The Trump administration is freezing child care funding to the state of Minnesota in response to a viral video that purports to expose extensive fraud by federally funded day care centers.
Nick Shirley, a 23-year-old self-described "independent YouTube journalist," posted the 42-minute video on X and YouTube the day after Christmas.
In it, he and an older man — identified only as "David" — visit various seemingly empty day care centers, bombarding Somali employees with questions and accusing them of not providing services to any children despite receiving public funds. The pair claim to have exposed over $110 million in fraud.
Allegations of social services fraud in Minnesota have been the subject of federal investigations and mainstream media coverage for years.
In one high-profile example, more than 90 individuals have been charged since 2022 in the ongoing case of a Minnesota nonprofit that prosecutors say misappropriated some $250 million in federal COVID-19 relief funds intended to feed children in need, calling it "the largest Covid-19 fraud scheme in the country."
And a federal prosecutor said earlier this month that half or more of the roughly $18 billion in federal funds that supported 14 Minnesota-run programs since 2018 may have been stolen.
However, Shirley's specific allegations have not been verified, with some challenging them in recent days. The manager of one Minnesota day care center has since said Shirley visited outside of its regular hours, while a CNN camera crew interviewing Shirley outside a different center filmed caregivers dropping off their kids in the background (he dismissed them as "showing face").
"How do I know that [the allegations are] true?" Shirley responded when asked. "Well, we showed you guys what was happening, and then you guys can go ahead and make your own analysis."
The lack of evidence hasn't stopped a number of prominent conservatives — including Elon Musk and key members of the Trump administration — from amplifying and acting on Shirley's claims. As of Wednesday, Shirley's video has over 131 million views on X and 2.5 million on YouTube.
Vice President Vance reposted Shirley's video the day after it went live, writing, "This dude has done far more useful journalism than any of the winners of the 2024 [Pulitzer] prizes." (Those prizes went to journalists who covered a range of topics, from billionaires' influence over the Supreme Court to catastrophic flooding in California and missing Black girls and women in Chicago.)
FBI Director Kash Patel also responded, writing on X that "even before the public conversation escalated online, the FBI had surged personnel and investigative resources to Minnesota to dismantle large-scale fraud schemes exploiting federal programs."
Shirley, suddenly in the national spotlight, has expressed concerns about his safety and is asking supporters to donate to his security, including by selling $50 sweatshirts on his website. And he's continued to criticize Minnesota's Democratic Gov. Tim Walz and the mainstream media for their perceived inaction on the issue.
"Mainstream media is more mad at me then they are at the FACT that billions of YOUR dollars are being used for fraudulent business," Shirley tweeted Wednesday. "I am not an enemy of the people, they are. I'm with you, they are against you."
Shirley started out as a vlogger
Shirley has been making shock-value YouTube videos for years, starting with pranks before wading into political exposés.
The Utah native vlogged consistently throughout high school, amassing some 7,000 followers before graduating in 2020, according to a profile that year from local NBC affiliate KSL-TV.
"Some people might not know who Nick Shirley is yet, but one day, they will," it reads.
One of his earliest stunts was flying to New York City at age 16 without telling his parents. They escalated from there: sneaking into influencer Jake Paul's wedding, tricking TikTokkers into auditioning for a fake Justin Bieber music video, riding a bike over a ramp lit on fire. He also filmed himself in the crowd outside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
Then came a hiatus: Shirley announced in December 2021 that he would be taking a two-year break from YouTube to serve on a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Santiago, Chile.
He returned to the platform in 2023 with a video interviewing undocumented immigrants at the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona. From that point on, his work took on a decidedly political bent, with man-on-the-street style interviews focused on topics including illegal immigration, the 2024 election, President Trump's deployment of federal troops to blue cities and the ensuing protests against them.
His two most-viewed videos are from this period, filmed from the El Salvadoran mega-prison housing deportees alleged to be gang members and another in Rio de Janeiro, titled "I Infiltrated Rio Brazil's Most Dangerous Gang."
The description of his YouTube Channel — which has 1.29 million subscribers as of Wednesday — reads: "Here to entertain and bring the truth to all."
An "independent journalist" with an agenda
Shirley's rise to prominence hit a new milestone in October, when he was invited to participate in a White House roundtable about the "antifa" movement — the far-left ideology opposed to fascism, which Trump has designated a domestic terrorist organization.
At the event, Shirley introduced himself as a "100% independent YouTube journalist" and said that while he's traveled to 15 countries for that work, "the most dangerous place I've been has been here in the United States" because of anti-Trump protests.
"I'm attacked every time I do my job," he said, without citing specifics. "When I leave my house to go to work, I'm violently assaulted. I've been bear sprayed and beaten down. I've been almost killed."
According to recent research from the Harvard Kennedy School, the thousands of local protests during Trump's second term have yielded an "extremely low number of injuries, property damage or arrests."
Shirley directly accused the mainstream media — particularly broadcasters — of undercovering and downplaying the violence of those protests. Trump responded by asking him to name the worst offenders, to which Shirley replied: "I'm not talking about Fox … Newsmax or any outlet that resembles them."
Shirley is part of a broader group of right-leaning journalists and political commentators who do not work for any particular outlet. The White House has embraced what it calls "new media," giving them unprecedented levels of access at the same time as it places restrictions on established journalistic outlets.
University of Minnesota media law professor Jane Kirtley told member station MPR News that individuals do not necessarily need a formal affiliation to do fine journalism. But she says many of today's news influencers prioritize fearmongering over fact-checking, something she says she observes in Shirley's reporting.
"They have a narrative, and they do everything they can to advance that narrative, but they seem to spend little to no time looking for the other side of the story, and that's what good investigative journalism has to do," she added.
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