UKIAH, CA., 10/6/26 — The Mendocino County Republican Party is selling $25 tickets to an evening with YouTuber Nick Shirley on Tuesday, Oct. 13, in Ukiah. The party has not announced the venue. The address goes out by email to people who buy a ticket, according to its press release.
The host is Keely Brazil Covello, a writer who grew up in Potter Valley and opposes removing the Potter Valley Project dams, Scott and Cape Horn.
Covello wants to keep the two dams that their owner, PG&E, has asked federal regulators for permission to take out.
The party’s press release calls Shirley an independent journalist and describes Covello and Shirley as independent voices. Tickets are sold through the Mendocino County Republican Central Committee’s fundraising page, which also asks buyers for donations to offset the cost of the event.
Shirley’s fraud videos
Shirley was raised in Utah and started posting prank videos at 16. He spent two years as a missionary in Chile and turned to political videos in 2023, according to the party’s release.
In December 2025 he posted a video saying Somali-run day care centers in Minneapolis were collecting public child care money without caring for children. Days later the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services froze federal child care payments to Minnesota. On Jan. 21 Shirley testified about fraud in Minnesota before a House Judiciary subcommittee, according to the committee’s witness list.
Minnesota’s Department of Children, Youth, and Families said in a Jan. 2 statement that its investigators had visited nine centers referenced in the video.
“Investigators confirmed the centers were operating as expected, gathered evidence and initiated further review,” the department said. Children were present at all but one site, which hadn’t yet opened for the day. Four of the centers were under investigation, the department said.
The owner of one Minneapolis center shown in the video, Future Leaders Early Learning Center, was later charged in federal court. Fahima Egeh Mahamud pleaded guilty July 9 to wire fraud and conspiracy to defraud the United States, court records show.
In March Shirley posted a video alleging more than $170 million in fraud among Southern California hospices, day care centers and home health providers.
In April the California Department of Public Health sent about 80 surveyors and investigators to a Van Nuys office building that it said was the subject of “viral” videos. The department said 19 hospices at the address were licensed and able to bill Medi-Cal. Another 109 that had tried to use the address were never licensed. It said California has revoked more than 280 hospice licenses since a 2021 moratorium on new ones.
On Sept. 4 Shirley sued Attorney General Rob Bonta and Secretary of State Shirley Weber in federal court in Sacramento, asking a judge to block a state privacy law for people who provide immigration support services that he argues threatens his reporting in violation of the First Amendment.
Covello and the dams
Covello grew up in Potter Valley, the daughter of large-animal veterinarians, and worked as a reporter in Ukiah as a teenager, according to the release. She founded and edits UNWON, an online publication about rural and Western America. She has made documentaries about ranching and about the unsolved killing of a cattle rancher on the North Coast. Her website says she now lives in Orange County, with her husband and son.
The release calls her “a leading voice in the effort to preserve the Potter Valley Project dams.” In an April post, Covello wrote that a Southern California water district’s proposal to buy the project and keep both dams could preserve the water supply.
The dams belong to PG&E. The utility applied to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in July 2025 to give up its license and remove Scott and Cape Horn dams on the Eel River. Commission staff wrote in a May scoping document that PG&E had determined the project is “uneconomic to operate.” The utility has kept Lake Pillsbury lowered since 2023 because of seismic concerns at Scott Dam, the document said.
The dams “supply water to hundreds of thousands of people across the Russian River basin and support agriculture, communities, and wildfire response,” the party’s release said.
PG&E’s application includes a replacement, the New Eel-Russian Facility, that would keep diverting Eel River water to the Russian River after the dams are gone. A regional agency, the Eel-Russian Project Authority, would run it. The coalition includes the agency, the Round Valley Indian Tribes, Humboldt County, California Trout and Trout Unlimited. The application is pending before the commission.
Tickets and security
Doors open at 4 p.m. on Oct. 13 and the program begins at 5:45 p.m., the release said. It says children 12 and under are free. The party’s ticket page lists a $1 child ticket. A food truck will sell food. Tickets are available through the party’s website, mendocountygop.org.
The release also offers a “personal roundtable discussion” with Shirley and Covello and directs people to the organizers at 707-485-1689 for details. According to the ticket page, security will check each person with a wand and inspect handbags. Backpacks aren’t allowed.