Between our books’ publication in 2023 and drafting these responses in 2025, Americans reelected Donald Trump, calls for his administration to release the sex trafficking case files against Jeffrey Epstein have amplified, and rapper and business mogul Sean Coombs was convicted and sentenced for prostitution-related transportation, but acquitted of sex trafficking and racketeering charges. Has there ever been a more opportune time to consider celebrity, politics, and human trafficking? At this moment, I thank Elena Shih for engaging with my book about these issues.

Discourse shapes how we understand myriad issues, including human trafficking, and Shih writes that my book engages the dominant narrative here, but takes a largely static view of it, noting that this discourse has “had to contend with its critics” and “has expanded in past two decades to include emphasis on structural factors.” I appreciate and start with this point because it speaks to how we understand and work to address inequality more broadly.

While I agree that dominant anti-trafficking discourse has contended with its critics, I found that celebrities were less receptive contenders here, which is noteworthy because they reach and potentially teach large audiences. Some celebrities, like Mira Sorvino, acknowledged the limits of this mainstream discourse around trafficking, but others were more likely to ignore their critics or to go on the defensive. And when they did respond to critics in more significant ways, it was often for different reasons: after reports emerged that Ashton Kutcher wrote a character reference for the actor Danny Masterson, who was convicted of rape, Kutcher stepped down from his anti-trafficking organization in September 2023 (a mere 4 months after my book came out). However, Kutcher was not responding to long-standing criticisms of how he promoted the dominant trafficking narrative and its attendant carceral politics, but to what he described as an “error in judgement” over Masterson’s reference.

Celebrities’ limited, critical engagement with the dominant anti-trafficking narrative thus speaks to its endurance: while many players in the anti-trafficking field may acknowledge related criticisms, they often do not go much further. After all, as Shih writes, even as major anti-trafficking organizations have expanded their discourse, they “largely abstained from commitments” to wealth redistribution and the decriminalization of sex work, among other demands from their critics. Here, it is worth engaging Shih’s question regarding the interactions of the anti-trafficking apparatus and discourse: what is the significance of engagements that challenge dominant representations of human trafficking, yet ultimately further the “anti-trafficking industrial complex”?

In the case of celebrity engagements, I argue that they matter less for their efficacy addressing trafficking, and more for what they say about elites’ investments in the status quo. In short, celebrities’ limited responses to trafficking are significant reminders that we cannot rely on powerful elites to solve inequality. Even with their vast resources and fan bases, celebrities—including those committed to egalitarian politics—are ultimately conservative figures who benefit from inequality. After all, if stars were “just like us” (to quote the section in Us Weekly), then we would not have celebrities!

And this brings me to the Shih’s question about collective action: how may we understand the weight of celebrity activism in “a broader political arc that aims for class revolution”? My short answer is that we must understand this skeptically and with great caution. At the time of writing, Donald Trump, a reality television celebrity who campaigned on a platform of “America first” economic populism, leads an administration that is rapidly imposing tariffs, cutting taxes for the wealthy and social programs for the poor, and conducting mass deportations (to name just some examples)—actions which will only increase class hierarchies and other forms of inequality. Certainly, Trump represents an extreme case of celebrity activism—most celebrities do not seek and attain the nation’s highest office, and they are more likely to advocate for poor and marginalized groups—but his example highlights the spectrum here. It should remind us that while celebrities may surely be part of broader political movements, they should not lead efforts to envision and build a more just and equal society.