Democrats in Sacramento are still doing damage control after being
forced to backtrack on a bill to toughen California’s law against child trafficking. This one seemed like a no-brainer, coasting to unanimous approval
in the Senate before stalling in the State Assembly.

That’s when the heat turned up, forcing a rare reversal on high
profile legislation. We are talking about SB14, a bill by Republican State Senator
Shannon Grove of Bakersfield, the former Senate Minority Leader. She
discovered that human trafficking of a minor was not on the state’s list of
serious felonies, which count as a strike under California’s "Three Strikes and
You’re Out" law, so she wrote this bipartisan legislation to correct that. Not
controversial in the Senate, where it passed 40 to nothing. But then it was
defeated in the Assembly Public Safety Committee. That sparked outrage, with
everyone from Governor Newsom to Elon Musk demanding reconsideration, and
after some impassioned remarks by Republicans on the Assembly floor,
Democrats convened a quick emergency hearing and resurrected the bill, which
passed the committee and is now on its way to likely passage.

For more on this, Doug Sovern, Patti Reising and Brett Burkhart spoke with
State Senator Shannon Grove, Republican from Bakersfield and author of this
bill.