Behind the Somali daycare panic is a mother-and-son duo angling to be prime Maga influencers

[ad_1] Y ouTube 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 nationwide funding freeze, has for years printed conspiracy-minded takes on hot-button rightwing points.

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He additionally has shut ties to the White Home, Republicans, and to representatives of an earlier technology of rightwing partisan “ambush journalists” similar to James O’Keefe. He labored with Minnesota Republicans to supply 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 often sensationalize battle, or deal with avenue violence. The titles of current movies embrace Dearborn Michigan has Fallen… Christians and Muslims Battle, Portland has Fallen… ANTIFA has Taken Management of Metropolis, and I Confronted Harmful Migrant Scammers in NYC | Canal Road, 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, grew to become the idea for a torrent of anti-immigrant and anti-Somali content material throughout social media, together with in Reality Social posts by Donald Trump.

Comply with-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 had been claiming federal funding with out caring for any youngsters.

Greater than 90 folks in Minnesota have been charged since 2022 in a $250m Covid-19 reduction fraud scheme involving a non-profit that falsely claimed to offer meals to youngsters, and a federal prosecutor estimated that $9bn or extra in federal funds throughout 14 state packages could have been stolen since 2018.

However no fraud prices have been filed towards the daycare facilities featured by Shirley, although state information 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 on the head of a burgeoning milieu of Maga-verse content material creators.

Brooke Shirley, 55, has posted tons of of movies to her TikTok account starting simply two weeks after the January 6 protests at the USA Capitol, which Nick Shirley filmed himself attending.

She has additionally publicly defended the veracity of her son’s work. In November she advised the Columbia Journalism Evaluation (CJR) that “what Nick is doing is journalism”, including: “He’s documenting what's going on in America and on the earth. And unbiased journalists are those which can be on the market.”

In addition they have a shared self-perception as truth-telling citizen journalists.

The Guardian contacted Brooke Shirley for remark by way of voice and textual content message on a cellphone quantity recognized as an energetic connection in her title by a number of knowledge brokers. Nick Shirley was contacted for remark by way of the contact e mail listed on his YouTube web page, and which he has invited folks to ship tips about within the description subject 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, mentioned: “Such a utilization of social media doesn't support democratic illustration and as a substitute contributes to a better destabilisation of recent politics.

He added, “The state of affairs has worsened in newer years with widespread mis/disinformation that deprives the general public of their basic proper to have entry to dependable, correct info so to make knowledgeable selections.”

Nick Shirley’s superb yr Nick Shirley has emerged within the final two years as one in every of a brand new crop of stories influencers who achieved a brand new stage of salience on the tail finish of the Biden years and have been actively cultivated by Trump’s White Home.

Shirley was one of many invitees to a White Home Antifa roundtable in October, at which influencers and administration officers aired their grievances in regards to the amorphous social motion that has served as a Maga goal since Trump’s first presidency.

Shirley dutifully posted a video of his speech on the occasion on his YouTube channel.

By then, Shirley was using excessive on the idea of a earlier viral yarn, after he was one of many first influencers to submit alarmist movies about immigrant distributors on New York’s Canal Road.

Reportedly, the eye from Shirley and different information influencers similar 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 positioned for many years as saying that Ice “simply reap the benefits of this as a result of immediately the rightwing media and on-line influencers got here down into the realm”.

In November, Shirley was awarded the “citizen journalist of the yr” on the Citizen Journalism Gala held at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property, and hosted by James O’Keefe.

The month after the Mar-a-Lago ceremony, Shirley was collaborating with Minnesota Republicans to place the difficulty of purported fraud within the state’s Somali immigrant neighborhood on the nationwide agenda.

On 29 December, Home Republican leaders held a press convention within 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 below an hour uncovered greater than 1,000,000 {dollars} in fraud.”

She additionally added: “Our caucus has been working to reveal fraud for years, together with working with Nick Shirley and company whistleblowers to get the data out to the general public and to carry the Walz administration accountable.”

The Guardian emailed DeMuth to ask for specifics on the collaboration, and whether or not the obvious inaccuracies unveiled by subsequent reporting had been Shirley’s alone, or on account of info offered by the caucus.

A spokesperson referred to a person who seems prominently within the video, referred to solely as “David” by Shirley, however who was later recognized 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 info they used, together with daycare places, CCAP numbers, violations, and so on, was given to David by caucus employees who discovered it within the official DHS licensing database and different publicly obtainable sources.”

Double act Shirley reportedly constructed his channel with shock and prank movies within 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, based on NPR, Shirley’s content material took on a extra sharply political and partisan character.

Per Columbia Journalism Evaluation reporting, this pivot was inspired 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 subject 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 best way for him, having printed pro-Maga content material to TikTok since late January 2021, based on a Guardian overview of the account.

She has additionally been intently concerned in his work. In his acceptance speech at Mar-a-Lago, based on CJR, he thanked Brooke “for filming a lot of his movies”.

Every has registered firms that look like associated to their public output.

In line with Utah firm information, Shirley was the organizer of Honey Badger LLC, whose goal 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 goal is “social media and associated actions”, which was included on 30 September 2024.

Each firms had been registered on the identical residential handle 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 convey the reality to all”, on Brooke’s TikTok account, which on the time of reporting had greater than 290,000 followers, Brooke describes herself as a “boots on the bottom Citizen Journalist!”, including, “observe me for true information!”.

Roving reporters Brooke’s boots often tread the identical floor as Nick’s.

The pair’s video output signifies that they journey to the identical locations which were the main target 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 printed a video on YouTube which purported to supply an account of occasions on the bottom in Portland, Oregon. His video performed up stereotypes of the town which have emerged through the Trump period, specializing in homeless encampments, and scuffles outdoors the town’s ICE facility, which has been a spotlight for protesters and counter-protesters for the reason that summer season, and attracted a Trump-ordered nationwide guard deployment, which has since ended after the supreme court docket 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 components and inflatable animal costumes.

Between 12 and 16 October, Brooke Shirley printed 5 TikTok movies shot within the metropolis. In a single printed on 17 October, Shirley options footage of the identical costumes, groceries and charcoal grills highlighted by Nick in his longer YouTube video.

Within 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 point out you what the ICE facility seems like,” including: “Proper over there you will get inflatables to placed 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 targeted on protesters sporting 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 happening in entrance of your condo advanced. As a result of this has been happening for greater than 100 days, 24/7”.

The identical sample repeats itself within 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 on the anti-immigrant Unite the Kingdom rally in London held two days earlier, the place interviewees included a lady in a Union Jack bikini, and a person with extreme facial contusions who was later seen confronting law enforcement officials.

The video additionally closely featured the far-right activist and convicted legal Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, higher generally known as Tommy Robinson, who was one of many rally’s key organizers.

Shirley printed a separate sit-down interview with Robinson.

Across the rally, Brooke Shirley printed interviews with attenders who provided reward for Donald Trump and the lately assassinated Charlie Kirk. The earlier yr, on a separate journey, Brooke Shirley printed her personal 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 federal government is dumb sufficient to permit it to proceed to go on it. It’s simple to search out the fraud. All you might want to do is a bit of 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 tens of millions yearly from the federal government.”

Within 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 will probably maintain as much as 40 youngsters. I went as much as the door. The door is locked, and as you possibly can see, the home windows are blacked out. I can’t hear any youngsters inside this daycare.”

Shirley continues: “It’s noon proper now. You’d suppose there’d be youngsters in there enjoying, 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 ability, with reporters seeing youngsters being cared for once they visited.

Brooke Shirley’s video had been seen virtually 360,000 occasions on the time of reporting.

Up to now, Brooke Shirley has credited her son for her success on TikTok.

On 18 January 2025, following a quick TikTok shutdown arising from Biden-era laws aimed toward forcing the positioning’s Chinese language dad or mum 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 might be again! Thanks my TikTok household and mates!” Shirley wrote, including “Thanks to my superb 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 photographs of Shirley interviewing migrants on the southern border and cities across the nation, attending Trump rallies and pupil protests, and standing outdoors homeless encampments.

Regardless of persistent considerations in regards to the high quality of the data handed on by self-described “citizen journalists” like Shirley, Pew analysis means that one in 5 Individuals usually get information from social media content material creators.

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