Chris Rufo’s Big Right-Wing Score

The far-right operative landed serious money from a major right-wing funder.

Written by Natalie Jonas                                                                                 Published: 3/21/25

Chris Rufo just scored a major haul from one of the largest right-wing funders in the country. On Tuesday, the far-right activist was named a winner of the 2025 Bradley Prize from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, which comes with a $300,000 stipend, up from $250,000 last year.

The prize is bestowed on individuals who champion the work and mission of the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation — “to restore, strengthen, and protect the principles and institutions of American exceptionalism,” the press release noted. The organization has been a major funder of climate change denial, islamophobia, and COVID-19 misinformation.

The second Bradley Prize winner was announced on March 20 — Cornell professor and classicist Barry Strauss. The third recipient will be announced on March 25 and all three winners will be honored in Washington D.C. on May 29.

Previous winners of the prize include Stanford health economist and COVID contrarian Jay Bhattacharya, who is now Donald Trump’s pick to lead the National Institutes of Health. Bhattacharya is best known for his advocacy of a pandemic herd immunity strategy reliant on mass infection. Since 2020, he has worked to sow doubt in the mainstream consensus on pandemic mitigation measures and even vaccines.

Rufo’s credentials within conservative scholarship are mainly linked to his work at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank that has worked to ban the teaching of critical race theory in schools, among other feats. Rufo has become known as something of a headhunter, targeting the supposed liberal establishment including journalists and academics.

The Bradley Foundation has donated substantial amounts to groups Rufo is affiliated with. It gave a whopping $2.1 million to the Manhattan Institute from 2020 through 2023, where Rufo is a senior fellow and director of their Logos Initiative. He is also a contributing editor at City Journal, the Manhattan Institute’s in-house publication. The Bradley Impact Fund, a donor-advised fund associated with the foundation, funneled an additional $95,000 to the group.

The right-wing, private Hillsdale College, where Rufo was named a distinguished fellow in 2023, got $58,000 through the impact fund.

Meanwhile, the Heritage Foundation, where Rufo was a visiting fellow in 2020, received $1 million from Bradley between 2020 and 2022 and another $371,000 through its affiliated donor-advised fund. The Claremont Institute, where Rufo also previously held a fellowship, received $400,000 from the foundation 2020 through 2023 and $60,000 through the impact fund.

“Chris has galvanized a public understanding of American exceptionalism and defends vigorously the principles that have made America a land of freedom and opportunity,” said Bradley Foundation president Rick Graber in the press release announcing the award, “He has reinvigorated conservatives by showing that it’s possible to restore vital American institutions to their intended purpose."

As Important Context reported last May, Rufo is also the founder and director of a nonprofit called American Studio, which has received hundreds of thousands of dollars through donor-advised funds and right-wing foundations. His wife is the group’s treasurer.

On its federal and state filings, American Studio lists its address as a mail center in Gig Harbor. The group’s mission is to “advance American principles through scholarship, publication, litigation and activism.” In 2023, it paid Rufo $250,000, or 41 percent of its total expenditures that year—an amount equal to roughly 17 percent of its total fundraising haul. American Studio does not appear to have a social media presence but its IRS Form 990 shows it paid contractors a total of $116,000 for “production,” “consulting,” and “advertising.” The group did not note any program services on it beyond “donations.”

American Studio currently boasts a One-Star rating from Charity Navigator, which rates charities by their financial efficiency, sustainability, and trustworthiness and commitment to governance practices and policies.

Rufo has published extensively on his Substack, where he claims to be “leading the fight against the left-wing ideological regime,” writing on such topics as Trump’s plan to disassemble the Department of Education, which was signed into action this week, and the supposed “ideological capture” inside the National Security Agency by a “trans cult.” He has also written against DEI initiatives for The New York Times in 2023 and against teaching critical race theory over the years.

Rufo has not made any comments on how he plans to spend the prize. When Important Context reached out to him last year about his major right-wing funding, he responded simply, “I ❤️ billionaires.”

It is unclear what past winners of the Bradley Prize have done with the money, although one of last year’s winners, William B. Allen, donated a portion of the prize to The Institute of World Politics, a secretive, conservative graduation program that teaches natural security and foreign policy. Bhattacharya claimed to have donated his awarded money to charity, but did not say which and he did not disclose the prize on his financial disclosure form as Trump’s NIH nominee.

Rufo released a statement this week following his win: “This award reaffirms my commitment to the principles of freedom, equality, and civic engagement – values that have guided my work. I extend my heartfelt thanks to The Bradley Foundation for their support and to my colleagues, mentors, and family, whose encouragement has been invaluable.”