Summary: A 43-minute video by right-wing creator Nick Shirley, viewed millions of times, claimed widespread fraud in Minnesota's public child-care program. The clip helped prompt federal funding freezes, intensified enforcement actions in Minneapolis and contributed to Governor Tim Walz suspending his reelection campaign. While fraud has been a real, longstanding issue—and more than 50 convictions have resulted from prior investigations—subsequent reporting and inspections found many daycare centers operating normally. The episode illustrates how viral creators who borrow journalistic form can shape policy and public perception.
How Right-Wing Creators Bend Reality: The Nick Shirley Video and the Minnesota Fallout
Children read at ABC Learning Center Inc. in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on December 30, 2025. The daycare was featured in a viral video claiming there were no children present, but it actually just didn’t allow the YouTuber into the building. | Renee Jones Schneider/Minnesota Star Tribune via Getty Images
The 43-minute video posted by 23-year-old creator Nick Shirley has become a touchstone for how viral right-wing content can reshape political debate and influence policy. Purporting to investigate fraud in Minnesota's publicly funded child-care program, Shirley's December 26 clip has been viewed millions of times and helped trigger a chain of federal and state actions with real-world consequences.
Background
Problems in Minnesota's child-care subsidy system are not new: state and federal investigators have long examined abuses and, since 2022, more than 50 fraud convictions have resulted from those probes. What changed this time was the style and reach of the exposé. Shirley's video compresses complex administrative issues into dramatic, confrontational moments built for social platforms rather than for traditional investigative reporting.
The Video And Immediate Impact
In the video, Shirley confronts daycare staff and parents—often filming unannounced and treating closed doors or refusals to speak as proof of wrongdoing. That footage, combined with polished editing and an urgent tone, helped the clip reach roughly 3.4 million views. Within days, the federal government froze child-care payments to Minnesota and issued new reporting requirements. Governor Tim Walz abruptly suspended his reelection campaign, and federal enforcement in Minneapolis was intensified.
Consequences On The Ground
The enforcement action tied to the video's allegations included the deployment of hundreds of ICE and other federal officers to the Minneapolis area. During the operation, an ICE agent shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Good, a killing captured on bystander video that has since been circulated and repurposed across social platforms.
How Viral Creators Reshape Reality
Shirley represents a broader phenomenon: creators who mimic the look and language of journalism—street interviews, voiceover narration, dramatic edits—without necessarily following journalism's norms of verification, balance, and transparency. As Jay Caspian Kang observed, this ecosystem lets officials and influencers point to apparently independent voices as seemingly authentic proof, even when those clips omit context or rely on emotional, selective framing.
"You can pick any type of political argument you want, and you can find somebody who is presumably independent who is making that argument," Kang told Vox. "All you have to do is point them to that person ... and then that person becomes, in some ways, an authentic and pure version that doesn’t feel like propaganda."
Reporting Versus Spectacle
Local journalists and state officials who subsequently visited many of the daycares Shirley highlighted found them largely operating normally, undercutting a simple equation of closed doors with fraud. Independent reporters—like Max Nesterak of the Minnesota Reformer—note that while fraud does exist and has been investigated for years, the viral video amplified impressions and incidents into a national narrative that outpaced the facts on the ground.
Broader Implications
The Minnesota episode highlights two intertwined trends: the decline of broad public trust in legacy media and the rise of algorithm-driven platforms that reward immediacy and emotion. When viral creators are amplified by high-level officials—posts reshared by figures such as Vice President JD Vance, FBI Director Kash Patel, and President Donald Trump—the resulting feedback loop can accelerate policy moves and enforcement actions before conventional reporting or official inquiry has fully established context.
Conclusion
The Shirley case is a concrete example of how attention-driven content can have outsized political and human consequences. It underscores the need for critical evaluation of viral claims, clearer separation between entertainment-style advocacy and rigorous reporting, and caution by officials who may be tempted to act on sensational clips rather than verified information.
Help us improve.
