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WASHINGTON, DC – OCTOBER 08: Independent journalist Nick Shirley speaks during a roundtable discussion in the State Dining Room of the White House on October 08, 2025 in Washington, DC. Trump’s administration held the roundtable to discuss the anti-fascist Antifa movement after signing an executive order designating it as a \u201cdomestic terrorist organization\u201d. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n
Anna Moneymaker<\/p>\n
Getty Images<\/p>\n
Online political influencer Nick Shirley<\/a> wore a camouflage-patterned sweatshirt as he and a cameraman waited outside the Capitol to question California state lawmakers. The hunter\u2019s garb seemed appropriate for the 24-year-old influencer, who has gained millions of followers through his ambush-centered style of online political journalism.<\/p>\n Shirley accumulated viral online fame after accusing daycare centers in Minneapolis that served the Somali community of widespread fraud \u2014 which in some cases were quickly disproven by local journalists,<\/a> but were cited by White House officials in the subsequent federal immigration crackdown in Minnesota.<\/p>\n Since then, Shirley\u2019s focus has turned to hospice fraud in California \u2014 a topic Republicans in the state have seized on<\/a>, sensing a political vulnerability for the Democratic establishment. Gov. Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta have responded with sharp pushback and hospice fraud arrests<\/a>, but the state\u2019s recent history of public funding scandals, beyond fake hospice centers, has lent Republicans plenty of fuel.<\/p>\n Amid that increasingly convoluted political dispute, Democrats in the Legislature were largely uninterested in engaging with Shirley\u2019s 1.8 million YouTube subscribers when he arrived at the Capitol last week.<\/p>\n Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas stepped quickly into a waiting SUV. Other lawmakers endured Shirley\u2019s questions for the one-block walk from the Capitol entrance until they could step through an officials-only doorway of the Legislature\u2019s office building on O Street.<\/p>\n \u201cI think you are a psycho scam artist,\u201d Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, told the streamer as he stepped into that building.<\/p>\n \ud83d\udea8 Exposing California’s corrupt “Stop Nick Shirley Act”, instead of going after the fraudsters California is now going after the people exposing the fraud.<\/p>\n This bill AB 2624 will: \u2014 Nick shirley (@nickshirleyy) April 18, 2026<\/a> <\/p>\n Shirley did not respond to a Sacramento Bee request for comment or for an interview.<\/p>\n Shirley was confronting lawmakers over AB 2624<\/a>, a bill carried by Assemblymember Mia Bonta, D-Alameda, that would allow lawyers, healthcare workers and other professionals who serve California\u2019s immigrant population to hide their home addresses in the public record if they can prove a credible threat to their safety.<\/p>\n Republican lawmakers have labeled the bill the \u201cStop Nick Shirley Act,\u201d and accused Bonta of creating cover for fraudulent businesses and blocking independent journalism. Bonta and her backers say conservatives have deliberately misled the public about her bill\u2019s purpose, leading to a wave of vitriol and threats against the lawmaker.<\/p>\n \u201cAny insinuation this bill would apply to Nick Shirley is insinuation that Nick Shirley intends to doxx individuals\u2019 personal information with the intent to incite violence,\u201d officials in her office said<\/a>.<\/p>\n A history of hospice fraud<\/p>\n State officials have labeled fraud a concern in California\u2019s hospice industry for years.<\/p>\n But Republicans have made a miniature parade to Los Angeles in recent months to spotlight the issue. Dr. Mehmet Oz, the head of the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, shot his own Shirley-esque video in January, in which he pointed from inside a car to businesses he said were fraudulent in the city\u2019s Van Nuys neighborhood.<\/p>\n Assemblywoman Alexandra Macedo, R-Tulare, also shot a video in Van Nuys, focused on a building she said had 197 hospices registered to it. Another video featured Macedo sitting in a park, scrolling on her phone. \u201cOh, I\u2019m just out here investigating hospice fraud that might be going on in the state of California,\u201d she says<\/a>, over a Taylor Swift song.<\/p>\n In 2021, after the Los Angeles Times documented growing hospice fraud, Newsom and the Legislature put a freeze on new hospice licenses in place.<\/p>\n The next year, the California State Auditor published a report<\/a> noting weak safeguards and a rapid increase in the number of hospices registering in Los Angeles County. It appeared likely that, \u201ca network or networks of individual perpetrators in Los Angeles County are engaging in a large and organized effort to defraud the Medicare and Medi-Cal hospice programs,\u201d the auditor wrote.<\/p>\n The governor and the attorney general have staunchly defended their response.<\/p>\n Newsom officials said the governor has taken a range of steps to combat hospice fraud since the auditor\u2019s report came out, including the creation of a multiple-agency task force to address the problem and a growing number of arrests and investigations. But four years later, the California Department of Public Health is still implementing guidelines from the auditor\u2019s report, leading the Legislature last year to extend the ban on new hospice programs into 2027.<\/p>\n Even as state and federal officials trade blame over who is responsible, law enforcement agencies at both levels of government have made highly publicized arrests of multimillion dollar fraud rings this month.<\/p>\n \u201cThis isn\u2019t a political game for us,\u201d Attorney General Rob Bonta said in an April news release announcing the charging of 21 people with suspected hospice fraud to the tune of $267 million.<\/p>\n Bonta\u2019s announcement came a week after the U.S. Department of Justice announced its own arrests of nine people it accused of bilking the federal government out of more than $50 million through fake hospice programs.<\/p>\n It was Bonta\u2019s second announcement of a hospice fraud bust in as many months. The first came in February, when he announced the arrest of seven people in Monterey County, including three doctors, over more than $3 million in alleged fraud.<\/p>\n \u201cClaims that California is overrun with fraud and doing nothing about it are simply false,\u201d Bonta said in the news release<\/a>. \u201cThis case proves it.\u201d<\/p>\n Touching a nerve?<\/p>\n Shirley\u2019s online following grew quickly after his videos in Minnesota went viral and were cited by White House officials amid the federal immigration crackdown in Minneapolis. That crackdown culminated in the deaths of two residents, Alex Pretti and Renee Good, and in widespread outrage against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.<\/p>\n But fraud scandals in state funding programs in Minnesota also led Gov. Tim Walz to end his reelection campaign. Shirley has sought credit for Walz\u2019s withdrawal.<\/p>\n Though the furor over fraud investigations preceded the YouTuber\u2019s arrival in Minnesota, Shirley and other conservatives thought they had found a winning playbook.<\/p>\n They quickly moved to apply it to Newsom and other blue state politicians.<\/p>\n Beyond hospice fraud, Republicans have raised the estimated $20 billion in fraudulent unemployment benefits California paid during the pandemic, and failures during the Newsom administration to track massive spending on homelessness.<\/p>\n The years of headlines stick with voters, Republican pollster Mike Madrid said.<\/p>\n Shirley, Madrid said \u201cis on to something. And that doesn\u2019t make him an honest broker but it makes him believable because people have seen it.\u201d<\/p>\n Madrid pointed to February polling data he conducted with Latino voters in California, the vast majority of whom disapproved of Trump\u2019s job performance. Of those poll respondents, 73% labeled corruption and fraud in government as an extremely important issue \u2014 far higher than the 53% who ranked concerns about U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement that high.<\/p>\n With widespread allegations of corruption against the Trump administration, neither party has much credibility with voters on fraud issues, Madrid said.<\/p>\n Newsom has responded to Republicans\u2019 rhetoric about California fraud in part by highlighting a criminal case in New York in which Trump\u2019s companies have been convicted of tax fraud, and the president\u2019s pardoning of people convicted of a litany of white-collar crimes.<\/p>\n \u201cDonald Trump is the personification of fraud,\u201d Newsom said in January. \u201cHis hypocrisy knows no bounds.\u201d The governor and his team have also said the federal government noted that the Trump administration paused a hospice oversight program last year.<\/p>\n Democrats shouldn\u2019t brush off Republican attacks over fraud, said Dan Schnur, a political analyst who teaches at University of California Berkeley\u2019s Institute of Governmental Studies.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not going to fundamentally change the power dynamic in the Capitol, but they\u2019d be wise not to ignore the issue,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s clear that both the governor and the attorney general see some potential vulnerability on this issue so they\u2019ve been working to demonstrate their concern. It\u2019s not clear whether the Legislature sees the same urgency.\u201d<\/p>\n So far, the supermajority has given no indication it intends to spend time developing new anti-fraud initiatives.<\/p>\n Assemblymember Bonta usually takes care to separate her political work from her husband\u2019s. But she cited the attorney general\u2019s recent arrests as evidence that the state has the resources and infrastructure in place to police fraud.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is the only time,\u201d Bonta said, \u201cthat I will speak to the work of my partner in life and partner in service, but I actually believe that our Attorney General is doing a very fine job and completing investigations that have been years in the making.\u201d<\/p>\n California Republicans are playing the best \u2014 often the only \u2014 cards the outnumbered political party have in the statehouse to force the issue: Vocal criticism, and occasional theatrics.<\/p>\n On April 15, Republican assembly members called for a special legislative session to address fraud at a news conference in the Capitol basement.<\/p>\n \u201cInstead of taking action, the politicians up here are circling the wagons and keeping secrets,\u201d Assemblymember Carl DeMaio, R-Valley Center, said.<\/p>\n The next day, as Shirley positioned himself outside the Capitol, Democrats killed the Republican\u2019s special session motion without a debate. They did the same to an attempt by DeMaio to table Bonta\u2019s bill.<\/p>\n \u201cOutrageous,\u201d DeMaio said in a video posted to his X account after the vote. \u201cProtect freedom of speech,\u201d DeMaio said, imploring voters to call their state lawmakers. \u201cExpose the fraud.\u201d<\/p>\n Bonta: Bill extends a program to protect threatened workers<\/p>\n Legislative analysts say Bonta\u2019s bill won\u2019t thwart fraud investigations, and the lawmaker rejects the idea that Shirtey has anything to do with her bill.<\/p>\n She began working on the legislation last fall, she told The Bee, before Shirley had turned his attention to California or even Minnesota. She had not heard of the YouTuber, she said, before this month\u2019s furor.<\/p>\n The progressive lawmaker\u2019s concern was the safety of people who provide services to immigrants during an era of increasing xenophobia, she said.<\/p>\n Her tool to do so is by expanding the California Secretary of State\u2019s Safe at Home program, created by lawmakers in 1998 to allow victims of domestic violence or stalking to have their personal information removed from the public record if they can document threats against them.<\/p>\n Since then, the Legislature has expanded the program to include other people lawmakers have viewed as vulnerable to attack \u2013 adding abortion providers and patients, election and public health officials, and health care providers who give gender-affirming care.<\/p>\n Bonta\u2019s bill would add to that list those who provide social services to immigrant communities \u2014 including legal, humanitarian and translation services. It would also make it a crime to publish such workers\u2019 personal information or images, if the intent is specifically to threaten or incite violence.<\/p>\n Shirley has labeled Bonta\u2019s bill a threat to journalism and the First Amendment, saying the Democratic lawmaker is trying to stop his investigations.<\/p>\n The criticism, from Shirley, his supporters, and California Republicans, has not swayed Democratic state lawmakers. If anything, it\u2019s coalesced support.<\/p>\n \u201cShame on anyone who is making this lightning rod, this firestorm happen,\u201d Assembly Public Safety Chairman Nick Schultz, D-Burbank, said.<\/p>\n Schultz\u2019s committee was the third in the assembly to endorse Bonta\u2019s bill on Tuesday, voting along party lines 7-2 to advance it. Surprisingly, given the robust opposition to the bill online, only one person showed up to speak against the bill: Sacramento resident Damian Duran, who described himself as an independent journalist and \u201ctruth seeker\u201d who wanted to investigate fraud in California.<\/p>\n Duran told The Bee that videos posted by Shirley and DeMaio had driven him to attend the committee hearing and speak against the bill. But he changed his position over the course of the hearing.<\/p>\n \u201cNow that I\u2019ve listened, O.K., it\u2019s more about the immigration (service providers), what they were going through,\u201d Duran said. \u201cIt had nothing to do with Nick Shirley, nothing to do with the hospice fraud.\u201d<\/p>\n The same day as the assembly committee\u2019s meeting in Sacramento, the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee held a hearing on hospice fraud.<\/p>\n \u201cVideos by citizen journalists in Gavin Newsom\u2019s California show people hiding the dirty conditions of neglected or wholly non-existent facilities, all while driving away in luxury vehicles and refusing to answer questions,\u201d Rep. Jason Smith, R-Missouri, the committee\u2019s chairman said.<\/p>\n He was describing scenes from Shirley\u2019s investigation in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n The influencer is a celebrity even in California\u2019s capitol city. During his visit last week, Shirley took time to greet fans in between questioning lawmakers, at one point posing for a photograph with a young boy and his father.<\/p>\n \u201cWe love you Nick,\u201d one motorist shouted as Shirley followed a lawmaker down the sidewalk, \u201cget \u2018em!\u201d<\/p>\n
– Criminalize journalists with misdemeanors, $10,000 fines, imprisonment, and content takedown
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