Nick Shirley sets his sights on California

After right-wing YouTuber Nick Shirley’s viral video alleging fraud at Minnesota daycares he said were operated by Somali residents, Donald Trump’s administration responded by flooding the state with federal immigration agents and freezing funding for childcare services. (A judge ruled that the federal government must continue funding childcare subsidies, at least temporarily.) Now Shirley is back loitering outside daycares again, this time in California.

Over the weekend the 23-year-old posted a photo of himself with the caption “Hello California I’ve arrived.” Like with his last video, which featured a “source” later identified by The Intercept as a far-right onetime political candidate and lobbyist, Shirley seems to have had a local tour guide: Amy Reichert, a San Diego right-wing activist who unsuccessfully ran for local election. She said on X that she spent two days with Shirley “checking out learning centers” in the city. An accompanying image appears to show the two of them — a tripod-mounted phone in tow — outside a business.

Shirley’s playbook is essentially to pull public records on licensed childcare facilities, looking for citations or reports from state inspectors that he or his “sources” deem suspicious. He then physically visits daycare facilities and, in the case of the Minneapolis video, demands to “see the children” in the provider’s care. In Minneapolis, a refusal to let Shirley and his team into daycares was taken as evidence that the business was a sham — a claim unsupported by follow-up visits. (Perhaps a good daycare should not allow a random YouTuber near its kids?) Subsequent visits by state inspectors found that children were present at the daycares Shirley visited and that they were “operating as expected.”

Even though Shirley hasn’t yet published a video about San Diego, local childcare providers have already reported harassment. One provider told a local news outlet that she came home with children in her care only to find two men with a camera outside her house who finally left when she entered with the children.

“For over a month, Somali childcare providers have endured harassment by internet vigilantes who are dead set on exposing fraud in California’s highly regulated government child care system,” Doug Moore, executive director of United Domestic Workers of America said in a statement on Tuesday. “In the process, they are stalking and intimidating our members at their homes and places of business. These provocateurs are sowing seeds of hatred and distrust of our neighbors after taking cues from the president who referred to Somalians as ‘garbage.’ We treasure our Somali members and their contributions to our families, our union, and our communities.”

Shirley’s online presence is as much MAGA propaganda as it is algorithm bait — I described him last week as a “slopagandist” similar to yellow journalism of the late 19th century, updated for the influencer age. His content is repetitive, with rehashed video titles and recurring themes and filming locations. Unlike a true ideologue, Shirley will go wherever the audience analytics take him. At the moment, the algorithm is taking him to childcare centers.