This is very confusing but if there's one thing I know it's that if Republicans ever mention protecting children it is never about protecting children and only about causing fake outrage so they can push oppressive policies and stoke culture wars

Interesting. I'm always suspicious of new laws meant to protect minors because it seems like children are always used as an excuse to promote bigotry. Not always of course, but that has been the recent trend. It seems this bill passed the Senate unanimously and was killed in an assembly committee. Newsom personally backed it and got it back on track. That probably says more about the political and optics of voting down a "tough on crime" trafficking bill than it does the actual policy.

Isa Borgeson, a manager for the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, an advocacy organization opposed to SB 14, said the measure “does nothing to prevent the trafficking of minors or provide them with the healing that they need and deserve.”

“The people most vulnerable to being charged with trafficking are the victims of trafficking themselves. Charges are used to leverage their cooperation in prosecution and their survivor status is erased with many currently incarcerated in both youth and adult prisons,” Assembymember Isaac Bryan (D-Los Angeles), a close Rivas ally, wrote on Twitter. Bryan is a member of the Public Safety Committee, and abstained from voting on SB 14 both on Tuesday and Thursday.

“Nobody supports the trafficking of children or any people. That’s why existing laws carry the potential for life in prison. We can and must do more to affirm, protect, and support survivors with all of our civic resources — including those beyond the criminal legal system,” he wrote.

It sounds to me like the concern is victims of trafficking getting forced into helping with recruiting. I don't know much about this stuff, but I remember that was one of the ways Epstein worked - victimize one girl, then coerce her to bring a friend next time. Sick shit, but the concern is do we treat that first victim the same as we would treat Epstein? Do we allow prosecutors to use the threat of a life in prison to coerce victims to testify if they otherwise wouldn't want to?

So, is this a case of a Republican legislator successfully backing Democrats into a corner optically, such that if they vote no Democrats get labeled as supporting child trafficking, while at the same time the law would work to turn victims of trafficking into criminals, to the potential detriment of victims? Or are some Democrats overly worried about edge cases? I don't know, this shit is complicated, and this is why policy shouldn't be reduced to headlines and talking points.

Chaos erupted in the Democratic-controlled Legislature after the committee’s vote, with Republican lawmakers blaming Democrats for failing to crack down on child sex trafficking and Democrats blaming Republicans for failing to address the root causes of crime.

This makes more sense. The issue isn't stopping trafficking but punishment for it. Stopping it should be the priority.