Status: 🔴 Fracking billionaires who used a $4.7 million donation to launch The Daily Wire, a right-wing media outlet that amplifies anti-trans rhetoric. Through their Thirteen Foundation, they have poured hundreds of millions into conservative Christian causes, including organizations that actively oppose LGBTQ+ rights.
Daniel Howard Wilks (born 1955) and Farris Cullen Wilks (born 1951) are American petroleum industry billionaires who made their fortune in hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”).[1] Sons of a bricklayer who once slept in a goat shed as children, they founded Wilks Masonry in 1995 before pivoting to fracking services with Frac Tech in 2002. In 2011, they sold their 70% stake in Frac Tech to Singapore’s government for $3.5 billion.[2]
Farris Wilks is a pastor and bishop of the Assembly of Yahweh (7th day), a conservative, non-trinitarian congregation near Cisco, Texas, that considers homosexuality “a crime.” His brother Dan Wilks shares the same religious and political worldview.
Both brothers reside in Cisco, Texas, and keep an extremely low public profile — their charitable foundation has no website and avoids publicity.
The Wilks brothers provided $4.7 million in seed funding to launch The Daily Wire in 2015, co-founded by conservative commentator Ben Shapiro and filmmaker Jeremy Boreing.[3] Farris Wilks manages the entity that publishes the Daily Wire (DailyWire Ventures, LLC).[4]
The Daily Wire has become one of the most influential right-wing media companies in the United States, and “regularly erases trans identities and parrots conservative transphobic talking points.”[5] The outlet has been described by multiple academic studies as a “fake news website” and has published climate change denial alongside its anti-LGBTQ+ content.[6]
In 2011, Farris Wilks and his wife JoAnn each contributed $50 million to The Thirteen Foundation, their primary philanthropic vehicle.[7] The foundation has no public website and operates in secrecy, but tax filings reveal massive grants to far-right organizations.[7:1]
The American Prospect noted that the foundation’s giving constitutes “a massive infusion of funds into some of the most aggressive right-wing organizations that are fighting legal equality for LGBT people, access to contraception and abortion services for women, and promoting the Tea Party’s vision of a federal government that is constitutionally forbidden from protecting American workers, consumers, and communities by regulating corporate behavior.”[7:2]
The Wilks brothers are two of the largest funders of PragerU, a conservative video production company that targets middle and high school children with its content.[8] The Thirteen Foundation gave $1 million to PragerU in 2015. PragerU regularly publishes anti-trans content alongside its broader conservative messaging.[8:1]
Through the Thirteen Foundation and other vehicles, the Wilks brothers have funded:
Farris Wilks is the pastor and bishop of the Assembly of Yahweh (7th day), a conservative Judaizing congregation that:
Their father, Gwyn Voy Wilks, was a founder of the congregation.[11]
Neither brother gives interviews or maintains a public presence. Their foundation has no website, and they rarely comment publicly. However, the paper trail through tax filings, campaign finance records, and investigative journalism makes their funding of the anti-trans movement well-documented.
Atmos/HEATED — Fossil Fuel Billionaires Are Bankrolling the Anti-Trans Movement (June 2025) ↩︎
Academic studies describing Daily Wire as fake news (via Wikipedia) ↩︎
The American Prospect — Meet the Billionaire Brothers You Never Heard Of Who Fund the Religious Right (2014) ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
ProPublica — The Wilks brothers’ Texas political network (2024) ↩︎ ↩︎
CNN — How the billionaire Wilks brothers are funding the far right ↩︎
CNN — First on CNN: Billionaire brothers give Cruz super PAC $1.5 million (2015) ↩︎
Idaho Statesman — How billionaire brothers bought up central Idaho and locked out the public (2019) ↩︎
DeSmog — Fracking Titans Spend Millions Proselytizing School Children ↩︎