Just a day after publishing a 40-minute video alleging fraud at Minnesota daycare centers, Nick Shirley had the vice president’s attention.
In Shirley’s video, he and another man identified only as “David” roam Minneapolis with cameras and microphones, demanding entrance to daycare centers they say are operated by members of the local Somali community. With scant evidence, Shirley accuses the centers of sweeping fraud, tying it to previous federal fraud cases pursued by Joe Biden’s administration in Minnesota. The men knock on doors, argue with workers who refuse them entry, and conduct man-on-the-street-style interviews, asking people if they’ve ever seen children at the centers.
The fraud Shirley claims he’s found remains elusive. Following his video, state officials visited nine businesses featured and found they were “operating as expected,” with children present at eight and one center that wasn’t yet open. State officials told reporters that previous investigations into some of the centers did not uncover evidence of fraud; four investigations are ongoing, they said. Officials also said that one of the childcare centers Shirley visited had been closed since 2022.
None of this stopped the video from going viral, however, or catching the eye of President Donald Trump’s administration. “This dude has done far more useful journalism than any of the winners of the 2024 [Pulitzer Prizes],” JD Vance said on X of Shirley, a 23-year-old right-wing content creator who fashions himself as a citizen journalist. Shirley’s post on X has 138 million “views” — the number of times a post was shown to X users — and more than 3 million views on YouTube. A few days after Shirley posted the video, federal agencies had launched a childcare fraud tipline, promising to prosecute violators “to the FULLEST extent of the law.”
There has never been a better time to be a far-right content creator
Within days, Shirley’s video had been used to trigger a national news cycle. Donald Trump’s administration said it would freeze federal childcare funding to Minnesota, where local childcare centers reported threats, break-ins, and frightened families in the wake of the video. Thousands of federal agents would be deployed to Minneapolis, the administration said. Shirley’s daycare stunt is one of many: In a previous video, he paid day laborers $20 to hold pro-Biden signs in front of the White House. And his work — along with that of countless other influencers — is grist for a content mill that now has a direct audience at the highest levels of power.
There has never been a better time to be a far-right content creator. The right has built an empire of online personalities, shows, and outlets that reach millions of people across platforms, centered on Elon Musk’s X: a place where influencers, government officials, and foreign grifters commingle, overseen by a billionaire owner that aligns with them politically. Shirley and others like him are able to elicit maximum attention and reaction — from officials with a penchant for posting, like Vance and FBI Director Kash Patel, and by extension from everyone else reacting to the news. Viral content becomes official government policy.
The line between influencer and politician is a thin one. The Intercept reported that “David” from the video was David Hoch, who previously ran for Minnesota attorney general and called Muslims “demons” on now-deleted social media accounts. In the video, Hoch says the information he has is “100 percent accurate coming directly from research done by people at the state capitol”; The Intercept reported on ties between Hoch and a Republican staffer who appears in emails shown in Shirley’s video. Minnesota state Rep. Lisa Demuth — a Republican running for governor — also claimed to have worked with Shirley to “expose fraud.” Shirley initially denied knowing who Demuth was and accused her of “clout chasing” before quickly pivoting and wishing her luck on her campaign. Shirley did not immediately respond to questions about whether he, Hoch, or his team had communicated with state and federal officials while producing the video.
A viral post can bestow both algorithmic success and a rapid response from the federal government. In October 2025, Savanah Hernandez, a Turning Point USA-aligned content creator, posted a short video on X showing merchants on Canal Street in New York City. “One of the migrants explained to me that they’re operating ‘without a license’ and if the police catch them, they’ll confiscate all of their items,” Hernandez wrote. “Perhaps @ICEgov should go check this corner out.” Shirley had earlier done the same schtick, in a YouTube video titled “I Confronted Dangerous Migrant Scammers in NYC | Canal Street.”
A few days after Hernandez’s post, dozens of federal agents swarmed the area in a raid targeting street vendors. The Department of Homeland Security said on X it had arrested nine immigrants; four US citizens were also reportedly held without federal charges. (Hernandez and Shirley both participated in a White House-hosted event on antifa in October.)
Shirley’s video from Minneapolis takes a well-worn YouTuber format and applies it to a high-profile situation that has been in the news for years. Shirley uses dramatic music to set the tone and an unpolished filming style to make viewers feel like they’re there — that because they did not see any children present, there must be massive fraud happening. Nuance, details, confirmation, or follow-up doesn’t suit a format that is measured primarily by whether you get enough watch time to be able to monetize your video.
Influencers have supplanted cable news talking heads as megaphones for politicians’ messages and platforms. They are cheap, fast, and savvy — drop a clickbait video on platforms like X, which can then act like a tornado maker for right-wing fury. Influencers know that information doesn’t need to be new, true, or fair. It just needs to hit at the right time and be boosted by the right people, at which point it might even get picked up by traditional news outlets, as the daycare story did. The Trump administration knows the influencer game well because its ranks are filled with them. That the president and senior staff have X tabs open on a giant screen in a war room tells us where they believe politics and governing take place.
In December, Axios published a chart visualizing search interest throughout 2025 for dozens of trending news cycles: Jeffrey Epstein, Charlie Kirk, RealID, Cracker Barrel. Most of these topics peak when news hits and then trickle off — but some endure for months with intermittent surges, like searches for Gaza, inflation, Labubus, and KPop Demon Hunters. If you rely on social media algorithms for your livelihood, audience, or to maintain power, you must stay on trend at all times and develop an ability to see a wave before it crashes.
If we made a chart for 2026 news cycles, “Somali daycare fraud” may very well be one of these flashes in the pan that surges and then disappears. Whatever other viral news events this year brings, we should expect to see the influencers — elected and not — swarm and milk them dry before carrying on to the next crisis. Each event will be the “the worst fraud in human history.” Merch will follow. The feds will not be far behind.
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