{"id":286038,"date":"2026-04-25T22:16:22","date_gmt":"2026-04-25T22:16:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/286038\/"},"modified":"2026-04-25T22:16:22","modified_gmt":"2026-04-25T22:16:22","slug":"ca-gop-invokes-nick-shirley-as-it-fights-privacy-protections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/286038\/","title":{"rendered":"CA GOP invokes Nick Shirley as it fights privacy protections"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Lynn La<\/a>, CalMatters<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\""A\"
\n\t\t\t\tUCSF-Fresno Medical Student Darlene Tran checks the blood pressure of a farmworker in an equipment barn during part of the Rural Mobile Health program visit at a farm outside of Helm on June 16, 2025. Photo by Larry Valenzuela, CalMatters\/CatchLight Local<\/p>\n

This story was originally published by CalMatters<\/a>. Sign up<\/a> for their newsletters.<\/p>\n

Angelica Salas is used to hearing from people who have opinions about her work providing legal aid to immigrants. She knows many people have different views on immigration<\/a>, including ones that contradict hers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But she wasn\u2019t prepared for the moment that a stranger showed up at her mother\u2019s house looking for her.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI was very shocked. My mother said somebody came looking for you,\u201d said Salas, the executive director for the The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights. \u201cIt\u2019s OK if someone decides to picket me if they don\u2019t agree with what I’m doing. \u2026 That\u2019s their First Amendment right. It\u2019s very different to go to your mother\u2019s home.\u201d<\/p>\n

Incidents like that one \u2014 and the threatening phone calls Salas and her staff regularly receive \u2014 led her organization to support a bill that would expand a privacy program that allows certain workers to hide where they live from public databases.<\/p>\n

It seemed noncontroversial at first. An expansion of the Safe at Home Program the Legislature approved last year passed with little opposition.<\/p>\n

But the new proposal set off a firestorm among some Republican legislators and conservatives who argue that it is unconstitutional and has the potential to silence independent investigations into government wrongdoing.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot only are we unwilling to investigate fraud, but our Legislature is quite literally moving in the opposite direction,\u201d Assemblymember Josh Hoover<\/a> of Folsom said at a GOP press conference about fraud last week.<\/p>\n

The proposal passed the Assembly\u2019s public safety committee this week and is moving through the Legislature.<\/p>\n

Expanding Safe at Home program<\/p>\n

Originally established to help victims of domestic violence, California\u2019s Safe at Home program helps participants keep their residential addresses confidential and out of public records by providing a substitute mailing address through the California secretary of state. People who live in the same residence are also eligible.<\/p>\n

Since its creation nearly 30 years ago, eligibility has expanded<\/a> to include victims of stalking, sexual assault and human trafficking, as well as to people who work in reproductive health care and, during the COVID-19 pandemic, public health care officials<\/a>. To be eligible, individuals must provide evidence that they have received credible threats of violence.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Last year, California passed a law expanding it to people who work in gender-affirming health care<\/a>. Though the bill advanced through the Legislature mostly on a party-line vote, it received bipartisan support in the Assembly\u2019s public safety and judiciary committees, and two Republican assemblymembers voted for it on the floor.<\/p>\n

The new measure, Assembly Bill 2624<\/a>, would widen the eligibility for the Safe at Home Program to \u201cimmigration support services provider, employee, or volunteer,\u201d such as Salas and her colleagues.<\/p>\n

Stopping independent journalists?<\/p>\n

Some GOP assemblymembers, particularly Carl DeMaio<\/a> of San Diego, have railed against the bill, arguing that it violates constitutional protections for the press, and that it limits journalists\u2019 ability to investigate organizations for fraud, waste and abuse.\u00a0<\/p>\n

At a privacy committee hearing earlier this month<\/a>, DeMaio pointed to a provision of the bill that would ban a person from knowingly posting on the internet \u201cthe personal information or image of any designated immigration support services provider.\u201d<\/p>\n

The provision goes on to say \u201cwith the intent \u2026 to cause imminent great bodily harm\u201d and \u201creasonable fear.\u201d<\/p>\n

DeMaio dubbed the bill the \u201cStop Nick Shirley Act,\u201d after the conservative social media influencer whose 2025 video accused child care centers in Minnesota of widespread fraud. His pieces triggered a surge of federal immigration enforcement activity. In February, Shirley visited several Somali-run day care centers<\/a> in San Diego where he accused owners of running \u201cghost facilities\u201d with no children present.<\/p>\n

DeMaio argues that the bill would curb Shirley and other \u201ccitizen journalists” from investigating taxpayer-funded organizations by intimidating them with costly fines and sanctions.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not about protecting people from violence,\u201d said DeMaio. \u201cThis is about threatening and intimidating people who are trying to shine a light on bad behavior. If you have nothing to hide, why fear the transparency?\u201d<\/p>\n

During a Fox News segment<\/a>, Caroline Sunshine, President Donald Trump\u2019s former deputy communications director, urged Gov. Gavin Newsom to denounce the bill, calling it \u201can authoritarian piece of legislation \u2026 designed to silence journalists and cover up the mess that is California.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shirley himself posted a 25-minute video<\/a> confronting Democratic legislators about the proposal, and pointing out that the bill\u2019s author, Democratic Assemblymember Mia Bonta<\/a> of Oakland, is married to California Attorney General Rob Bonta.<\/p>\n

\u201cInstead of going after the fraudsters,\u201d said Shirley in the video, \u201cThey\u2019re trying to make it criminal to go after the people committing this fraud.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reaction to bill called ‘shocking’<\/p>\n

Assemblymember Bonta contends that the bill attempts to prevent the misuse of personal information \u2014 especially actions tied to threats or incitement of violence \u2014 not to limit lawful speech. But her measure has drawn so much ire from the right that Bonta said she and her staff have received death threats over it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can’t imagine how it must be for immigrant service providers who are doing their job every single day to have to deal with this level of hate,\u201d she said at the public safety hearing.<\/p>\n

The proposal has since been amended to exclude mentions of social media, though that language was in the law making gender-affirming health care providers eligible for the confidentiality program.<\/p>\n

Aydee Rodriguez, who testified in support of the bill as a fellow for the Sol\u00eds Policy Institute at the Women’s Foundation of California, said the reaction has been shocking.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis law has been in existence for 30 years. No one had an issue for 30 years until now, when we wanted to protect immigrant service providers,\u201d Rodriguez said. \u201cThat\u2019s the trigger, it\u2019s \u2018immigrant,\u2019 and that\u2019s what\u2019s sad for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

CalMatters reporter Nadia Lathan contributed to this story.<\/p>\n

This article was originally published on CalMatters<\/a> and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives<\/a> license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Lynn La, CalMatters UCSF-Fresno Medical Student Darlene Tran checks the blood pressure of a farmworker in an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":286039,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,2340,9,8,6198,14,9295],"class_list":{"0":"post-286038","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-california","8":"tag-california","9":"tag-california-democrats","10":"tag-california-headlines","11":"tag-california-news","12":"tag-california-republicans","13":"tag-immigration","14":"tag-privacy"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=286038"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286038\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/286039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}