The California State Assembly passed AB 2624 on Wednesday and sent it to the state Senate, advancing a measure that independent journalist Nick Shirley and a growing chorus of critics say would make it harder to investigate taxpayer-funded organizations suspected of fraud. Shirley, whose undercover reporting on immigration-related nonprofits prompted the bill's unofficial nickname, the "Stop Nick Shirley Act", appeared on Fox News @ Night to push back against the legislation.
The bill, formally titled "Privacy for Immigration Support Services Providers," would create privacy and address-confidentiality protections for immigration service providers who face documented threats or harassment because of their work. Assemblymember Mia Bonta, a Democrat from Oakland, authored the measure. She has said immigrant service providers have faced harassment, doxxing campaigns, and threats.
Shirley sees it differently, and he isn't shy about saying so.
During his Wednesday night appearance with host Trace Gallagher, Shirley laid out his objections in plain terms. He argued the bill's real effect would be to insulate organizations that receive public money from the kind of scrutiny taxpayers deserve.
"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."
Shirley also claimed on X that the bill would place journalists at civil risk for investigating fraud involving immigration support services, nonprofits, and health care facilities. The full text of AB 2624 has not been detailed in available reporting, so the precise scope of its penalties, civil or otherwise, remains an open question.
But the broader pattern Shirley described is not hypothetical. He pointed to fraud cases he says he personally investigated, including alleged theft by Minnesota nonprofits and a hospice fraud scheme inside California. As Shirley has previously confronted California lawmakers over the same bill, his argument has sharpened: the state is trying to protect the people he exposed, not the communities those organizations claim to serve.
"The Somalis in Minnesota, they stole hundreds of millions, billions of dollars, and then the hospice fraud that took place inside California. Everyone was saying that was bogus. And then her husband actually tried to take credit for exposing the hospice fraud after I had went and exposed the hospice fraud."
The "husband" Shirley referenced is California Attorney General Rob Bonta, Assemblymember Mia Bonta's spouse. Fox News Digital reached out to both Mia Bonta and Rob Bonta for comment. Neither had responded.
That family connection raises its own questions. The bill's author is married to the state's top law enforcement officer, and Shirley alleges that same officer tried to claim credit for fraud exposure Shirley says he did first. Whether or not that claim holds up under scrutiny, the optics are difficult to defend. A lawmaker writes a bill that would restrict the work of a journalist who embarrassed her husband's office, and the husband declines to comment.
The California Assembly's passage of the bill drew immediate reaction online. Rep. Tim Burchett responded on X with a blunt summary of his view.
"This is Democrat leadership."
Lily Tang Williams, a Republican congressional candidate from New Hampshire, was more specific in her criticism. She argued taxpayers should be alarmed by what Sacramento is doing.
"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 online after Shirley criticized the legislation, though his specific remarks were not detailed.
Shirley's core argument is that the bill exists not to protect vulnerable immigrants but to protect the organizations that profit from serving them, sometimes fraudulently.
"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."
He added that the scale of fraud he has investigated suggests it has gone unchecked for years.
"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."
The specific fraud cases Shirley referenced, in both Minnesota and California, are not fully detailed in the Fox News report. But the broader landscape of healthcare and nonprofit fraud in the state is well documented. A federal task force recently suspended 470 Los Angeles healthcare providers over $600 million in suspected fraud, underscoring the scale of the problem Shirley says he's been chasing.
California's political class has not always welcomed that kind of scrutiny. Governor Gavin Newsom's press office previously directed a slur at a conservative journalist investigating fraud in the state, a moment that suggested Sacramento's instinct, when caught flat-footed, is to attack the messenger rather than address the message.
AB 2624's operative language, as described in available reporting, would create privacy and address-confidentiality protections for immigration service providers who face "documented threats or harassment because of their work." That framing sounds reasonable in isolation. Nobody supports genuine threats against anyone.
But the bill's critics argue the definition of "harassment" could easily expand to cover legitimate investigative journalism, the kind that involves showing up at an office, filming operations, or publishing the names and addresses of organizations that receive public funds. The specific civil penalties, statutory damages, attorney fees, or injunction provisions in the bill have not been publicly detailed in the reporting reviewed here. That gap matters. A bill's teeth determine its real-world impact, and those teeth remain hidden from public view.
Shirley himself acknowledged the political stakes plainly. "I obviously hit a nerve," he said.
He did. The question is whether the California Senate will now rubber-stamp a bill that looks, to a growing number of observers, like an incumbent protection racket dressed up as a privacy measure.
The bill now sits with the California Senate. If it passes and reaches the governor's desk, it will formalize a framework that critics say prioritizes the comfort of taxpayer-funded organizations over the public's right to know how its money is spent. Supporters say it protects vulnerable workers from real threats. Neither Mia Bonta nor Rob Bonta has offered a public response to Shirley's specific allegations.
That silence speaks. When an independent journalist exposes fraud, and the state's response is not to investigate the fraud but to draft legislation making the journalism harder, the priorities of the people in charge are not ambiguous. They are simply indefensible.
Taxpayers don't need privacy protections for the organizations spending their money. They need receipts.
