OPINION:
The Stop Nick Shirley Act, which California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law Saturday, is a gross violation of the First Amendment and a shield to protect government perpetrators of waste, fraud and abuse.
The California law is bound to be struck down as unconstitutional, as it prevents journalists from investigating nonprofit organizations operating on the taxpayer’s dime.
Late last year, Nick Shirley, an independent journalist and YouTuber, went door to door in Minneapolis, staking out taxpayer-subsidized childcare centers. What he uncovered was widespread, multimillion-dollar fraud: centers that operated outside business hours, some that were empty of children and, notably, one facility with a sign misspelling “learning” as “learing.”
Mr. Shirley’s posts went viral, catching the eye of federal prosecutors and Vice President J.D. Vance’s White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud. To date, federal prosecutors have achieved major sentencing and conviction milestones in Minnesota’s social services fraud cases.
These were highlighted by a nearly 42-year prison sentence in May for Feeding Our Future leader Aimee Bock, as well as recent multi-defendant Medicaid and childcare enforcement takedowns targeting more than $90 million in intended losses.
California, another blue state rife with waste, fraud and abuse in its federal welfare programs, took note of Minnesota’s plight. When Mr. Shirley vowed to investigate the Golden State, Democratic lawmakers quickly looked to criminalize his efforts.
California Assemblywoman Mia Bonta, who introduced the legislation, described it as a way to protect the “privacy” of “immigration support service providers.”
The Stop Nick Shirley Act prohibits “a person, business, or association from soliciting, selling, or trading on the internet the personal information or image of a designated immigration support services provider, employee, or volunteer” with the intent “that another person imminently use that information to commit a crime involving violence or a threat of violence.”
So, if a journalist publishes information that may lead another person to threaten violence against the nonprofit reported on, the journalist gets criminally indicted. It is a blatant attempt to chill news organizations from investigating and reporting on waste, fraud and abuse: Expose it, and you could be criminally liable.
California Republican Assemblyman Carl DeMaio said Sunday that he was asking the Justice Department to block it.
“I ultimately believe that this has to go to court because clearly our politicians don’t give a damn about our First Amendment rights. But this is a bad pattern of behavior,” he told the California Post.
Mr. Newsom has long looked to block the First Amendment rights of individuals and viewpoints with which he disagrees. In 2024, he attempted to ban the use of artificial intelligence in political ads to protect Kamala Harris, but the effort was thrown out in federal court.
Then there was the prosecution of pro-life activist David Daleiden, who released undercover videos of Planned Parenthood officials that appeared to implicate them in the illegal sale of unborn-baby parts. Ms. Harris, serving as California’s attorney general, ordered a criminal investigation into Mr. Daleiden, including a raid on his home, for unlawfully recording the exchange.
Last year, California agreed to a plea deal with Mr. Daleiden after a yearslong criminal prosecution in which Mr. Daleiden and his co-worker would receive “no jail time, no fines, no admission of wrongdoing, and no probation” — meaning that the pair would face zero punishment.
“After enduring nine years of weaponized political prosecution, putting an end to the lawfare launched by Kamala Harris is a huge victory for my investigative reporting and for the public’s right to know the truth about Planned Parenthood’s sale of aborted baby body parts,” Mr. Daleiden said in a statement after the plea deal was announced.
His attorney, Steve Cooley, a former Los Angeles County district attorney, added: “In my five decades as an attorney, 40 years of which were as a prosecutor, I have never seen such a blatant exercise of selective investigation and vindictive prosecution.”
Now, with the Stop Nick Shirley Act signed into law, expect this political lawfare to escalate, especially given that Mr. Vance’s task force is homing in on California.
Still, Mr. Shirley is not cowering.
“These politicians need the fraud to continue, and they sadly use immigrants to do so often. They fund nonprofits and NGOs with hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars every year for immigration services, including free healthcare and have now made ’immigration support service providers’ essentially a protected class in California,” he wrote on X after Mr. Newsom signed the bill into law.
“When the fraud is exposed, they create new laws to protect the fraudsters and penalize those who expose it,” he wrote. “By signing this bill, the Governor and California politicians expose themselves as the corrupt politicians they are. This is not the end, the fight has just begun. More to come soon, this is far from over.”
• Kelly Sadler is the commentary editor at The Washington Times.
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