Good Government
Trent England | January 25, 2019
Victory for free speech
Trent England
Free speech won a victory today when the Oklahoma Ethics Commission declined to move forward with its plan to regulate private political speech. After hearing public comment on the proposal for a third straight meeting, no commissioner made a motion to approve it. This means it is dead, at least for the remainder of 2019.
This is the result of many organizations that provided expert testimony on the flaws of this proposed regulation. But it is thanks most of all to the thousands of Oklahomans who signed the OCPA petition and the hundreds who contacted the Ethics Commission directly. This is exactly the kind of citizen activism that we were protecting. And we won!
Watch the testimony in the video below, and read more about the measure here and here.
Trent England
David and Ann Brown Distinguished Fellow
Trent England is the David and Ann Brown Distinguished Fellow at the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, where he previously served as executive vice president. He is also the founder and executive director of Save Our States, which educates Americans about the importance of the Electoral College. England is a producer of the feature-length documentary “Safeguard: An Electoral College Story.” He has appeared three times on Fox & Friends and is a frequent guest on media programs from coast to coast. He is the author of Why We Must Defend the Electoral College and a contributor to The Heritage Guide to the Constitution and One Nation Under Arrest: How Crazy Laws, Rogue Prosecutors, and Activist Judges Threaten Your Liberty. His writing has also appeared in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Washington Times, Hillsdale College's Imprimis speech digest, and other publications. Trent formerly hosted morning drive-time radio in Oklahoma City and has filled for various radio hosts including Ben Shapiro. A former legal policy analyst at The Heritage Foundation, he holds a law degree from The George Mason University School of Law and a bachelor of arts in government from Claremont McKenna College.