California Republicans call on Nick Shirley in fight against privacy laws – CalMatters

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Angelica Salas is used to hearing opinions about her work providing legal aid to immigrants. You know a lot of people have different views on immigration even ones that contradict yours.

But she was not prepared for the moment when a stranger showed up at her mother’s house looking for her.

“I was very surprised. My mother told me that someone was looking for me,” said Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Immigrant Human Rights. “There’s no problem if somebody decides to protest in front of my office if they don’t agree with what I’m doing… That’s their First Amendment right. It’s a whole different thing to go to your mother’s house.”

Incidents like this, and threatening phone calls that Salas and her staff receive regularly, have led her organization to support a bill that would expand the privacy program that allows certain workers to hide their residences in public databases.

At first, this seemed like a no-brainer. The expansion of the Safe at Home program, which the Legislature approved last year, passed with little opposition.

But the new proposal has sparked a firestorm of criticism among some Republican and conservative lawmakers who say it is unconstitutional and has the potential to silence independent investigations into government wrongdoing.

“Not only are we unwilling to investigate fraud, but our legislature is literally moving in the opposite direction,” the lawmaker said. Josh Hoover of Folsom at a GOP news conference on fraud last week.

The proposal was approved this week by the Assembly Public Safety Committee and is moving forward in the Legislature.

Expansion of the “Safe at Home” program.

California’s Safe at Home program, originally created to help victims of domestic violence, allows participants to keep their residential addresses private and prevent them from appearing in public records by providing them with an alternate mailing address through the California Secretary of State. People who live in the same residence can also benefit.

Since its inception almost 30 years ago, the eligibility requirements are expanded to include victims of harassment, sexual violence and human trafficking, as well as people working in the reproductive health sector and during the COVID-19 pandemic, of public health officials . To be eligible, individuals must provide evidence that they have received credible threats of violence.

Last year, California passed a law expanding its reach to people who work in gender-affirming health care. Although the bill moved through the Legislature primarily on a party line vote, it received bipartisan support in the House Judiciary and Public Safety Committees, with two Republican members of the House voting in favor on the floor.

The new measure, Assembly Bill 2624 would expand eligibility requirements for the Safe Home program to “immigration support service providers, employees or volunteers,” like Salas and her colleagues.

Suspension of independent journalists?

In particular, some Republican members of the Assembly Carl DeMaio of San Diego, sharply criticized the bill, arguing that it violates constitutional protections for the press and limits the ability of journalists to investigate organizations for fraud, waste and abuse.

In one privacy committee hearing held earlier this month DeMaio pointed to a provision of the bill that would prohibit a person from knowingly posting on the Internet “the personal information or likeness of any specified immigration support service provider.”

The provision goes on to say “with intent … to cause immediate and serious bodily harm” and “reasonable fear.”

De Maio called the bill the “Stop Nick Shirley Act,” a reference to the conservative social media influencer whose 2025 video accused day care centers in Minnesota of widespread fraud. His videos sparked an increase in federal immigration enforcement. In February, Shirley visited several nurseries run by Somalis in San Diego, where he accused the owners of running “ghost centers” without children present.

DeMaio argued that the bill would prevent Shirley and other “citizen journalists” from investigating publicly funded organizations, threatening them with costly fines and penalties.

“This is not about protecting people from violence,” DeMaio said. “It’s about threatening and intimidating those who try to report wrongdoing. If you have nothing to hide, why are you afraid of transparency?”

During a Fox News segment Caroline Sunshine, former deputy communications director for President Donald Trump, called on Gov. Gavin Newsom to denounce the bill, calling it “overreaching legislation … designed to silence journalists and cover up the disaster that is California.”

Shirley himself posted a 25 minute video in which he confronted Democratic lawmakers about the proposal and pointed out that the bill’s author, Democratic Assemblyman Oh my god of Oakland, is married to California Attorney General Rob Bonta.

“Instead of going after the fraudsters,” Shirley said in the video, “they’re trying to criminalize going after the people who are committing this fraud.”

The reaction to the bill has been described as “shocking”.

MP Bonta argued that the bill was intended to prevent the misuse of personal information – especially actions involving threats or incitement to violence – and not to limit freedom of expression. However, her proposal sparked so much anger on the right that Bonta says she and her team received death threats because of it.

“I can’t imagine what it must be like for immigrant service providers who go about their jobs every day to have to deal with this level of hate,” he said at the public safety hearing.

The proposal was later amended to exclude mention of social media, although that clause was in the law that allowed health professionals who engage in gender-affirming practices to take advantage of the privacy program.

Aidy Rodriguez, who testified in support of the bill as a fellow at the California Foundation for Women’s Solis Policy Institute, said the reaction has been shocking.

“This law has been in place for 30 years. No one has had a problem for 30 years, until now, when we wanted to protect immigrant service providers,” Rodriguez said. “That’s why, that’s ‘immigrant’ and that’s what’s sad to me.”

CalMatters reporter Nadia Lathan contributed to this article.