Nick Shirley has his sights set on California

After the right YouTuber Nick ShirleyWidely circulated video alleges fraud at daycare centers in Minnesota, which he said were run by Somali residents, Donald Trump administration He responded By flooding the state with federal immigration agents and freezing funding for child welfare services. ( a judge to rule That the federal government should continue to fund child care subsidies, at least temporarily.) And now Shirley is back hanging out outside day care again, this time in California.

Over the weekend, the 23-year-old posted a photo of himself with the caption, “Hey California, you’ve arrived.” As is the case with the recent video featuring “The Source.” It was later determined by Objection As a far-right political candidate and lobbyist, Shirley apparently had a local tour guide: Amy Reichert, a right-wing activist in San Diego. He ran in vain For local elections. She told the X program that she spent two days with Shirley “inspecting learning centres” in the city. The accompanying photo appears to show the two – phone mounted on a tripod – out of action.

Shirley’s playbook is basically to pull public records on licensed child care facilities and look for citations or reports from state inspectors that he or his “sources” find suspicious. He then physically visits daycare facilities and, in the case of the Minneapolis video, asks to “see the children” under the care of the provider. In Minneapolis, the refusal to let Shirley and his team go to day care was taken as evidence that the business was a sham — a claim not supported by follow-up visits. (Maybe a good preschool shouldn’t let a random YouTuber near her kids?) Subsequent visits by state inspectors I found that children were present At the daycare centers Shirley visited and that they were “operating as expected.”

Although Shirley has not yet posted a video about San Diego, local child care providers have The harassment has already been reported. One provider he told the local news outlet That she returned home with children in her care to find two men with a camera outside her house and they finally left when she entered with the children.

“For more than a month, Somali child care providers have been harassed by cyber vigilantes who are doggedly determined to expose fraud in California’s highly regulated state child care system,” Doug Moore, executive director of the American Domestic Workers Federation, said in a statement Tuesday. “In the process, they are stalking and intimidating our members in their homes and workplaces. These instigators are sowing seeds of hatred and distrust of our neighbors after receiving signals from the President who referred to Somalis as ‘trash’. We cherish 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 bait for the algorithms – me Last week, he described it as “reckless.” Similar to the yellow journalism of the late 19th century, updated for the age of influencers. Its content is repetitive, with rehashed video titles and recurring themes and filming locations. Unlike a true ideologue, Shirley will go wherever audience analysis takes him. Right now, the algorithm takes him to child care centers.