YouTuber and independent journalist Nick Shirley has landed in California to begin a new investigation into the state’s waste, fraud, and abuse, fresh off exposing millions of dollars in child-care fraud in Minnesota. In a short clip posted to X, Shirley takes viewers inside California’s homelessness crisis, highlighting how taxpayer dollars are being used to subsidize drug addiction rather than deliver genuine help. Highlighting what he described as waste and fraud that seems to plague Democratic states.
Gavin Newsom’s world’s fifth largest economy is a third world country pic.twitter.com/VDoboYpKBk
— Kevin Dalton (@TheKevinDalton) February 10, 2026
"This guy is clearly he's passed out right now," Shirley said as a man is seen lying unconscious on the sidewalk. "How do we know that he is still alive and that he doesn't need Narcan right now?"
"He's breathing," the social worker with Shirley said. "You see his chest raising and it's going up and down, and his color is good. No,w if he's blue, he's not responsive. His color is gone. He'd be like a blue-gray-purple color. Then you know, he's overdosing. Okay, so the most important thing is to hit him with Narcan. It doesn't matter how much Narcan you give him, you know, if you got three in here, give him all three and rescue breaths."
"Okay, so what's in here? What's inside this bag?" Shirley asked, as the social worker opened it up, showing Shirley three doses of Narcan. "This Narcan you inject into their nose, and it brings them back to life."
"Yes, sir. Yeah."
"While I was talking to the guy about Narcan, my friend Tommy was also talking to another guy in the cart about some other things. I think you guys are all gonna find this very strange, what he'd received from the people in the cart," Shirley said.
Shirley went on to describe how the state handles its homeless population. Instead of requiring treatment, expanding job programs, or seriously confronting the addiction crisis that plagues the streets, the state hands out bags of clean needles and Narcan, effectively enabling repeated overdoses, allowing addicts to revive themselves or be revived by others, and perpetuating a devastating cycle.
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"We were talking to the people over there in the van, and they're giving out free stuff. They're giving out the Narcan to save people, and they're also giving out needles. And what's their like, what's the idea of giving out needles and the rubber bands?" Shirley asked.
"This is so they could do the drugs like without worrying about disease, so everyone gets a clean needle," a man showing Shirley around the homeless-infested streets said.
"That's like how many needles inside? There's 10 needles inside of this bag, right here."
"You get everything, the whole kit. You get the rubber band, you get the alcohol, you get the cotton swabs, but then this is what you actually put it in here and heat this up, and then they give you filtered water," the man added.
"So they're literally giving the people here on the street what they need to keep doing drugs."
And it's funny because if you notice, like in your hand, you have the Narcan one, right? So they're giving you the drug, the stuff to do the drugs, right? This, glass pipes, and then they're giving you the stuff to save your life, so they don't die and then they give it to you every day. Look, I'm not even homeless. I just went up to the guy and said hey can I get a Narcan bag and can I get a drug bag and the guy said 'yeah.' No questions asked, no, 'Hey, don't do this' or 'Can we get you some help?' No, they're just offering you the drug bags to do the drugs They're not offering you any kind of help or assistance or any kind of detoxing.
"They're giving you the drugs to do the drugs. They're giving you the stuff you need to do the drug, and they're giving you the stuff that you need to revive your life after you do the drugs," Shirley said.
Think about how much money this costs for these packs to be given out daily to so many people. When that money could be going to other programs to help them, it just doesn't make sense like here, kill yourself. Save yourself. Kill yourself. Save yourself. It's a cycle, and it's not fair to them.
Welcome to California…
— Nick shirley (@nickshirleyy) February 9, 2026
Here they will let you overdose on their streets, give you the narcan to revive yourself and then give you the supplies to kill yourself again 💀
The homeless industrial complex has corruption, fraud and waste all over it. pic.twitter.com/8f3tXX7g50
All of this comes as Shirley has pledged to root out the waste, fraud, and abuse plaguing what is already the nation’s most generous state. Minnesota’s lax oversight exploded into a massive fraud scandal, and yet California operates a far larger, far better-funded safety net, overseen by an even more bloated bureaucracy. Remarkably, Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton has already uncovered evidence of fraud without even holding elected office, and has pledged to root out even more waste, fraud, and abuse if he's elected.
Hello California I’ve arrived pic.twitter.com/lqYxagMoDa
— Nick shirley (@nickshirleyy) January 31, 2026
Still, the Newsom administration insists that claims of widespread fraud in the Golden State are overblown, a denial that grows harder to sustain as the evidence continues to mount.
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