Right-wing commentator Eric Daugherty took to X to share Vice President JD Vance’s latest remarks at Bangor, Maine on Thursday where he gave a shoutout to YouTuber Nick Shirley, who came into prominence after flagging frauds in Minnesota.
Shirley runs a self-titled YouTube channel where he documents field visits, interviews, and confrontations related to his reporting. He has covered subjects like childcare fraud allegations, homelessness, immigration, and public spending.
His style typically involves direct questioning and real-time documentation, which he also shares across platforms like X. One of his videos in particular, which raised allegations of fraud involving Somali-run childcare centers in Minnesota, quickly gained widespread attention in December 2025.
READ: Elon Musk reacts to California’s ‘Stop Nick Shirley Act’: ‘Investigating fraud illegal’ (April 14, 2026)
Vance’s praise for Shirley comes as the vice president leads a “fraud task force.” Last month, President Donald Trump “fraud czar,” who would be responsible for investigating fraud, particularly in Democrat-run states. The fraud task force Vance leads was put in place by an executive order by Trump. Trump had also previously charged Vance with leading administration efforts to investigate fraud in Minnesota.
While Shirley’s reports gained widespread attention, there has also been pushback against them, with one report by Governing calling them an exaggeration. The report points out that Shirley claimed to have found that the Somali daycare centers were collecting money without providing any care, but he didn’t get in to check. It also mentioned that while there certainly were problems with the federally funded childcare programs in Minnesota, but nowhere near what the Trump administration had charged.
A federal audit in 2025, on data collected in 2023, found an error rate of 11 percent in payments that were made to 1,155 child-care centers. Most of the errors came from sloppy recordkeeping by the centers, not fraud, according to the report.
READ: ‘Where are the children?’: Independent Journalist Nick Shirley alleges ‘billion dollar’ fraud in California (March 19, 2026)
A report by CBS news also mentioned that state records for the daycare centers showed that all but two have active licenses, and all active locations were visited by state regulators within the last six months. Their review found dozens of citations related to safety, cleanliness, equipment, and staff training, but no recorded evidence of fraud.
In response to the viral video, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services froze federal childcare funding for Minnesota, which received about $185 million in federal support for childcare. Amid the funding freeze and increased scrutiny, more than 2,000 federal agents from Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), leading to turmoil and clashes, with two individuals being killed.
Federal agents returned to Minneapolis in April 2028, executing search warrants at about 20 childcare centers for suspected fraud.