YouTube influencer Nick Shirley, whose viral video alleging fraud by daycare facilities servicing Minneapolis’s Somali American neighborhood got here days forward of the Trump administration’s declaration of a national funding freeze, has for years printed conspiracy-minded takes on hot-button rightwing points.
He additionally has shut ties to the White Home, Republicans, and to representatives of an earlier era of rightwing partisan “ambush journalists” comparable to James O’Keefe. He labored with Minnesota Republicans to produce the viral video on Somali-run daycares.
Shirley has collaborated intently together with his mom and fellow influencer Brooke Shirley, with the pair touring collectively to flashpoints elevated by rightwing discourse on-line and in conservative media, and publishing throughout platforms together with TikTok and YouTube.
Their US locations have included the southern border, Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington, however they’ve additionally traveled abroad for big-ticket rightwing and anti-immigrant occasions together with the Tommy Robinson-organized “Unite the Kingdom” rally final September.
Shirley’s movies continuously sensationalize battle, or focus on avenue violence. The titles of current movies embody Dearborn Michigan has Fallen… Christians and Muslims Battle, Portland has Fallen… ANTIFA has Taken Control of City, and I Confronted Dangerous Migrant Scammers in NYC | Canal Street, the latter of which highlights a bodily confrontation between Shirley and a avenue vendor in New York.
Shirley’s 26 December video, which focused Minnesota’s Somali neighborhood with allegations of widespread fraud, became the basis for a torrent of anti-immigrant and anti-Somali content material throughout social media, together with in Reality Social posts by Donald Trump.
Observe-up reporting by native shops together with CBS Minnesota and the Minnesota Star-Tribune, has discovered little factual foundation for Shirley’s claims that daycare facilities have been claiming federal funding with out caring for any kids.
More than 90 people in Minnesota have been charged since 2022 in a $250m Covid-19 reduction fraud scheme involving a non-profit that falsely claimed to present meals to kids, and a federal prosecutor estimated that $9bn or extra in federal funds throughout 14 state applications could have been stolen since 2018.
However no fraud charges have been filed against the daycare centers featured by Shirley, although state data present some had code violations unrelated to fraud
Shirley’s newest video was the fruits of a years-long, peripatetic effort by the mother-and-son pairing to entrench themselves at the head of a burgeoning milieu of Maga-verse content material creators.
Brooke Shirley, 55, has posted a whole bunch of movies to her TikTok account starting simply two weeks after the January 6 protests at the United States Capitol, which Nick Shirley filmed himself attending.
She has additionally publicly defended the veracity of her son’s work. In November she told the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) that “what Nick is doing is journalism”, including: “He’s documenting what is going on in America and in the world. And unbiased journalists are the ones that are on the market.”
In addition they have a shared self-perception as truth-telling citizen journalists.
The Guardian contacted Brooke Shirley for remark through voice and textual content message on a cellphone quantity recognized as an lively connection in her title by a number of knowledge brokers. Nick Shirley was contacted for remark through the contact e mail listed on his YouTube web page, and which he has invited folks to ship ideas on in the description area of his movies.
Neither responded.
Petros Iosifidos, professor of media and communications coverage at Metropolis St George’s, College of London, and the co-author of the 2021 guide Digital Democracy, Social Media and Disinformation, stated: “Such a utilization of social media does not assist democratic illustration and as a substitute contributes to a better destabilisation of contemporary politics.
He added, “The state of affairs has worsened in more moderen years with widespread mis/disinformation that deprives the public of their basic proper to have entry to dependable, correct information so to make knowledgeable choices.”
Nick Shirley’s excellent yr
Nick Shirley has emerged in the final two years as certainly one of a brand new crop of stories influencers who achieved a brand new stage of salience at the tail finish of the Biden years and have been actively cultivated by Trump’s White Home.
Shirley was one of the invitees to a White Home Antifa roundtable in October, at which influencers and administration officers aired their grievances about the amorphous social motion that has served as a Maga goal since Trump’s first presidency.
Shirley dutifully posted a video of his speech at the event on his YouTube channel.
By then, Shirley was driving excessive on the foundation of a earlier viral yarn, after he was one of the first influencers to submit alarmist movies about immigrant distributors on New York’s Canal Avenue.
Reportedly, the consideration from Shirley and different information influencers comparable to Savanah Hernandez led to an Ice sweep of the distributors, which was met by resistance from New York residents, and earned a rebuke from Zohran Mamdani, then a mayoral candidate, who known as the ways “aggressive and reckless”.
One media report quoted a resident of the Chinatown district the place the distributors have been situated for many years as saying that Ice “simply make the most of this as a result of all of the sudden the rightwing media and on-line influencers got here down into the space”.
In November, Shirley was awarded the “citizen journalist of the yr” at the Citizen Journalism Gala held at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, and hosted by James O’Keefe.
The month after the Mar-a-Lago ceremony, Shirley was collaborating with Minnesota Republicans to put the situation of purported fraud in the state’s Somali immigrant neighborhood on the nationwide agenda.
On 29 December, Home Republican leaders held a press convention in the wake of his movies.
At that convention, Lisa DeMuth not solely backed the veracity of the video, telling reporters: “By now, everybody has seen the viral video that in beneath an hour uncovered greater than one million {dollars} in fraud.”
She additionally added: “Our caucus has been working to expose fraud for years, together with working with Nick Shirley and company whistleblowers to get the information out to the public and to maintain the Walz administration accountable.”
The Guardian emailed DeMuth to ask for specifics on the collaboration, and whether or not the apparent inaccuracies unveiled by subsequent reporting have been Shirley’s alone, or because of information supplied by the caucus.
A spokesperson referred to a person who seems prominently in the video, referred to solely as “David” by Shirley, however who was later identified by the Minnesota Star-Tribune as David Hoch, a Minnesotan whose a number of paid political campaigns included an incident wherein he campaigned “in nothing however shorts and a sandwich board on Minneapolis’ Nicollet Mall”.
They wrote: “A few of the information they used, together with daycare places, CCAP numbers, violations, and so forth, was given to David by caucus employees who discovered it in the official DHS licensing database and different publicly out there sources.”
Double act
Shirley reportedly constructed his channel with shock and prank movies in the late teenagers, whereas he was nonetheless a highschool pupil. After graduating in 2020, Shirley, a Mormon, took a hiatus throughout 2021 and 2022 whereas he accomplished a religiously ordained mission.
After he returned from his mission in 2023, in accordance to NPR, Shirley’s content material took on a extra sharply political and partisan character.
Per Columbia Journalism Overview reporting, this pivot was encouraged by Brooke: “It was Brooke – who was a former journalism pupil and a content material creator herself – who pushed her son to cowl the southern border,” the matter of a number of Nick Shirley movies in 2023.
Brooke Shirley not solely inspired her son to make such content material, however arguably led the manner for him, having printed pro-Maga content material to TikTok since late January 2021, in accordance to a Guardian overview of the account.
She has additionally been intently concerned in his work. In his acceptance speech at Mar-a-Lago, in accordance to CJR, he thanked Brooke “for filming a lot of his movies”.
Every has registered firms that seem to be associated to their public output.
In accordance to Utah firm data, Shirley was the organizer of Honey Badger LLC, whose objective was “on-line media and associated actions”, which was registered in April 2024 and administratively dissolved on 21 September 2025. Brooke Shirley, in the meantime, is the organizer of BT Outlook LLC, whose objective is “social media and associated actions”, which was included on 30 September 2024.
Each firms have been registered at the identical residential tackle in suburban Farmington, Utah. It’s not identified if BT Outlook LLC is the underlying entity for the pair’s information influencer actions.
Whereas Nick Shirley promotes his YouTube channel as being “right here to entertain and produce the reality to all”, on Brooke’s TikTok account, which at the time of reporting had greater than 290,000 followers, Brooke describes herself as a “boots on the floor Citizen Journalist!”, including, “comply with me for true information!”.
Roving reporters
Brooke’s boots continuously tread the identical floor as Nick’s.
The pair’s video output signifies that they journey to the identical locations which were the focus of conservative media and social media, and produce often-inflammatory content material that reinforces conspiracy narratives about locales, people and teams which were demonized in rightwing discourse.
Nick Shirley’s movies are normally longer, extra advanced, and extra intensively edited than his mom’s, however the pair typically cowl the identical floor.
On 28 October, for instance, Nick Shirley published a video on YouTube which purported to supply an account of occasions on the floor in Portland, Oregon. His video performed up stereotypes of the metropolis which have emerged throughout the Trump period, focusing on homeless encampments, and scuffles outdoors the metropolis’s ICE facility, which has been a spotlight for protesters and counter-protesters since the summer season, and attracted a Trump-ordered nationwide guard deployment, which has since ended after the supreme courtroom judged it unconstitutional.
In a piece of the video Shirley entitled “ANTIFA receives a brand new cargo”, Shirley confirmed a U-Haul truck resupplying protesters with barbecue substances and inflatable animal costumes.
Between 12 and 16 October, Brooke Shirley printed 5 TikTok movies shot in the metropolis. In one published on 17 October, Shirley options footage of the identical costumes, groceries and charcoal grills highlighted by Nick in his longer YouTube video.
In the video, which options all through a textual content insert studying “Antifa camp receives gear in Portland”, Brooke Shirley intones over footage of the set-up outdoors the ICE facility: “I’m in Portland, Oregon, and I’m going to present you what the ICE facility seems to be like,” including: “Proper over there you will get inflatables to put on. There’s meals to eat. There’s tents to take a nap in, I assume.”
One other of Brooke Shirley’s Portland movies printed on 15 October is focused on protesters wearing Tyrannosaurus rex costumes.
In that video, over footage of the blow-up theropods dancing with different protesters, Shirley requested viewers to “think about if for 100 days this has been going on in entrance of your condominium advanced. As a result of this has been going on for greater than 100 days, 24/7”.
The identical sample repeats itself in the pair’s journeys all through the US and past to cowl hot-button rightwing points and occasions.
On 15 September, Nick Shirley posted video taken at the anti-immigrant Unite the Kingdom rally in London held two days earlier, the place interviewees included a woman in a Union Jack bikini, and a person with severe facial contusions who was later seen confronting police officers.
The video additionally heavily featured the far-right activist and convicted criminal Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, higher generally known as Tommy Robinson, who was certainly one of the rally’s key organizers.
Shirley printed a separate sit-down interview with Robinson.
Round the rally, Brooke Shirley printed interviews with attenders who provided reward for Donald Trump and the just lately assassinated Charlie Kirk. The earlier yr, on a separate journey, Brooke Shirley printed her own interview with Tommy Robinson.
‘The Somalians are masters at fraud’
Following established follow, Brooke Shirley posted variations of the Minnesota story to her TikTok channel.
On 27 December, she posted a video captioned “The Somalians are masters at fraud and the authorities is dumb sufficient to enable it to proceed to go on it. It’s simple to discover the fraud. All you want to do is just a little little bit of analysis and go to the companies. #minnesota #minneapolis”.
A textual content insert on the video, which reveals Brooke Shirley standing outdoors a purportedly empty ABC Studying daycare middle in Minneapolis, reads: “Somalian-run Daycares throughout Minnesota are closed but gathering hundreds of thousands yearly from the authorities.”
In the video, Brooke Shirley says: “This daycare proper right here, ran by Somalians, has taken in from the Minnesota authorities $1.1m.”
Shirley provides: “This daycare says it might probably maintain up to 40 kids. I went up to the door. The door is locked, and as you possibly can see, the home windows are blacked out. I can’t hear any kids inside this daycare.”
Shirley continues: “It’s noon proper now. You’d suppose there’d be kids in there taking part in, being taught, however nobody is in there.”
Additional on, she asserts: “The Somalians are robbing the taxpayers in Minnesota blind.”
Nick Shirley’s equivalent claims about ABC Studying Heart have been refuted by a number of shops, together with CBS Minnesota, who discovered timestamped safety footage of kids arriving on the day they visited the facility, with reporters seeing kids being cared for after they visited.
Brooke Shirley’s video had been seen virtually 360,000 occasions at the time of reporting.
In the previous, Brooke Shirley has credited her son for her success on TikTok.
On 18 January 2025, following a short TikTok shutdown arising from Biden-era laws geared toward forcing the web site’s Chinese language guardian firm to divest, Shirley posted a video whose caption explicitly credited her son for her success on the platform.
“I’m saying goodbye for a second hopefully we will likely be again! Thanks my TikTok household and buddies!” Shirley wrote, including “Thanks to my wonderful son @Nick Shirley for making my goals come true right here on TikTok!!”
The accompanying video, soundtracked by Inexperienced Day’s Good Riddance (Time of Your Life), featured a montage of nonetheless pictures of Shirley interviewing migrants at the southern border and cities round the nation, attending Trump rallies and pupil protests, and standing outdoors homeless encampments.
Regardless of persistent issues about the high quality of the information handed on by self-described “citizen journalists” like Shirley, Pew research suggests that one in 5 People often get information from social media content material creators.
Disclaimer: This article is sourced from external platforms. OverBeta has not independently verified the information. Readers are advised to verify details before relying on them.
