Allies and enemies of YouTuber Nick Shirley gathered around California’s state Capitol on Wednesday as he vocalized his disdain for the state’s newly signed law AB2624.
Or as its critics like to call it — the Stop Nick Shirley Act.
The law, Shirley said to his crowd of supporters, “Was only created after I’d exposed widespread fraud here inside of America.”
In essence, the bill creates a new address-confidentiality program that allows eligible immigration-service workers or volunteers who “fear for their own safety” to apply for a substitute address that will appear on public records instead of their actual address.
It further prohibits someone from knowingly publishing or sharing an immigration-services worker’s personal information or image online when they have the specific intent to either incite another person to cause imminent harm or threaten the worker themselves in a way that puts them in fear for their safety.
The bill was nicknamed after Shirley by Republican California Assemblyman Carl DeMaio, who argued that it threatens freedom of speech and could put independent journalists and reporters at risk of unlawful activities. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed it last weekend.
“Instead of fixing rampant waste, fraud, and abuse, Newsom and his party are trying to punish the people exposing it. In so doing, they are blatantly violating our First Amendment freedom of speech rights,” DeMaio said in an op-ed published in the New York Post.
He also said he would be taking the bill to the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division “to review the law and intervene against it in the courts.”
Last December, Shirley published a viral investigation alleging widespread fraud among publicly funded childcare and healthcare providers in Minnesota. Shirley often arrived unannounced at the centers, engaging in on-the-ground confrontations and using public records, with assistance from a Minneapolis man who has researched fraud in the state for years.
The claims triggered mixed state and federal scrutiny:
Less than two months after Shirley’s Minnesota fraud video went viral, California state lawmaker Mia Bonta introduced AB2624. A month after that, Vice President JD Vance launched the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud.
Shirley said that the fraud he discovered in California is worse than what he discovered in Minnesota, describing it as a “billion-dollar fraud crisis.”
“Here in California, they’ve learned that by using immigrant support service providers, they can funnel millions upon millions of dollars to nonprofits, NGO’s, provide health care for illegal migrants and immigrants just in general,” he added. “And then they will then funnel that money back into their agendas. And it’s one big churn wheel that continues to enable the fraud and continue to push these crazy agendas here inside the state of California.”
But Bonta said the bill is for protecting Californians who serve the state’s immigrant community, and “doesn’t stop journalism or fraud investigations; it stops bad-faith actors from doxxing workers serving immigrants with proven intent to threaten or incite violence. Doxxing isn’t journalism.”
Shirley also pointed to Bonta’s marriage to California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a connection he argued was ironic given the position’s responsibility to investigate fraud.
“Fun fact, this bill was created by the attorney general’s wife, Mia Bonta. She’s an assemblywoman who created this bill only after I’d exposed widespread fraud in locations like Minnesota. And then I announced I was coming here to California,” Shirley said during Wednesday’s rally.
“While the attorney general is supposed to go after fraudsters, his wife is doing the opposite,” Shirley said.