I’m sure you have all read the great pieces last week by our Managing Editor Jennifer Van Laar on the FBI raid’s on Project Veritas journalists and its founder James O’Keefe, after O’Keefe outed the FBI’s collusion with The New York Times on the raids perpetrated against his people.

O’Keefe is a personal hero of mine. If anyone has embodied the legacy of Andrew Breitbart and what he stood for, it’s him. I lived in Chicago when ACORN was in its heyday there, taking taxpayer dollars to flood the system with questionable voter registrations in order to the gaslight voters and game elections in favor of Democrats. I cheered when O’Keefe took them down, and hoped he would continue with this work, especially after Breitbart passed away.

O’Keefe didn’t disappoint, and I continue to admire how he is smart about his investigations, who he chooses to target, and how he deftly crosses his T’s and dots his I’s.

He’s the real deal, and I make every effort to embody that detail, documentation, and activist mentality in my own work. You regular RedState readers are all good at letting me know where I have succeeded or failed, and I greatly appreciate that.

So, to see O’Keefe targeted by the FBI simply for being good at what he does and who he targets is frankly chilling.

What’s also chilling is what is happening with the January 6 defendants. I have had a few requests to dig deeper in with some of them, but I only have so much bandwidth and so much time; so I chose not to pursue those requests. Other conservative media is doing quality work in exposing the false narrative and trumped up charges, so I felt no need to duplicate. I do follow the stories, and suffice to say, between the attacks on O’Keefe and Project Veritas, and what they are doing to the January 6 defendants cements the fact that we are living in a police state. The FBI we celebrated and admired back in the day is not the FBI in 2021. I am not sure where the rot began, but it is fully riddled throughout the body of this national law enforcement arm.

Many of the RedState contributors, particularly those of us who are really good at investigation, have been a target in one form or another. Some at the hand of local or federal law enforcement. With the state of our government and the work we all do, we have no idea whether we might be in O’Keefe’s shoes sometime soon. It’s a sobering wake-up call, and a reminder to stay vigilant on all fronts. I personally have fake accounts out of reach of Big Tech, certain computer protocols and firewalls, and other analog and digital means of protecting the work I do.

One of my gun trainers recommended dogs and guns as lines of defense in protecting your home, and my family has both of those too. However, being violated in the dead of night by law enforcement simply because you exercise your right to free speech is antithesis to what we are supposed to stand for in this country. Sadly, the ship has sailed on a lot of this, and it makes it even more tragic that in some ways, it may not be coming back.

While there may be limits on what we can do to protect ourselves against being targeted, we can work to protect our right to exercise free speech. To report the truth, and deliver evidence and the facts, not just what is acceptable by Big Tech or the government propaganda arms known as the legacy media.

Hence why RedState and other conservative media are using special content paywalls as a firewall. Between the useless “fact-checkers,” to targeting by law enforcement, conservative media is in real peril of being extinguished. Speaking freely and protecting our right to free speech is what we do over here at RedState, and our VIP subscriptions help to ensure that keeps happening.

So many of you are already on board, and I thank you. But if you have friends or family who have not jumped on the train, this is the week for them!

From November 8-12, we’re having a VIP subscription sale. It’s very exciting, but also a pivotal time, as I explain below.

WATCH:

So, if your friends and family haven’t taken the leap into the world of VIP, now is the time! This week only, they can receive 40 percent off on a new VIP subscription. All they have to do is use the code “2022” (without the quotes) when they sign up. Feel free to supply them with this link (https://redstate.com/subscribe?tpcc=oconnellnov2021) to subscribe.

Your support of RedState will ensure that our Constitutional and God-given right to freedom of speech is protected and defended. If the First Amendment falls, all the others go right along with it.

Thanks for reading, and being a part of Team RedState!