Florida recently adopted new classroom guidelines that mandate teachers tell students that enslaved people “developed skills” that “could be applied for their personal benefit.” Earlier this year, DeSantis staged a hostile takeover of public liberal arts school New College, installing anti-civil rights activist Christopher Rufo on the board of trustees; the college has recently seen a “ridiculously high” number of faculty members leave the school.
Here’s what Florida’s latest salvo against public education actually looks like.
PragerU Kids videos are a mix of animated and live-action shorts, broken up into different recurring series. Some are more overtly political than others, but the roughly 350 videos on the outlet’s YouTube channel seem largely intended to push a right-wing agenda to one extent or another. Now, any of them could be shown in public school classrooms throughout Florida.
In “Poland: Ania’s Energy Crisis,”—part of PragerU Kids’ “Around the World” series—the titular character learns about climate change in school, only to have her eyes opened by her parents, who are helpfully equipped with decades of climate denialist talking points. Ania soon becomes a denialist herself and is ostracized by her peers, who “barely talk to her any more.”
She finds comfort in history, however, as the video analogizes her situation with one of the most famous antifascist acts of resistance in memory. “Grandfather Jakub tells her about the Warsaw Uprising, when the city’s Jews fought back against the Nazis,” the narrator says.
“Through her family’s stories, Ania is realizing that fighting oppression is risky, and that it always takes courage,” the narrator concludes.
Closer to home, “Los Angeles: Mateo Backs the Blue” is anti-Black Lives Matter, pro-cop propaganda. The video describes a Mexican immigrant family that moved to Los Angeles and had their lives upended by the death of George Floyd, whom the narrator characterizes as “a Black man who resisted arrest.”
“Activists claimed that police were targeting the Black community and purposefully killing unarmed Black men,” the narrator says. “As the false claims of racial targeting spread, so did the anger and violence.”
Mateo develops fondness for his school’s “resource officer”—a euphemism, though one not unique to PragerU Kids—and comes to view the cop as “as a guide, a mentor, and a protector, not how he has seen police characterized in the news, as mean-spirited bullies.”
PragerU Kids has other lessons to teach about the world, often steeped in colonialist apologia and market fundamentalism. In “India: Priya Overcomes Adversity” a narrator explains that under Britain’s colonial rule, “Western influence helped transform the country in many positive ways, but some ancient customs are harder to change than others,” referring to the county’s caste system. The video frames India as a backwards land that benefited from the British, who “spread the influence of Christianity and Western values through India” and “discouraged or even outlawed harmful traditions.” The narrator describes India being “given its independence,” rendering the country the beneficiary of British benevolence, rather than the victor in a struggle to overthrow colonial rule.
The video’s description further reveals the purpose of the narrative—to downplay existing oppression by contrasting it with a distorted version of history. “Young people may think that discrimination is worse than ever, but they'll gain perspective,” the caption promises.
PragerU Kids also finds much to praise in the settler-colonialist state of Israel. In “Israel: Shira Prays for Peace,” the country is presented as “the only country in the Middle East that does not oppress its minority populations.” In fact, multiple human rights organizations and experts have determined that Israel is an apartheid state that systematically oppresses and dispossess Palestinians as a matter of practice and law.
Another entry, “Canada: Marcel Makes a Sacrifice,” is an eight-minute hagiography of the for-profit U.S. health care system, and it repeats the same conservative talking points about the dangers of so-called socialized medicine that have been used for decades.
Another series sees animated characters Leo and Layla traveling back in time to learn from historical figures. In one episode, the pair discuss slavery with a fictionalized Booker T. Washington.
“I hate that our country had slavery,” Layla says. “Mr. Washington, sometimes do you ever wish you could have lived somewhere else? Like a different country?”
“That’s a great question, and I hate slavery too, but it’s been a reality everywhere in the world,” Washington responds.
The overriding theme of Leo and Layla’s adventures—and PragerU Kids in general—is that schools have made white children feel uncomfortable by teaching them about racism, colonialism, and other forms of oppression, and that that anxiety must be alleviated through a rigorous disavowal that the past plays any role in ordering the present.
The fictional Washington then elides the reality of the U.S. Civil War by adopting the passive voice. This flattens the process through which enslaved people freed themselves—alongside the Union Army—into an undifferentiated joint venture of the entire country.
“America was one of the first places on earth to outlaw slavery,” Washington says, getting the timeline completely reversed. “And hundreds of thousands of men gave their lives in a war that resulted in my freedom.”
“When you put it that way, it totally makes sense,” Leo responds.
Washington’s comforting account of history adds up to a conclusion squarely in line with DeSantis’ anti-critical race theory agenda. “Future generations are never responsible for sins of the past,” Washington reassures the children.
“OK I’ll keep doing my best to treat everyone well and won’t feel guilty about historical stuff,” Layla responds, now absolved and innocent.
PragerU Kids’ anti-anti-racism project includes a predictable deradicalization of Martin Luther King Jr., whom Leo and Layla travel to meet.
“My parents… taught me that racism, thinking people are better than or lesser than because of skin color, is wrong and to hate the wrong but never the wrongdoer,” the fictional King tells the kids.
“Wow. That’s so noble,” Layla responds, in an inadvertent but tellingly condescending way.
“My Christian faith directs me to love my neighbors, even when they act in ways I don’t like, and that’s always helped me remain peaceful,” King replies.
Like in the “Around the World” segments, Leo and Layla also have ample opportunities to promote Western chauvinism.
“What’s up with the face?” Layla asks her brother at the beginning of their Christopher Columbus episode. “You look stressed.”
“I’m just doing some research,” Leo responds. “Was today weird for you?”
“Yeah. How’d you guess?” Layla says.
“Columbus Day,” Leo says.
“Or Native American Day, or Indigenous People’s Day—it’s weird, right?” Layla replies.
The kids then discuss how their teachers and peers got into arguments about whether Columbus should have his own holiday.
“The side against Columbus says he was a really mean guy who spread slavery, disease, and violence to people who would’ve been better off if he’d never gone to the new world,” Leo says. “The side for him says he was a really courageous guy who loved exploring, inspired generations, and spread Christianity and Western civilization to people who really benefited from new ways of thinking and doing things.”
When the two kids meet Columbus, he assures them that he was justified in his violence against Indigenous people.
“The place I discovered was beautiful, but it wasn’t exactly a paradise of civilization, and the native people were far from peaceful,” he tells them.
Like the fictional Booker T. Washington, Columbus naturalizes slavery and the slave trade as something that happened everywhere.
“Slavery is as old as time and has taken place in every corner of the world,” Columbus says.
“Well, in our time we view slavery as being evil and terrible,” Layla corrects him.
“Ah. Magnifico! That’s wonderful,” Columbus responds. “I am glad humanity has reached such a time. But you said you’re from 500 years in the future? How can you come here to the 15th century and judge me by your standards from the 21st century?”
As this episode shows, the overriding theme of Leo and Layla’s adventures—and PragerU Kids in general—is that schools have made white children feel uncomfortable by teaching them about racism, colonialism, and other forms of oppression, and that that anxiety must be alleviated through a rigorous disavowal that the past plays any role in ordering the present. If historical wrongs committed by white people in the United States or Europeans must be acknowledged, we must teach that those injustices were undertaken with good intentions. Even more importantly, the past must remain firmly in the past, lest Leo and Layla lose their innocence and be forced to confront continuities of domination.
Another series, called “How To,” instructs kids on the proper ways to conform to society’s expectations of them, or to repress any unease that results from a sense that power is unequally distributed.
“Most gender stereotypes exist because they reflect the way that men and women are naturally different,” a presenter tells the viewers in “How to Embrace Your Femininity.”
“And those differences aren’t bad,” she continues. “Men and women complement each other and create a well-balanced family and community. So don’t let anybody tell you it’s bad to fit stereotypes.”
In “How to Be a Victor and Not a Victim,” students learn that “people all around the world who have encountered great setbacks have gone on to overcome them, whether it’s poverty, disease, discrimination, or all of it combined.”
That, PragerU Kids says, is the mentality of winners. “Victims on the other hand, don’t believe that personal growth is possible,” the presenter—who, it should be noted here, is Black—instructs the kids.
“Or, even worse, don’t believe it’s needed,” he continues. “Victims are often so busy blaming everything and everyone else for their problems that they don’t stop to think about how their own growth can make things better.”
Other conservative media outlets are attempting to expand their footprint to include children’s programming as well. The Daily Wire, one of the most openly pro-violence and virulently anti-LGBTQ outlets in right-wing media, last year announced a “$100 million commitment to develop entertainment for kids that parents can trust.” Also in 2022, Charlie Kirk launched Turning Point Academy, an affiliate of his extremist-aligned Turning Point USA, which similarly targets elementary school-aged children and defines itself as “an educational movement that exists to glorify God.”
PragerU Kids has a head start on these other outlets, and its curriculum reflects the far-right ideology of Dennis Prager, the organization’s founder. Prager has a long history of making offensive comments, including promoting an anti-gay conspiracy theory about the murder of Matthew Shephard, instructing married women to have sex with their husbands even if they don’t want to, and lamenting that he is socially constrained from using a racist anti-Black slur.
Prager’s recent comments about education are also instructive. “If you see a noose on a college dorm of a Black student, the odds are overwhelming that the noose was put there by a Black student,” Prager said in April 2022.
The goal is to render history and its inheritances invisible, inert, and incapable of inspiring young people to seek a more equal and more just world.
“What has any fifth-grader done to have made the world better because he or she is in it?” he asked last September.
Critics tell him, “‘You indoctrinate kids’—which is true,” Prager said this month. “We bring doctrines to children. That’s a very fair statement.”
PragerU Kids is the newest vehicle for that indoctrination, but Prager also seeks to downplay that very project by presenting his curriculum as ideologically neutral, as he illustrated on his radio show in discussing Florida’s adoption of his product.
“To have responsible—it’s not even right-wing, it’s just responsible,” he said, describing PragerU Kids. “Look at our materials.”
Looking at those materials makes PragerU Kids’ mission clear. Discrimination? Oppression? Structural inequality? These forces either don’t exist, or they’re the fault of the individual who hasn’t sufficiently adopted the rise-and-grind mindset that their more successful peers have.
What this all amounts to is painfully obvious, though perhaps not to the Florida children who will be forced to consume this right-wing propaganda while in a public institution. The goal is to render history and its inheritances invisible, inert, and incapable of inspiring young people to seek a more equal and more just world. PragerU Kids is looking to expand that mission to more states. Now it’s the public’s turn to respond.
Sophie Lawton & Jack Wheatley contributed research to this piece.
"They're now using the failed War on Drugs to justify their egregious violation of international law," the Minnesota progressive said of the Trump administration.
Congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Delia Ramirez on Thursday strongly condemned the Trump administration's deadly attack on a boat allegedly trafficking cocaine off the coast of Venezuela as "lawless and reckless," while urging the White House to respect lawmakers' "clear constitutional authority on matters of war and peace."
"Congress has not declared war on Venezuela, or Tren de Aragua, and the mere designation of a group as a terrorist organization does not give any president carte blanche," said Omar (D-Minn.), referring to President Donald Trump's day one executive order designating drug cartels including the Venezuela-based group as foreign terrorist organizations.
Trump—who reportedly signed a secret order directing the Pentagon to use military force to combat cartels abroad—said that Tuesday's US strike in international waters killed 11 people. The attack sparked fears of renewed US aggression in a region that has endured well over 100 US interventions over the past 200 years, and against a country that has suffered US meddling since the late 19th century.
"It appears that US forces that were recently sent to the region in an escalatory and provocative manner were under no threat from the boat they attacked," Omar cotended. "There is no conceivable legal justification for this use of force. Unless compelling evidence emerges that they were acting in self-defense, that makes the strike a clear violation of international law."
Omar continued:
They're now using the failed War on Drugs to justify their egregious violation of international law. The US posture towards the eradication of drugs has caused immeasurable damage across our hemisphere. It has led to massive forced displacement, environmental devastation, violence, and human rights violations. What it has not done is any damage whatsoever to narcotrafficking or to the cartels. It has been a dramatic, profound failure at every level. In Latin America, even right-wing presidents acknowledge this is true.
The congresswoman's remarks came on the same day that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio designated a pair of Ecuadorean drug gangs as terrorist organizations while visiting the South American nation. This, after Rubio said that US attacks on suspected drug traffickers "will happen again."
"Trump and Rubio's apparent solution" to the failed drug war, said Omar, is "to make it even more militarized," an effort that "is doomed to fail."
"Worse, it risks spiraling into the exact type of endless, pointless conflict that Trump supposedly opposes," she added.
Echoing critics including former Human Rights Watch director Kenneth Roth, who called Tuesday's strike a "summary execution," Ramirez (D-Ill.) said Thursday on social media that "Trump and the Pentagon executed 11 people in the Caribbean, 1,500 miles away from the United States, without a legal rationale."
"From Iran to Venezuela, to DC, LA, and Chicago, Trump continues to abuse our military power, undermine the rule of law, and erode our constitutional boundaries in political spectacles," Ramirez added, referring to the president's ordering of strikes on Iran and National Guard deployments to Los Angeles, the nation's capital, and likely beyond.
"Presidents don't bomb first and ask questions later," Ramirez added. "Wannabe dictators do that."
"The fact that a facility embedded in so much pain is allowed to reopen is absolutely disheartening!" said Florida Immigrant Coalition's deputy director.
Two judges appointed to the US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit by President Donald Trump issued a Thursday decision that allows a newly established but already notorious immigrant detention center in Florida, dubbed Alligator Alcatraz, to stay open.
Friends of the Everglades, the Center for Biological Diversity, and the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida sought "to halt the unlawful construction" of the site. Last month, Judge Kathleen Williams—appointed by former President Barack Obama to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida—ordered the closure of the facility within 60 days.
However, on Thursday, Circuit Judges Elizabeth Branch and Barbara Lagoa blocked Williams' decision, concluding that "the balance of the harms and our consideration of the public interest favor a stay of the preliminary injunction."
Judge Adalberto Jordan, an Obama appointee, issued a brief but scathing dissent. He wrote that the majority "essentially ignores the burden borne by the defendants, pays only lip service to the abuse of discretion standard, engages in its own factfinding, declines to consider the district court's determination on irreparable harm, and performs its own balancing of the equities."
The 11th Circuit's ruling was cheered by the US Department of Homeland Security, Republican Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, and Gov. Ron DeSantis, who declared in a video that "Alligator Alcatraz is, in fact, like we've always said, open for business."
Uthmeier's communications director, Jeremy Redfern, collected responses to the initial ruling by state and federal Democrats, and urged them to weigh in on social media. Florida state Sen. Shevrin "Shev" Jones (D-34) did, stressing that "cruelty is still cruelty."
In a Thursday statement, Florida Immigrant Coalition deputy director Renata Bozzetto said that "the 11th Circuit is allowing atrocities to happen by reversing the injunction that helped to paralyze something that has been functioning as an extrajudicial site in our own state! The Everglades Detention Camp isn't just an environmental threat; it is also a huge human rights crisis."
"Housing thousands of men in tents in the middle of a fragile ecosystem puts immense strain on Florida's source environment, but even more troublesome, it disregards human rights and our constitutional commitments," Bozzetto continued. "This is a place where hundreds of our neighbors were illegally held, were made invisible within government systems, and were subjected to inhumane heat and unbearable treatment. The fact that a facility embedded in so much pain is allowed to reopen is absolutely disheartening! The only just solution is to shut this facility down and ensure that no facility like this opens in our state!"
"Lastly, it is imperative that we as a nation uphold the balance of powers that this country was founded on," she added. "That is what makes this country special! Calling judges who rule against you 'activists' flies in the face of our democracy. It is a huge tell that AG Uthmeier expressed this as a 'win for President Trump's agenda,' as if the courts were to serve as political weapons. This demonstrates the clear partisan games they are playing with people's lives and with our democracy."
While Alligator Alcatraz has drawn widespread criticism for the conditions in which detainees are held, the suit is based on the government's failure to follow a law that requires an environmental review, given the facility's proximity to surrounding wetlands.
In response to the ruling, Elise Bennett, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, told The Associated Press that "this is a heartbreaking blow to America's Everglades and every living creature there, but the case isn't even close to over."
The report found that seven of America's biggest healthcare companies have collectively dodged $34 billion in taxes as a result of Trump's 2017 tax law while making patient care worse.
President Donald Trump's tax policies have allowed the healthcare industry to rake in "sick profits" by avoiding tens of billions of dollars in taxes and lowering the quality of care for patients, according to a report out Wednesday.
The report, by the advocacy groups Americans for Tax Fairness and Community Catalyst, found that "seven of America's biggest healthcare corporations have dodged over $34 billion in collective taxes since the enactment of the 2017 Trump-GOP tax law that Republicans recently succeeded in extending."
The study examined four health insurance companies—Centene, Cigna, Elevance (formerly Anthem), and Humana; two for-profit hospital chains—HCA Holdings and Universal Health Services; and the CVS Healthcare pharmacy conglomerate.
It found that these companies' average profits increased by 75%, from around $21 billion before the tax bill to about $35 billion afterward, and yet their federal tax rate was about the same.
This was primarily due to the 2017 law's slashing of the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%, a change that was cheered on by the healthcare industry and continued with this year's GOP tax legislation. The legislation also loosened many tax loopholes and made it easier to move profits to offshore tax shelters.
The report found that Cigna, for instance, saved an estimated $181 million in taxes on the $2.5 billion it held in offshore accounts before the law took effect.
The law's supporters, including those in the healthcare industry, argued that lowering corporate taxes would allow companies to increase wages and provide better services to patients. But the report found that "healthcare corporations failed to use their tax savings to lower costs for customers or meaningfully boost worker pay."
Instead, they used those windfalls primarily to increase shareholder payouts through stock buybacks and dividends and to give fat bonuses to their top executives.
Stock buybacks increased by 42% after the law passed, with Centene purchasing an astonishing average of 20 times more of its own shares in the years following its enactment than in the years before. During the first seven years of the law, dividends for shareholders increased by 133% to an average of $5.6 billion.
Pay for the seven companies' half-dozen top executives increased by a combined $100 million, 42%, on average. This is compared to the $14,000 pay increase that the average employee at these companies received over the same period, which is a much more modest increase of 24%.
And contrary to claims that lower taxes would allow companies to improve coverage or patient care, the opposite has occurred.
While data is scarce, the rate of denied insurance claims is believed to have risen since the law went into effect.
The four major insurers' Medicare Advantage plans were found to frequently deny claims improperly. In the case of Centene, 93% of its denials for prior authorizations were overturned once patients appealed them, which indicates that they may have been improper. The others were not much better: 86% of Cigna's denials were overturned, along with 71% for Elevance/Anthem, and 65% for Humana.
The report said that such high rates of denials being overturned raise "questions about whether Medicare Advantage plans are complying with their coverage obligations or just reflexively saying 'no' in the hopes there will be no appeal."
Salespeople for the Cigna-owned company EviCore, which insurers hire to review claims, have even boasted that they help companies reduce their costs by increasing denials by 15%, part of a model that ProPublica has called the "denials for dollars business." Their investigation in 2024 found that insurers have used EviCore to evaluate whether to pay for coverage for over 100 million people.
And while paying tens of millions to their executives, both HCA and Universal Health Services—which each saved around $5.5 billion from Trump's tax law—have been repeatedly accused of overbilling patients while treating them in horrendous conditions.
"Congress should demand both more in tax revenue and better patient care from these highly profitable corporations," Americans for Tax Fairness said in a statement. "Healthcare corporation profitability should not come before quality of patient care. In healthcare, more than almost any other industry, the search for ever higher earnings threatens the wellbeing and lives of the American people."