The “Stop Nick Shirley Act” is a LIE
What if I told you California just introduced a bill that could make it a felony to expose fraud, just for posting what you find online? That would be crazy! Well, unfortunately for us that is the case in California, as lawmakers once again hide behind “immigration” and “protecting the vulnerable” to pass a much more sinister agenda.
What is AB 2624?
Mia Bonta – the wife of our Attorney General Rob Bonta, and Assemblywoman for the East Bay – recently introduced Assembly Bill 2624, titled “Privacy for Immigration Support Services Providers.” She and supporters of the bill say it is intended to protect people providing services to immigrants from harassment and threats.[1] It does three specific things:
1. It creates standards for wider address confidentiality. What this means practically is that anyone who provides "designated immigration support services,” including health care, legal assistance, and case management can conceal their address from the public if they have experienced threats or harassment because of their work.
2. It makes it illegal for anyone to share, sell, or post online any personal information – like someone’s name, address, phone number, or even their photo – if they work or volunteer for an immigration support organization. It also specifically bans posting that kind of information if the goal is to threaten them or encourage others to harm them.
3. Lastly, it imposes criminal penalties to make any violation of this bill a felony punishable by up to $50,000 and prison time.[2]
The bill is supposedly designed to protect individuals, but the definition of "address" in the bill text includes a "work address of an individual" as well as personal address – so addresses of organizations allegedly providing immigrant services could be shielded from the public.
Background & Purpose of the Bill
Where is this stemming from? Why is this coming up now?
This is in response to the recent investigations into California’s various fraudulent schemes. As we’ve covered previously, there have been journalistic investigations as well as federal investigations into daycare scams, hospice fraud, and many other ways that taxpayer funds intended to support approved programs have been funneled by these organizations to commit fraud. These investigations have been happening across the country – sparked initially by Nick Shirley’s journalism uncovering Minnesota’s daycare fraud – but have specifically impacted California as well with the bombshell report on Los Angeles County hospice fraud.
So, here’s what’s been happening. Mainstream news outlets and so-called journalists have ignored some of the largest scandals of our time. They have not looked into the insane, and quite frankly criminal, misuse of taxpayer dollars to fund all kinds of waste and abuse, and it has gone unchecked and unnoticed for years. As a result, people like Nick Shirley, who care about the truth and who are not glossing over glaring fraud for the sake of their own political party, go out and actually investigate. Shirely showed up to daycare centers in Minnesota, and attested for himself, with his own eyes, that the buildings were not, in fact, daycare centers. That no children were present, and that no one would even answer the door. He spoke to neighbors and those living in the area and learned no one had ever seen children going in and out of the so-called facilities. And, to share that evidence for the sake of making change to a corrupt system, he recorded it and posted his findings online.
Now he is doing the same in California, because we all know that California is a circus when it comes to money management – as we’ve seen with the high-speed rail boondoggle, the billions spent on free healthcare for illegal immigrants, and the over $30 billion spent on a homelessness problem that has somehow only gotten worse. He is uncovering similar, and even worse schemes in our own state, including the recently reported hospice fraud that some are estimating to be in the billions.
But, on the left, this kind of work is not classified as investigation, nor is it praised to reveal how much rampant waste there is and incite calls for our government to make radical change. No. Instead, Democrats, and representatives in California like Mia Bonta, are classifying this all as “harassment,” and are trying to shut it down through legislation. If organizations receiving taxpayer money can claim this protection, it creates a significant barrier to the kind of citizen journalism and public records work that has exposed real fraud.
The Underlying Deception & Hypocrisy
But here’s the thing, this isn’t about immigration at all. These investigations are not about immigrants or immigrant communities – they only target the fraudsters and schemes carried out to waste money paid to our state. They may have included immigrant communities, as some have been involved, but they have not been targeted or even harassed. To paint the picture that service providers who specifically help immigrants are being targeted by evil journalists for the purpose of harassing them is literally insane – it’s mentally unwell because it’s so far from what is true.
It matters that we talk about this because, at the end of the day, politicians are really good liars, and we must be shrewd enough to see through their deception. They can cloak ill intent under the guise of "protecting the vulnerable.” We know this cannot be true of them because in every instance of an actual vulnerable person – like an unborn baby, young children in school vulnerable to gender ideology, teenage girls raped and murdered by illegal immigrants – in each of these instances they rush to defend the attacker, not the victim. They rush to justify why abortion is not murder, by feeling empathy for the woman. They rush to give teachers the power to impose their worldviews on children, because after all, parents might not agree and that must be abusive. They rush to defend criminals who are in our country illegally, even when they commit heinous crimes against our communities. They do not enforce laws against crime, they encourage and incentivize mass homelessness, they pass bills that jack the cost of living so high into oblivion that actual hard-working Californians are bleeding out financially while they are simultaneously handing out social welfare benefits like they're candy. Over and over and over again they have proven to be ruthless to the good in pursuit of the morally bankrupt, and we cannot be so naïve as to let them lie to us through their teeth while stabbing us in the back.
What does this bill actually do? Well, it is a blatant attempt to suppress the publication of videos and investigative reporting that calls them out on their mismanagement, their incompetence, and their corruption. They know it restricts public access in a way that is unconstitutional – they call it out in the bill specifically by saying, “[this act] imposes a limitation on the public's right of access to the meetings of public bodies or the writings of public officials and agencies” – but they argue the “safety” interest outweighs it. But we have to ask – safety of whom? Who is being harmed in these investigations?
They want you to believe that Nick Shirley showing up to ask questions is harassment and violence. It is not. They want you to think that conservatives publishing exposés on how our government leaders have wasted your money and spit in your face while doing it is a threat that should be outlawed. It is not! How insane do you have to be to look at the kind of investigation that has been going on – which has not threatened any person or any group of people at all – and immediately cite violence? It’s delusional. But it comes from the same party who says that if you say men are men and women are women and the two are not the same, that you are committing violence. This inability to contend with realities you don’t like, this ability to “cry wolf” at every turn and claim you are being harassed, leads us to the point of outlawing speech you don’t like and restraining freedoms that are inconvenient to you.
You as a taxpayer should be free to walk up to any center that is expressly funded through your tax dollars and ask a few questions about how the money is being managed. And if that center is an operating business that does not commit fraud, it will be obvious very quickly, you will have your answer, and you will move on. If the center is not a real business though, if no one is there to answer your questions or they evade you entirely, then that is information our government should welcome and act upon immediately. But the Democrats in power in this state do not want you asking any questions. They want to enshrine into law the implication that if you do, you are engaging in harassment and discrimination and slap you with a felony – a charge they will not even give to real criminals in our state! If you think this bill will only be used to protect innocent people truly being harassed, you are being deceived.
We can be certain of this because we see the blatant hypocrisy all too easily. What have our lawmakers done about violent protestors who dox ICE agents, spread their addresses on social media, and show up to their hotels to threaten and intimidate them? Has Mia Bonta put forth any sort of legislation designed to protect their whereabouts? Not at all! Instead, they passed Senate Bill 627 which prohibits ICE from wearing masks to protect their identity. They literally made it harder and more dangerous for ICE to carry out their jobs amid violent protests. On top of that, our representatives themselves engage in this doxing. Representative Salud Carbajal, who represents the entirety of Santa Barbara County, was caught engaging in doxing, harassment, and a violent protest against an ICE raid conducted legally in Camarillo last summer.[3]
Does Bonta care that those officers had their whereabouts given to people who literally showed up and threw rocks at them, sending an officer to the emergency room with injuries? Does she pass equal legislation to say it is just as wrong to share information about ICE agents online as it is to post pictures of vacant hospice centers clearly committing fraud? No. Because she and all the rest of those who support this bill could not care any less about true justice or protecting victims. They only care that their acts of wickedness and deeds done in the darkness are not exposed.
And they are doing this by trying to scare away independent journalists from looking into fraud. Nick Shirley responded perfectly, saying, "They're literally willing to impose a $10,000 fine or imprisonment if you go and seek to find out the truth about a location that could potentially be fraudulent inside your own neighborhood."[4] After all, do you think it’s a coincidence that the bill's author is married to California’s Attorney General, Rob Bonta? No, it is a blatant attempt on part of legislators to intimidate and silence journalists exposing fraud with the full weight of California’s Department of Justice behind them.
But this is America. And we will not be silenced. Journalists will not be imprisoned for uncovering truth and bringing it into the light. We will not let them! But only if we ourselves refuse to be fooled, refuse to believe their lies, and wake up from our complacency. We do not want to live in a North Korea-style state, where we can’t criticize our government. But we will end up there if we do not call it out as it happens.
Decline is never obvious in the moment. Governments don’t pass laws that clearly state they are taking over authoritarian control, restricting freedom of speech, or protecting their own interests. They cloak their true motives in language that sounds good, that seems innocent. That is precisely what is happening with this bill. And for the sake of our state, our country, and our freedoms, we cannot be deceived by it.
References:
[1] CalMatters, “AB 2624: Privacy for Immigration Support Services Providers.,” Digital Democracy, April 9, 2026, https://calmatters.digitaldemocracy.org/bills/ca_202520260ab2624.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Velie, Karen. “Congressman Salud Carbajal Accused of Endangering ICE Employee.” Cal Coast News, July 16, 2025. https://calcoastnews.com/2025/07/congressman-salud-carbajal-accused-of-endangering-ice-employee/.
[4] Mallon, Elaine, and Peter Pinedo. “Dems Ripped for ‘Stop Nick Shirley Act’ That Could ‘shield’ Fraud and Abuse in California.” Fox News, April 15, 2026. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/california-dems-ripped-bill-dubbed-stop-nick-shirley-act-could-penalize-independent-journalists.
