To say Nick Shirley is making waves is an understatement.
On Dec. 26, the 23-year-old Farmington, Utah, native posted a 42-minute video of himself and a man named David looking into allegations of billions of dollars of fraud in Minnesota. On Tuesday, four days after it posted, the video had been viewed more than 127 million times on X and watched more than 2 million times on YouTube.
Shirley, who served a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Chile, was given the Citizen Journalist of the Year award in November at President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. On Instagram, he wrote, “Weird thing is this feels like just the start…“.
When his Minnesota video was posted, Shirley had about 500,000 followers on X; now he has nearly 1 million. He also has more than 1.2 million subscribers on YouTube.
At the beginning of the video, Shirley interviewed the Minnesota-native, David (whose last name was not included), on why he started suspecting fraud in his state. David said he began noticing childcare facilities popping up around his office in Minneapolis, but no children would go in or out.
“All I’d see were a couple of guys outside smoking, and I’d go by another one and see the same thing, and I said, ‘Where do these kids play?’” David said. When he started looking into one of the daycares, he found that it was licensed to serve 80 children. His investigation unfolded from there.
Clad in a grey sweatshirt, Shirley went from daycare to daycare in Minneapolis, knocking on doors. With David next to him, Shirley asked adults at the daycares if there were any children present and what they thought about the allegations of fraud.
One daycare Shirley visited, the “Quality Learing [sic] Center,” has garnered exceptional scrutiny online.
When The New York Post went to the site on Monday, they found the parking lot full of cars and saw about 20 children coming in and out of the building — a scene drastically different from the one Shirley observed.
A local told the Post, the scene Monday was “highly unusual,” adding, “We’ve never seen kids go in there until today. That parking lot is empty all the time, and I was under the impression that place is permanently closed.”
The daycare owner’s son, 26-year-old Ibrahim Ali, told The New York Post that Shirley visited before the daycare opened and also blamed their graphic designer for the sign’s typo.
Shirley investigates Medicare and Medicaid fraud as well
After Shirley and David made their rounds at Minneapolis childcare facilities, they headed over to an office building with 14 Somali-owned health care companies.
Shirley’s investigation builds on the work done by journalists Christopher Rufo and Ryan Thorpe, who shed light on Minnesota’s Medicare and Medicaid fraud in City Journal at the end of November. Their investigation quoted then-acting U.S. Attorney for Minnesota Joe Thompson, as he announced several indictments for alleged fraudsters.
“Most of these cases, unlike a lot of Medicare fraud and Medicaid fraud cases nationally, aren’t just over-billing,” Thompson said. “These are often just purely fictitious companies solely created to defraud the system, and that’s unique in the extent to which we have that here in Minnesota.”
So Shirley tracked some of the health care providers. Outside of “Itasca Home Health Care,” the independent journalist said, “I’d like to speak to someone here about getting health care.”
The person inside closed the door and said, “No, no, no.”
Inside another health care office, Shirley asked a woman at a desk, “We’re looking for the best rates of health care here inside this building, because we have so many options. Who can we talk to about getting the best health care?”
She responded, “I don’t know. Sorry.”
Then Minneapolis law enforcement showed up and asked the 23-year-old to leave, after receiving a complaint that Shirley was “harassing individuals.”
When asked to respond to the allegations made in the video, a spokesperson for Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz told Fox News that the "governor has worked for years to crack down on fraud" and “has strengthened oversight — including launching investigations into these specific facilities, one of which was already closed.”
The video goes viral
The day after Shirley released the video, Vice President JD Vance posted on X, “This dude has done far more useful journalism than any of the winners of the 2024 @pulitzercenter prizes."
Elon Musk, who ran the federal government’s Department of Government Efficiency earlier this year, praised Shirley’s reporting as well. In one post he wrote, “One taxpayer funded daycare after another where there are literally zero kids, not even a few kids just for show!”
On Monday night, Donald Trump Jr. invited Shirley on his podcast.
Shirley said he believes the video “hit so hard,” because it’s “at home, and it’s something that should have been fixed.”
“People have known about the fraud for years, but no one has had the guts to talk to it and confront it head on... It’s something we could fix tomorrow by not letting it happen any more,” Shirley told the president’s son.
And while Shirley’s reporting has garnered praise from some, he told Donald Trump Jr. he’s been receiving death threats on social media. “It’s not the most safe thing for me to be moving around freely right now,” he said.
People online say Shirley is inspiring a citizen-led ‘DOGE 2.0′
From coast to coast, local political leaders have asked Nick to conduct similar investigations in their own states.
Chad Bianco, a Republican running to replace Gavin Newsom as California governor, posted on X, “Dear @nickshirleyy Any interest in moving to California? We could use you."
Similarly, Patricia Morgan, a former Rhode Island representative, said, “Looks like Massachusetts and Rhode Island could use the investigative reporting of @nickshirleyy. The fraud must stop!"
Chamath Palihapitiya, an American venture capitalist and host of the All In podcast, responded to Shirley’s reporting on X, on Sunday.
“We may be witnessing the Cambrian explosion that creates DOGE 2.0 - completely decentralized gonzo journalism exposing fraud all over the country,” Palihapitiya wrote.
Shirley’s reporting has also gained the attention of Attorney General Pam Bondi, who posted on Monday, "@NickShirleyy’s work has helped show Americans the scale of fraud in Tim Walz’s Minnesota."
She added that the U.S. Justice Department has investigated the fraud for months and charged 98 people, with “more prosecutions coming.”
Investigators from the Department of Homeland Security have also been deployed and are following in Shirley’s footsteps, “going door-to-door” to fraud sites, assistant secretary for the DHS Tricia McLaughlin told the Charlie Kirk Show on Tuesday.
Christopher Rufo, who first published a story on the fraud with City Journal, summarized the fallout of Shirley’s reporting succinctly.
“We opened the discourse with the Somali fraud story. Now it’s built into a massive social reaction. But the question is whether the Trump Administration will deliver results: investigations, arrests, mugshots, prosecutions. Ultimately, only action matters,” he said.