I met Rupa Subramanya on Twitter (now X) in early 2022. It was during the Canadian truckers’ protest, and she seemed to be one of the only people actually trying to understand what was going on: Why were these people so angry? Were they really revolting over a Covid vaccine mandate? And why, despite the fact that the protesters were from every walk of life, was the legacy press insisting that they were driven by bigotry?
Rupa had the sensibility and mindset of a great reporter: curious, astute, open-minded, incisive—and disinclined to believe groupthink.
So, I messaged her. What do you think about writing something for us?
That led to Rupa’s first piece for The Free Press: What the Truckers Want.
In her story, she wrote: “I live in downtown Ottawa, within view of Parliament Hill, and have spent the past 10 days or so bundled up and walking around the protests. I have spoken to close to 100 protesters, truckers and other folks, and not one of them sounded like an insurrectionist, white supremacist, racist, or misogynist.” She also found that the truckers, the vast majority of whom were actually vaccinated, were really protesting about something else: “A sense that they are being ganged up on by the government, the media, Big Tech, Big Pharma.”
Since then, Rupa has reported for The Free Press on state-sanctioned euthanasia and race-based criminal sentencing in Canada. She exposed the “giant grift” that is ESG and how PayPal has become a cornerstone of our emerging social credit system. She flew to Virginia and got the first big interview with country phenom Oliver Anthony. She’s written about the end of affirmative action, and, of course, Justin Trudeau’s war on internet freedom.
If there’s one theme that runs through Rupa’s work it is this: the urgent threat to our liberties by the combined power of government and Big Tech.
It’s hard to think of a more urgent subject than that one at the moment. Which is why we felt it was so important to fly Rupa down to Washington late last week to testify at a House of Representatives hearing on free expression.
Watch her impassioned testimony here. It’s seven minutes long and worth watching with your children. (She also appeared on Fox and Newsmax.)
This is the second time a Free Press reporter has headed to the capital in recent weeks. Our intern, Julia Steinberg, offered powerful testimony before Congress on the rise of antisemitism on college campuses.
This is all to say: we are a small team, but our impact is enormous.
So if you believe in our work and want to make sure The Free Press is here to stay, please become a paid subscriber today.
—BW
Rupa Subramanya, Matt Taibbi, & Michael Shellenberger all did a great job testifying before the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. Watching them school some of these politicians on basic rights and at times laugh at them was pure gold. Subramanya did a really good job of describing how Justin Trudeau has basically turned the Liberal Party of Canada into a present day 1970's Cambodian People's Republic of Kampuchea, minus the rice paddies of course.
The Democrats were simply awful with their questioning and partisanship. I don't know how anyone on the left could have listened to them and not been embarrassed and horrified with how they treated these 3 witnesses and how they've justified the governments overreach of US citizens privacy and first amendment rights. Shellenberger and Taibbi explained clearly how numerous federal agencies have coerced big tech, in some cases directly or through NGO's, to censor and deamplify voices of those who they don't agree or find inconvenient to a narrative.
Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Dan Goldman are two of the worst human beings on the planet. If you've not watched any of the questioning by either of these depraved authoritarian lunatics you should. The exchange between Goldman, Taibbi and Shellenberger on the percentage of censorship that is acceptable is mind jarring and very telling about the direction of progressives.
Speaking of horrible human beings, Olivia Troye ranks right up there with Schultz. I'm certain she would have been a fine National Socialist German Workers' Party leader in 1938.
Here is the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjFWInU8pqU (watch Goldman/Taibbi/Shellenberger exchange 2:31 - 2:40)
I hope she keeps her money in somewhere other than Canada and has a food taster. I enjoy her reporting. FP is lucky to have her.