Nick Shirley and California Republicans are threatening legal action after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 2624, legislation critics have dubbed the “Stop Nick Shirley Act.”

On Wednesday, hundreds of people gathered outside the California State Capitol to support Shirley and oppose the new law, which shields certain immigration-service providers from public scrutiny by restricting how journalists and citizens can investigate and report on them. Under its sweeping privacy provisions, journalists such as Shirley could face substantial fines, and potentially jail time, if they publish personal information now protected under California law. 

Shirley and his supporters argue that the law violates free-speech protections guaranteed by the First Amendment.

"Welcome to the Califradia Republic," Shirley said during a speech on Wednesday. "Here in California, the politicians, instead of going after the fraudsters, they've now gone after those that are going to expose the fraud."

"AB 2624, also known as the 'Stop Nick Shirley Act,' was only created after I'd exposed widespread fraud here inside of America," he said. "They've essentially created a protected class by calling this group, the Immigration Support and Service Providers, saying that I and you cannot expose them. Politicians have learned that they can use immigrant communities and use non-profits and NGOs and funnel millions upon millions of your tax dollars into these non-profits, NGOs, and for so long nobody ever looked into it. Then I did, and look what they're doing now."

Recommended
It’s Always Cute When Canada Thinks It Matters Kurt Schlichter Ayanna Pressley Just Compared Trump and His Supporters to This. Is She Serious? Amy Curtis

"They heard we were having this rally, so last week they brought it forth to the Senate. Not a single Democrat voted against it. All the Republicans did. Then they fast-tracked it to the Assembly. Same thing happened. And then we did something that's never happened. We made Gavin Newsom work on a Saturday. And loaded the bill into the law," Shirley said. "Unfortunately for him, he just started this battle that we're bringing upon him. But really, that's why all of you showed up here today, because this is not the end, this is just the beginning. Thank you all so much for coming out, and thank you so much for coming."

Shirley later suggested he may be willing to “test” the new law himself, setting up a potential legal showdown.

This comes as Shirley, members of the Trump administration, and Republicans more broadly have accused California of becoming the fraud capital of the country, a state where taxpayer money moves through sprawling programs and NGOs with far too little scrutiny. Minnesota may have been the dominant fraud story of the past year, but people have argued that California could prove even worse once its own system is subjected to the same level of attention. 

California officials, from Attorney General Rob Bonta to Gov. Gavin Newsom, have pushed back on claims that the state has ignored fraud, pointing to investigations, prosecutions, a hospice-license moratorium, and hundreds of revoked licenses. But the scale of the problem is difficult to dismiss.