Fighting human trafficking is the latest cause this California congressman won’t support

Rep. Tom McClintock has never been one to blindly follow the congressional crowd by, say, living in the district he represents. But even McClintock’s history of iconoclasm might not prepare one for some of his most recent votes.

The Elk Grove Republican was the only Californian and one of just 20 members of the House to vote against legislation to combat human trafficking this week. The bill in question, which would reauthorize and fund programs dating to two decades ago, was sponsored by one of McClintock’s fellow Republicans, Chris Smith of New Jersey, and supported by most of the GOP caucus. According to one analysis, over 13,000 people in Sacramento County were likely victims of human trafficking during a recent five-year period.

But McClintock claimed to be one of the very few representatives who saw through a scheme to provide “trafficking handouts,” as he put it. “Under the pretense of combating human smuggling,” he said, “this bill hands out $1.1 billion to bloated foreign aid programs, résumé workshops for noncitizens and other unaccountable grants to community groups and local governments.”

With less than 5% of the chamber willing to join the traffickers’ side of the argument, McClintock had scant but striking company. The other noes included Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), to whom McClintock himself has ascribed “an extensive history of Internet outbursts that range from bizarre to frightening”; Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), whose own siblings called for his expulsion from Congress over his involvement in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection; and Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), who is under federal investigation for alleged sex trafficking of a teenager.

The trafficking vote came a week after McClintock was the only Californian to join an even more rarefied group of 18 members who registered their opposition to Sweden and Finland joining NATO amid Russia’s war on Ukraine. Even Gosar voted for that one.

McClintock explained that we should “beware of foreign entanglements,” questioned NATO’s value to the United States and suggested the Russian invasion could have been avoided with a promise to keep Ukraine out of the military alliance — talking points borrowed, respectively, from George Washington, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.

A longtime state legislator from Southern California, McClintock has represented a Placer County-based district in Congress for over a decade without ever living in it. After redistricting put the area in a more competitive district, the congressman opted to run in a new San Joaquin Valley district that is even farther from his residence but perhaps closer to his political views. McClintock’s recent votes certainly help explain why he has felt compelled to wander the state in search of a constituency that will vote for him.