The California State Assembly passed a bill on Wednesday that independent journalist Nick Shirley says was written to stop him, and anyone else, from investigating how taxpayer money flows to immigration service nonprofits. The measure, AB 2624, now heads to the California Senate, where it could become law in a state already facing mounting scrutiny over fraud in publicly funded programs.
Assemblymember Mia Bonta, a Democrat from Oakland, authored the bill. Its official title is the "Privacy for Immigration Support Services Providers." Its unofficial name, coined by critics, is more direct: the "Stop Nick Shirley Act."
Shirley, who has built a following investigating fraud allegations at nonprofits and healthcare facilities, appeared on Fox News @ Night with Trace Gallagher on Wednesday to respond. He did not mince words about what he sees as the bill's true purpose.
"What's interesting about this, this bill is it's protecting NGOs and nonprofits. These are organizations and groups that receive our tax dollars, yet they want to make it so we [can't find out what they're] doing with our tax dollars."
That framing, taxpayer-funded groups shielded from the taxpayers who fund them, is the heart of the controversy. And it is a controversy Sacramento brought on itself.
The bill would create privacy and address-confidentiality protections for immigration service providers who face what it describes as documented threats or harassment because of their work. Bonta's remarks, played during the Fox News interview, characterized immigrant service providers as targets of harassment, doxxing campaigns, and threats.
Shirley pushed back hard. He claimed the bill would place journalists and investigators at civil risk for looking into fraud at immigration support services, nonprofits, and healthcare facilities. In a post on X, he argued that investigators could face injunctions, attorney fees, and statutory damages if covered organizations claim a reasonable fear for their safety.
Read that again: the organizations receiving public money could invoke a subjective standard, "reasonable fear", to trigger legal consequences against the people trying to find out where the money went. As the New York Post editorial board put it, California is trying to criminalize journalism to protect fraud.
There is another layer. Mia Bonta is married to Rob Bonta, California's attorney general. Shirley alleged on air that Rob Bonta attempted to take credit for exposing hospice fraud in California, fraud Shirley says he uncovered first.
"Her husband actually tried to take credit for exposing the hospice fraud after I had went and exposed the hospice fraud."
Fox News Digital reported reaching out to both Mia Bonta and Rob Bonta for comment. Neither responded. That silence is notable for an assemblymember who authored a bill now generating national attention and an attorney general whose office presumably has a view on press freedom and public accountability.
The recent suspension of 470 Los Angeles healthcare providers over $600 million in suspected fraud underscores exactly why independent scrutiny of publicly funded service providers matters. When the federal government itself is uncovering fraud on that scale in California, a state bill designed to make such investigations harder deserves every ounce of skepticism it is receiving.
Shirley pointed to specific fraud cases to justify his work. He referenced nonprofit fraud in Minnesota, claiming that "hundreds of millions, billions of dollars" were stolen. He also cited the California hospice fraud cases. The Step 1 package does not provide case names, conviction records, or verified dollar amounts for these claims, so they remain Shirley's assertions. But the broader pattern he describes, large-scale fraud at taxpayer-funded organizations serving immigrant communities, is not something he invented.
"The fraud has been going on for so long. These fraudsters thought they could get away with it for so long that so many people started committing this fraud."
Whether or not every detail of Shirley's fraud claims holds up to full scrutiny, the question AB 2624 raises is simpler: Should the response to a journalist investigating potential fraud be a law that makes investigating fraud legally dangerous?
Most Americans, regardless of party, would say no.
The bill drew immediate criticism from conservative figures online. Rep. Tim Burchett responded on X with a blunt assessment: "This is Democrat leadership."
Republican New Hampshire congressional candidate Lily Tang Williams went further in her own post:
"Taxpayers should be outraged by this in CA. If CA signs this bill into law to protect fraudsters, Federal government must fight back."
Actor Dean Cain also weighed in, though his specific comments were not detailed. The pattern is clear: AB 2624 has become a national flashpoint, not just a Sacramento committee matter.
Shirley himself seemed to relish the attention. "I obviously hit a nerve," he told Gallagher. That much is hard to dispute. When a state legislature drafts a bill that critics name after a single independent journalist, the nerve has been located.
California's pattern of using state power to insulate favored institutions from accountability is not new. The state has already faced confrontation from Shirley over this same bill, and the controversy has only grown louder as the legislation advances.
The core problem with AB 2624 is not complicated. Nonprofits and service providers that accept public dollars operate in a space between private enterprise and government function. They spend taxpayer money. They serve populations that elected officials claim to champion. And when fraud occurs, as it demonstrably has in multiple states, the public has a right to know.
A bill that gives those organizations a legal tool to silence investigators does not protect vulnerable immigrants. It protects the organizations themselves. The immigrants who depend on honest service delivery are harmed most when fraud goes unchecked and money meant for them disappears.
California lawmakers have also moved to fund legal defense for illegal immigrants with taxpayer dollars, a separate measure that drew its own wave of conservative opposition. Together, these bills paint a picture of a state legislature more interested in shielding a political constituency from scrutiny than in ensuring public money is spent honestly.
Shirley offered his own prescription on Fox News:
"My response is stop using these communities, commit fraud, and no one will ever have any speculation about fraud taking place when we know that the fraud is very much real."
It is a blunt message, but it contains a logic that AB 2624's supporters have not answered: if there is no fraud, why do you need a law to stop people from looking for it?
AB 2624 now sits in the California Senate. Its fate there will signal whether Sacramento's Democratic supermajority is willing to put its name on a measure that, whatever its stated intent, functions as a legal deterrent to independent journalism and fraud investigation.
The bill's full operative language has not been made publicly available in the reporting reviewed here. Key questions remain: What specific penalties does it impose? How broadly does it define "immigration support services providers"? What threshold of "documented threats or harassment" triggers the protections? And who decides whether an investigator's conduct crosses the line?
Those details matter. A bill sold as protecting workers from genuine threats could, depending on its language, become a blanket shield for any organization that wants to avoid uncomfortable questions. The difference between the two is the difference between a reasonable privacy measure and a censorship tool. California's track record of institutional overreach in the name of protection does not inspire confidence about which version the legislature intended.
Fox News Digital has not received responses from either Mia Bonta or Rob Bonta. The silence from the bill's author and her husband, the state's top law enforcement officer, speaks for itself.
When a government's answer to fraud exposure is to pass a law against the people doing the exposing, taxpayers don't need a journalist to tell them something is wrong. They can see it plainly enough.
