Show Notes
California Democrats really don’t like Nick Shirley and his brand of journalism. But a high-ranking statehouse aide took it to another level, interrupting Shirley’s attempt to interview a state lawmaker on the street by holding up a paper sign questioning the size of his manhood.
Terry Schanz, who makes $200,000 a year as chief of staff to state assembly Rep. Tina McKinnor (D-CA), disrupted Shirley’s interview on the street near the state capitol, shouting and holding a printed paper sign that read “Allegedly Nick Shirley Has a Small Penis. Prove Me Wrong.”
“This is the kind of gutter-level politics we now have in California,” says investigative reporter Susan Crabtree. She and her On Background podcast co-host Eric Eggers of the Government Accountability institute play a video clip of the confrontation, which shows Schanz aggressively disrupting the interview.
“What he did is the definition of political bullying. And he [Schanz] knew he was being filmed,” Crabtree says. She doubts Schanz will face any repercussions for his “childish” behavior. “This is a sign of what happens when you have one-party control of a state,” she says. “There’s no accountability.”
Shirley is well known for a series of confrontational interviews he filmed while exposing fraudulent daycare centers in Minneapolis, as well as similar efforts in California. Democrats in California just passed and sent to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk a bill that would criminalize doing that while inside “Immigration Support Service Centers” in the state. The bill was created by Assemblywoman Mia Bonta (D-Oakland), who is also the wife of California’s Attorney General Rob Bonta. It would fine citizen journalists a minimum of $4,000. Critics have noted that it appears to target one citizen journalist in particular, derisively calling the bill the “Stop Nick Shirley Act.”
Eggers notes the irony of a Democratic political operative trying to intimidate Shirley while pushing for adoption of the legislation. “The thing they are doing in the bill, Schanz just did,” he notes.
Crabtree has herself taken abuse from government staffers. After Newsom told a black audience he had been diagnosed as dyslexic, she asked his
Meanwhile, newly declassified FBI records detailed that former Rep. Eric Swalwell’s told the FBI back in 2015 that he “occasionally hooked up” with a suspected Chinese spy named Fang Fang. Also known as Christine Fang and a suspected Chinese intelligence operative, she placed interns in his office, and illegally funneled Chinese money to his political campaigns.
The sordid details didn’t stop Swalwell from running for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, and he was the frontrunner in the race to succeed Gov. Newsom this year until several other women came forward with sexual assault allegations that forced him to abandon that bid and immediately resign from Congress in disgrace.
Apparently that investigation is ongoing. The Daily Mail reported this week that Swalwell’s phone and personal computer were seized by FBI agents last Saturday night when he landed in San Francisco’s airport before conducting a search at his residence in Washington, D.C. the following day. The warrant was filed under a statute used to prosecute officials who abuse their government authority.
Eggers quips, “The sex stuff is more interesting, but there’s a lot more going on.”
Finally, Crabtree reacts to the release of a bombshell new report by the Dept. of Health and Human Services on medical and surgical procedures performed on children who identified as the opposite sex. “Wolves in White Coats” says more than 225 hospitals and health systems established pediatric gender programs nationwide between 2015 through 2025 and asserts there may have been insurance fraud in how hormone blockers and surgical mutilations of children at those facilities coded the reasons for those actions.
“I get upset watching the video,” Crabtree says. “It’s so alarming what they’re doing. They’re manipulating the diagnoses to say that it is some kind of endocrine problem or early puberty to engage in fraud so that the insurance companies… will go ahead and approve it.”
“Some of these individuals that have gone through this are trying to de-transition and they’re finding themselves abandoned by these hospitals,” sha adds.
In releasing the report, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. said, “Doctors and hospitals must put children’s health ahead of ideology and financial gain. This report identifies troubling billing practices that demand scrutiny. HHS will follow the evidence, protect taxpayers, and hold accountable anyone who broke the law or violated the trust of patients and families.”
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