Nick Shirley

Nick Shirley (born April 4, 2002) is an American conservative and right-wing YouTuber and influencer known for street interviews and political videos. In December 2025, his video alleging fraud at Somali-run child care centers in Minnesota went viral. Shirley's central claims that members of the Somali community were operating fake childcare centers or inflating attendance numbers were unsubstantiated.

Early life and education Shirley was raised in Utah, by a family affiliated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He attended Farmington High School in Farmington, Utah, graduating in 2020.

Career

Early activities Shirley started his YouTube career as an amateur vlogger and prankster at age 16. Most of his pranks involved his high-school friends, while others included publicity stunts such as disrupting celebrity weddings. He also offered to sell some of his own recorded footage, including of the January 6 attack, to media companies such as CNN and HuffPost.

Political videos

Shirley's YouTube channel has over 1.1 million subscribers and more than 200 million total views. He is best known for street interviews and direct questions. Some media outlets have described Shirley as right-wing. According to Semafor, Shirley is part of Trump's "new media", a right-wing creator class whose posts have become influential within the second Trump administration, whereas conservative institutional media was more influential during Trump's first term. He has received "pushback from some traditional members of the media" for claiming to be a journalist. Republican legislators had provided information that appeared in the video; one Republican floor leader said they were "ready and willing to provide information ... including some of the information that ended up in that video".

Shirley made multiple videos in support of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump in the months preceding the 2024 U.S. presidential election. He paid a number of Hispanic men $20 each to hold pro-Joe Biden and pro-immigration signs in front of the White House as part of a publicity stunt to support Trump. When asked by Reuters whether he had exploited participants in the video, he said he "wanted to give the migrants an opportunity to voice their opinions". Also in 2024, Shirley released footage from inside the Salvadorian maximum-security prison CECOT, which he praised.

In October 2025, Shirley participated in a White House roundtable discussion with Trump and other right-wing figures, such as Andy Ngo and Jack Posobiec, on topics including antifa. Shirley claimed in the title of one of his videos that Portland had "fallen" and antifa had "taken control". ICE arrested several people selling watches on Canal Street in Lower Manhattan after he made a video in which he called them "illegal scammers". In an interview with Fox News, Shirley defended his videos, saying, "fraud is fraud—it doesn't matter if it's a Black person, white person, Asian person, Mexican... and we work too hard simply just to be paying taxes and enabling fraud to be happening." Shirley's support of Oliveira's documentary was published a day after he attended Trump's 2026 State of the Union Address, to which he was invited by Minnesota representative Pete Stauber. In June 2026, Politico reported that references to Polymarket (a prediction market) had begun to appear in Shirley's content "after Shirley started to receive money from Polymarket's chief marketing officer, Matthew Modabber".

Allegations of daycare and healthcare fraud in Minnesota

On December 26, 2025, Shirley published a video, filmed on December 16, in which he alleged widespread fraud at Somali-run childcare centers and healthcare companies in Minnesota. On January 30, 2026, state officials said they had "no public information to share" about ongoing fraud investigations into over 100 childcare centers. On February 19, three daycare centers featured in the video sued the Minnesota Department of Children, Youth and Families, alleging that the agency withheld funds and conducted investigations without evidence. Somali-owned businesses reported a surge in harassment and threats after the video came out. The Trump administration cited Shirley's video as justification for increasing ICE enforcement activity in Minnesota under an initiative known as Operation Metro Surge.

After the video's release, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Federal Bureau of Investigation increased their presence in the state and federal funding for the childcare centers was frozen. In April, federal agents raided 20 childcare centers in the Twin City Metro area, including those covered in the video. The move was promoted by state officials who said they were working with federal agencies. On May 20, 2026, federal prosecutors charged the owner of the Future Leaders Early Learning center with one count of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States through Minnesota's Child Care Assistance Program. The business was one of the centers shown in Shirley's video. In July 2026, one daycare owner featured in the video, Fahima Mahamud, pleaded guilty to $4.6 million in daycare fraud and $850,000 in the Feeding Our Future scam.

Media appearances On December 30, 2025, CNN correspondent Whitney Wild interviewed Shirley outside a Minneapolis daycare center for Anderson Cooper 360, questioning his investigative methods and asking how he knew his allegations were true. Shirley responded, "We showed you guys what was happening, and then you guys can go ahead and make your own analysis."