The same public charity that supports Real America’s Voice and Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast funneled $1.4 million to the parent company of ADN Cuba and ADN América from 2021 to 2024.
ADN Cuba has evolved over the past decade. It began in 2017 as a cultural bridge—a shared space uniting the diverse perspectives and creative visions of Cubans on and off the island.
Nearly a decade later, ADN Cuba is part of a thriving right-of-center media ecosystem. Its anti-regime reporting blends seamlessly with heated U.S. partisan debates leading up to the mid-term congressional elections.
ADN Cuba’s parent organization, Ulloo Media Inc., has received key support from the Informing America Foundation. From its K Street NW office just a half mile from the White House, the foundation distributed a total of $18 million in grants from 2021 to 2024. That included $1.4 million to Ulloo Media for the creation of “bi-lingual media focusing on public-interest policy.”
Conservative journalist John Solomon founded IAF in 2021. Former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows was listed as a director on the board in 2021 and 2022, highlighting the foundation’s political clout despite filing as a strictly non-partisan public charity.
At first glance, it appears the foundation paid $0 for executive compensation, giving the impression that the leadership was working for free. But dig into the back pages of the charity’s 2024 tax filing and you’ll find $708,000 in executive pay.
While unconventional, such an approach is legal. It’s also efficient. By outsourcing everything to contractors and keeping its operation lean, Informing America can focus on its core mission: Funneling millions of dollars in donations into an ecosystem of right-of-center media operations.
The foundation’s mega-donors are anonymous, leading to criticism that it is a “dark money” operation.
To be fair, the left also uses wealthy anonymous contributors to fund media operations.
COURIER Newsroom is a prime example. Democratic political strategist Tara McGowan founded the company in 2019. COURIER now operates 20 digital publications with such names as The ‘Gander, UpNorthNews and Granite Post.
WIRED Magazine calls it “a media powerhouse for the Left.”
“Courier Newsroom is a partisan media project that supports liberal politics and Democratic political candidates while appearing to be state-level independent news outlets,” InfluenceWatch reports.
“We’re reaching our audiences where they spend their time – on platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook,” COURIER states.
Informing America passed out 40 grants to Ulloo Media and 17 other organizations from 2022 to 2024. Its top grant recipients include:
- Star News Digital Media: A network that operates in critical political battleground states. Key outlets include The Georgia Star News, The Arizona Sun Times, The Tennessee Star and The Michigan Star. Content is optimized for social media, dramatically boosting its audience size.
- Performance One Media: This private, Colorado-based firm produces and distributes Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast and Real America’s Voice.
- Bentley Media Group: The company behind conservative investigative journalist John Solomon’s digital outlet, Just the News. The outlet reports on politics, government accountability and national security from a right-of-center perspective.
- Gingrich 360: The multimedia production and consulting firm owned by former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. Deborah Myers, now CEO of Informing America, used to run this company.
- Accuracy in Media: A media watchdog and activist organization founded in 1969. AIM has traditionally focused on what it sees as a liberal bias in mainstream journalism.
Informing America’s largest single institutional funder is DonorsTrust, which gave the foundation $8 million from 2022 to 2024.
DonorsTrust is a public charity and is not legally required to disclose names of its clients. It oversees billions of dollars in assets and distributes hundreds of millions of dollars every year to a range of policy, media and legal organizations.
DonorsTrust promises never to give funds to politically liberal causes and says it “focuses solely on conservatives, libertarian, and faith driven donors and their charities.”
Critics say such organizations “fund anti-government and hate groups at a rate 3.5 times higher than other sources.” See “Are Donor-Advised Funds Facilitating Opaque Giving to Political Engaged Charities?”
Supporters say such groups safeguard donors.
“During this time of deep polarization in our country, donors are facing increased harassment and threats of violence, and donor privacy allows Americans to give freely and generously without fear,” according to the Philanthropy Roundtable.
Informing America says it “promotes the gathering and dissemination of information about important public-policy issues facing the U.S. through investigative, explanatory, data-driven, and multimedia journalism, as well as other forms of public-interest information.”
The foundation’s chief executive officer, chief operating officer, chief financial officer and chief editor are all classified on tax forms as independent contractors rather than traditional employees.
The unusual arrangement underscores the foundation’s role as a pass-through organization designed to quickly funnel millions of dollars in donations to media outlets.
The foundation’s grants to Ulloo Media totaled:
- $333,333 in 2021
- $333,334 in 2022
- $433,333 in 2023
- $300,000 in 2024
Records don’t say whether any of the funds went to ADN Cuba, which features coverage in Spanish and English. See English-language page.
Ulloo Media’s non-profit arm is the Digital News Association in Parkland, Florida. It has received more than $3.8 million in U.S. government grants since 2020 for programs specifically targeting Cuba, according to HigherGov.com.
The now dismantled U.S. Agency for International Development gave the association $3.6 million to promote human rights and freedom of information in Cuba, develop local media networks and stimulate “discussions among citizen networks to enable political participation.”
The Agency for Global Media, which oversees the Office of Cuba Broadcasting, awarded the organization $240,000 in July. The purpose is listed as “investigative journalism, research and media production services.”
By law, such funds cannot be used for political reporting in the United States. Informing America grants to ADN América are not restricted in the same way.
The media landscape is complicated these days. More than 266,000 newspaper jobs have vanished since 2005, according to Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism. Partisan advocacy and the invisible hands of billionaire patrons have filled the void.
Fear and outrage drive social media algorithms. What’s left is a permanent state of information warfare. The news is rarely just reported—it is deployed.
Information warfare is especially combative now as the 2026 congressional elections approach and the Trump administration continues ramping up the pressure on Cuba.
What’s your opinion? How do you see the media landscape? Do you trust what you read and watch?
Gemini, Google’s AI tool, rates this article as accurate. See fact check.
The Agency has to be involved in some fashion. I just read the National Security Archive’s latest project: a deep probe of the CIA in Mexico. It’s not a reach to say that almost all U.S. involvement in America is wicked. In Cuba’s case, all the evil is labeled with noble-sounding names, but the result is to ravage Cubans who have nothing to do with the island’s government. Keep up the outstanding work. The media landscape is a wasteland.
Thanks for your comments, Ricardo. It would be fascinating to know just what the CIA is doing in Cuba right now. It’s such an asymmetric fight. Hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars in State Department, Agency for Global Media, and Defense (War) Department money, public records show. And who knows how much the CIA and other intelligence agencies are spending because that’s all secret. All of these resources target a country with military equipment that is rusting, obsolete and deteriorating.