Category: Nick shirley
Government fraud meets its worst enemy: Some dude with a phone
Nick Shirley knocked on doors. That was all it took to crack Minnesota’s multibillion-dollar fraud scandal — and expose the failure of the institutions that were supposed to catch it.
Shirley visited Somali-run “businesses” that had received millions in taxpayer funds. His videos showed locked doors, covered windows, and empty buildings where thriving operations were supposed to exist.
When institutions feel threatened, they usually try to personalize the fight. That approach won’t work here.
Within days, the footage racked up more than 100 million views on X alone, triggered a flood of federal scrutiny, and helped force a political reckoning in a state where warnings had gone ignored for years.
Legacy media outlets initially dismissed the story as a “conspiracy theory” — until they couldn’t. Gov. Tim Walz (D) went from defending the programs to demanding crackdowns almost overnight. Federal authorities surged additional personnel and resources into Minnesota. What had been treated as untouchable suddenly became unavoidable.
What happened in Minnesota matters. But what happens next matters more.
You are about to see hundreds — perhaps thousands — of Nick Shirley imitators flood social media. Exposing government waste and fraud is no longer just journalism; it is an incentive structure and a business model.
Independent investigators armed with public records, smartphones, and social platforms will fan out across the country, documenting the gap between what government pays for and what actually exists. And the establishment has no effective way to stop them.
The old playbook no longer works.
When institutions feel threatened, they usually try to personalize the fight. Discredit the messenger. Destroy the movement by targeting its most visible figure. We saw this strategy deployed against the DOGE by turning government efficiency into a culture war about Elon Musk.
That approach won’t work here.
You can’t sue a thousand kids with iPhones. You can’t “fact-check” an empty building that’s supposed to be full of children. Calling something “misinformation” loses its power when the door is locked, the windows are covered, and fraud indictments follow months later.
RELATED: Fraud thrived under Democrats’ no-questions-asked rule
Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images
What’s emerging isn’t a movement with a leader — it’s a decentralized ecosystem. Accountability no longer depends on a single newsroom or institution. It comes from a generation that has figured out that exposing corruption is vastly more rewarding than working a shift at Starbucks.
That should terrify every political leader who has relied on the assumption that no one is really watching.
A single viral video now generates more pressure than a year of congressional hearings. The Minnesota press corps had years to uncover what Shirley documented in an afternoon. They didn’t look — not because the evidence was hidden, but because looking wasn’t incentivized. Now it is.
This shift is part of the reason I created Rhetor, an AI-driven political strategy firm designed to track what people are actually saying and doing in real time. Using these tools, we’ve identified billions of dollars in questionable spending beyond Minnesota.
In New York City, for example, migrant-related spending is projected to reach $4.3 billion through 2027. Audits have flagged contractors billing the city for empty hotel rooms — charging $170 per night while paying hotels closer to $100 and pocketing the difference.
Chicago has paid at least $342 million to staffing firms charging $156 an hour for shelter workers. Illinois spent $2.5 billion in 2025 under emergency rules with minimal oversight.
These are not isolated incidents. They share the same ingredients as Minnesota’s scandal: emergency declarations, suspended procurement rules, inexperienced contractors, and little meaningful oversight.
And someone is going to knock on those doors too.
The old gatekeepers understand what this means — and they’re panicking. For decades, investigative journalism required institutional backing. Stories could be delayed, softened, or killed outright if they threatened the wrong people and interests.
That system is dead.
Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images
The new investigative journalism runs on virality, not permission. The reporter is a 23-year-old with a ring light and a Substack. The editorial board is the algorithm. The feedback loop is brutal, immediate, and unforgiving. Get it wrong and the internet will tear you apart. Get it right and the story spreads faster than any newspaper ever could.
This isn’t replacing traditional journalism. It’s filling the void left when traditional journalism stopped doing its job.
Minnesota was the proof of concept. The data was public. The facilities were visitable. The fraud existed for years. Nobody looked — until looking became profitable.
Now it’s profitable everywhere.
The bureaucrats and contractors who built careers on the assumption that no one was watching are about to discover that everyone is. The politicians who treated emergency spending like free money are about to learn that the emergency is over — and the receipts are coming to light.
A generation that treats views like oxygen just learned that fraud is the best clickbait.
Good luck stopping that.
Journalist who exposed Minnesota day-care fraud says investigate THESE people now
Nick Shirley, a 23-year-old conservative YouTuber and independent journalist, gained national attention in late December 2025 after posting a viral 43-minute video titled, “I Investigated Minnesota’s Billion Dollar Fraud Scandal,” in which he visited several Minneapolis childcare centers — primarily Somali-run — and claimed they were empty or inactive despite receiving millions in federal and state government funding.
Shirley’s footage showed locked doors, blacked out windows, and no visible children during his visits despite public payment records, sparking national scrutiny, federal investigations by the FBI and DHS, a temporary freeze on childcare funding to Minnesota (and briefly nationwide), and political fallout — most notably Gov. Tim Walz (D) dropping his re-election bid.
On yesterday’s episode of “The Glenn Beck Program,” Shirley told Glenn that the Minnesota day-care fraud he exposed doesn’t even scratch the surface. If we want to see how deep the corruption really goes, there are several people who absolutely must be investigated.
Shirley’s first thought when he uncovered that massive fraud scheme was, “If millions — quite literally billions — of dollars is being given to these day-care centers, how come the government doesn’t know that the money is being spent here?”
More digging revealed the answer: “They’re all in on it,” he says.
“They just announced today the U.N. ambassador of Somalia is involved in all of this,” adds Glenn.
But he’s certainly not the only one with blood on his hands.
Tim Walz’s exit is almost certainly an evasion of deeper scrutiny or accountability for the fraud scandals. Glenn and Shirley agree that he must be investigated regardless.
But a Walz probe is just the beginning. “Everyone involved over at the capital in Minnesota and the DHS who was cutting the checks [needs to be investigated],” says Shirley.
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who’s known for her advocacy for childcare funding, tops his list of people who need to be immediately investigated. “She has photos of her outside of ‘Quality Learing Center,”’ he says.
This center, which has repeatedly been mocked for missing the “n” in what is supposed to say “Learning,” was one of the main day-care centers featured in Shirley’s exposé. Extensive video footage shows a nearly empty parking lot, locked doors, and no visible activity despite the center receiving millions in funding and being licensed for dozens of kids.
Another person who needs to be investigated, says Shirley, is Omar Fateh, the Somali-American Democratic Socialist and Minnesota state senator who snagged a shady DFL endorsement in Minneapolis’ mayoral race through a rigged convention, only to have it stripped over vote irregularities.
“[Fateh] had a brother-in-law or some family member who was in charge of one of the day cares that had also been receiving $2 million, and they actually had so many violations they shut down the day care; then the next day they reopened,” says Shirley. “That guy was about to become mayor.”
“And so all these people are in on the fraud. They all know it’s happening,” he reiterates.
“Well, somebody clearly had to. You can’t have that much money rolling around. A lot of people knew,” Glenn agrees.
To hear more of the interview, watch the video above.
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Minnesota day care center reports ‘extensive vandalism,’ blames YouTube video
A Minnesota day care center on Wednesday said they’ve faced “extreme vandalism” after Nick Shirley’s viral YouTube video shared allegations of fraud. Employees of Nokomis DayCare Center in Minneapolis told police they were broken into on Tuesday morning after Shirley claimed they were using public funding for a child care facility where kids were not…
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‘Walz is 100% responsible for massive fraud’
Tim Walz scurries to defend record after video alleges new Somali-linked fraud
On Friday, independent video journalist Nick Shirley published a video on X that he claims shows widespread fraud involving purported day-care centers in Minnesota. Shirley wrote that he “uncovered over $110,000,000 [in fraud] in ONE day.” The video is the latest public allegation of fraud tied to Minnesota’s Somali community and comes as failed Democrat vice presidential nominee and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz faces renewed scrutiny over the issue.
In the video, Shirley and his team are seen traveling Minnesota and visiting addresses where federally funded day-care centers are supposed to exist. When he arrived, he often found buildings with no children and seemingly no active day-care facilities.
‘There are not enough words to describe the breathtaking failure that has happened under the watch of @GovTimWalz.’
In a clip from Shirley’s video that Education Secretary Linda McMahon shared over the weekend, Shirley is shown standing outside a day-care facility identified as “Quality Learing [sic] Center.” The sign appears to misspell the word “learning.” Shirley says that when he attempted to enter the building during regular weekday hours, it was closed and its windows were blacked out. He also claims the center received $1.9 million in government funding.
In sharing the clip on X, McMahon wrote, “There are not enough words to describe the breathtaking failure that has happened under the watch of @GovTimWalz.”
RELATED: Somali fraud inspires Democrats to assimilate to Somalian culture
Blaze Media Illustration and Getty Images
Walz’s office pushed back over the weekend against Shirley’s allegations. Fox News Digital reported Sunday that a spokesperson for Walz said the governor has spent years working to “crack down on fraud” and has taken steps to strengthen oversight of state programs, including launching investigations into several facilities.
The spokesperson also pointed to the state legislature’s role in overseeing the programs and said that at least one business highlighted in Shirley’s reporting had already been shut down by Walz’s administration.
Despite the response, criticism continued. In addition to Education Secretary Linda McMahon, Vice President JD Vance praised Shirley’s work, writing on X, “This dude has done far more useful journalism than any of the winners of the 2024 [Pulitzer] prizes.”
FBI Director Kash Patel said in a post on X that the bureau is aware of the allegations circulating online. Patel wrote that the FBI had already deployed additional personnel and “investigative resources” to Minnesota to address “large-scale fraud” involving federal programs, even before the issue gained widespread attention on social media.
“Fraud that steals from taxpayers and robs vulnerable children will remain a top FBI priority in Minnesota and nationwide,” Patel wrote.
Patel also cited previous arrests and convictions as evidence of the bureau’s ongoing efforts to combat fraud in the state.
BlazeTV host Christopher Rufo disputed Patel’s characterization, calling it “misleading.” In a post on X, Rufo said Patel was taking “credit for investigations and convictions that occurred under the Biden Administration,” adding that the unresolved question concerns alleged fraud that has not yet resulted in charges. “When do we see arrests, mugshots, and new prosecutions?” Rufo wrote.
Rufo previously reported on alleged fraud involving Minnesota welfare and health programs earlier this year. As independent journalists such as Shirley continue to highlight the allegations, scrutiny of Minnesota officials, including Walz and U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, has intensified.
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