California’s fraud problem just got a government-issued shield around it.
Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill that critics say criminalizes the very act of documenting taxpayer-funded scams, and a Republican lawmaker is already loading up for a legal fight.
And now the citizen journalist who blew the lid off fraud in Minnesota is warning that what Newsom just buried in California is far, far worse.
What Newsom Just Signed Into Law
The bill is officially titled “Privacy for immigration support services providers,” but Republican state Assemblyman Carl DeMaio (R-CA) has a different name for it: the Stop Nick Shirley Act.
The law creates privacy protections for immigration support service providers, their employees, and volunteers, shielding their addresses from public records and imposing penalties on anyone who publishes their images on social media. Violators face up to a $10,000 fine or up to one year in jail.
DeMaio told Fox News Digital the bill amounts to criminalizing investigative journalism, one that works to “silence citizen journalists and shield taxpayer-funded organizations from public scrutiny.”
He didn’t mince words about what the law actually does. “What does the Stop Nick Shirley Act do? It basically makes it illegal for a citizen journalist to document fraud of taxpayer money and post that on the internet in the form of an internet video,” he said.
The bill was authored by Democratic Assembly member Mia Bonta, the wife of California Attorney General Rob Bonta. Bonta defended the measure during a legislative session, saying, “This bill will ensure that we have an opportunity, when people are being harassed, doxed, subjected to violence, to be able to have the ability to protect themselves.”
Newsom’s spokesperson Diana Crofts-Pelayo told Fox News Digital that “this law has nothing to do with Nick Shirley” and that “the real controversy here is that MAGA Republicans are either lying to create up fake conspiracy theories, or none of them know how to read.”
That’s the official line. But what the law actually does tells a different story.
The Lawsuit Is Coming and DeMaio Is Not Bluffing
DeMaio told Fox News Digital that he and a “coalition of civil liberty protectors” are prepared to file a lawsuit challenging the law.
“We have a plaintiff and are putting together the legal briefs,” he said. “It is a matter of time before we’re going to get before a judge to stop this act.”
He has also formally asked the US Department of Justice Office of Civil Rights to intervene. “I have asked the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Civil Rights to look at the Stop Nick Shirley Act … to see if they can do anything to intervene to prevent the implementation of this law. We have been dialoguing with the Department of Justice, and now we have a game plan as to how we will proceed forward in the courts to overturn this unconstitutional law,” he said.
“It is our hope,” DeMaio continued, “that the U.S. Department of Justice will file to intervene in that case, because this is an open-and-shut infringement on our First Amendment rights.”
The law is set to take effect Oct. 1.
DeMaio did not stop at legal procedure. He went directly at Newsom. “Gavin Newsom, once again, you’re a bully trying to silence citizen watchdogs into not exercising their First Amendment rights and exposing your fraud, the billions of dollars that you’ve allowed to be wasted of precious taxpayer funds, all because you want the benefit of these left-wing NGOs to help you politically,” he said.
And he accused Newsom of something even more damning than incompetence. DeMaio said Newsom and California’s Democrat supermajority “created such a monumental problem with fraud of taxpayer money being abused that it’s clear that it is intentional.”
“You’re going to be exposed as a bully,” he told Newsom. “You’re going to be exposed as the fraud ringleader.”
What Nick Shirley Found and Why Sacramento Panicked
Nick Shirley is the independent journalist whose viral videos first put government-funded fraud on the national map. He went to Minnesota and filmed daycare centers receiving millions in taxpayer dollars that appeared to have no children in them. The video racked up more than 138 million views on X alone and triggered federal investigations that froze childcare payments across the state.
Then he turned his camera toward California.
Shirley has said the fraud he found in California dwarfs what he uncovered in Minnesota, describing it as a “billion-dollar fraud crisis.” DeMaio agrees, saying California’s scandal makes the Minnesota situation look like “garden variety government mismanagement.”
“If you were worried about Somali daycare centers in Minnesota not having children in the daycare, take a look at California government NGOs receiving taxpayer funds and not having any sort of public services that they’re delivering,” DeMaio said. “They say they provide public services to immigrants when, in fact, they organize rallies, they harvest ballots, they endorse candidates and ballot measures during campaigns, and they are an extension of the Democrat Party.”
Shirley put it plainly at a recent rally in Sacramento. “Here in California, the politicians, instead of going after the fraudsters, they’re going after the ones that are going to expose the fraud,” he said.
And he warned where this path leads. “They’re trying to make it so citizen journalists or just average Americans who are going about seeing what’s happening inside their community — they’re trying to scare them from talking about potential fraud taking place inside of these communities,” Shirley said.
The law was created, Shirley told supporters, only after he exposed what was happening. That timing is not incidental. It is the point.
The Bigger Picture Newsom Doesn’t Want Discussed
California has spent $24 billion in the last five years on homelessness, according to First Assistant US Attorney for the Central District of California Bill Essayli, who said on Fox & Friends in early January that “no one can account for where that money has really gone.” Essayli launched a task force to investigate corruption in the state, with a focus on programs for the homeless.
The pattern is worth sitting with. A citizen journalist starts filming empty government-funded facilities. He goes viral. Federal investigations follow. Then the state legislature, under a Democrat supermajority, passes a law that makes filming those same facilities a criminal offense. And the governor signs it.
Sacramento is not protecting immigration workers from harassment. If that were the actual goal, the law would be narrow and targeted. What AB 2624 does is throw a legal wall around an entire category of taxpayer-funded organizations and make it financially ruinous to film what happens inside them. A $10,000 fine and the threat of a year in jail have a way of discouraging people from pointing cameras at fraud.
The bill was authored by the wife of the state’s top law enforcement officer. Shirley noted the obvious problem with that arrangement. “While the attorney general is supposed to go after fraudsters, his wife is doing the opposite,” he said.
Big Tech has already spent years suppressing conservative speech on COVID policy, the 2020 election, and other contested issues. Now California’s Democrat supermajority is reaching for the same playbook — not through platform rules, but through criminal law. The goal is identical: make it too costly, too dangerous, and too legally exposed for ordinary Americans to document what their government is actually doing with their money.
The First Amendment does not include an exception for inconvenient journalism. Courts have repeatedly held that recording in public spaces is a protected activity. DeMaio’s lawsuit is not a long shot. It’s a straightforward challenge to a law that criminalizes exactly what the First Amendment was written to protect.
Newsom is almost certainly positioning himself for a 2028 presidential run. The last thing that campaign needs is a federal judge striking down a law his office signed specifically to stop a citizen journalist from filming empty fraud operations. But that is exactly where this is heading, and DeMaio is making sure the DOJ is watching every step of the way.
Shirley said it simply: “If they’re willing to violate our First Amendment and the freedom of the press, imagine what they’re going to do next.”
That is the right question. And the answer, if Newsom gets away with this, will not be comfortable for anyone who thinks government money should come with public accountability attached.
Source: Fox News Digital, “Newsom hit with lawsuit threat as whistleblower begs Trump for help with ‘monumental’ fraud scandal”
