First Lady Melania Trump Celebrates Committee Passage of Bill Targeting Revenge Porn, Sextortion and Explicit Deepfakes
First Lady Melania Trump celebrated with lawmakers this week after the House Energy & Commerce Committee passed the Take It Down Act (H.R. 633) in a near unanimous, 49-to-1 vote.
“This marks a significant step in our bipartisan effort to safeguard our children from online threats,” Mrs. Trump wrote Monday. “I urge Congress to swiftly pass this important legislation.”
The Take It Down Act would make it illegal to share, or threaten to share, nude images and videos without consent. Violators would face up to three years in jail. The bill also requires websites and social media companies to remove explicit images within 48 hours of a victim’s request.
“I was only fourteen years old when one of my classmates created deepfake, AI nudes of me and distributed them on social media,” Elliston Berry, now fifteen, wrote in her own statement. “I was shocked, violated and felt unsafe going to school.
She continued:
The first lady invited Berry to attend President Trump’s joint address to Congress in March. The president praised both women for their commitment to the bill, promising to sign it into law once it passed the House of Representatives.
The Senate passed the Take It Down Act in a rare unanimous vote on February 13.
Bipartisan support for the legislation reflects lawmakers’ desire to protect children from some of the most common forms of internet exploitation.
Berry was a victim of explicit AI deepfakes — images and videos edited to make it appear as though a person is performing a sexual act. Though the photos may be fake, the damage they do to victims is very real.
The Take It Down Act punishes those who distribute of explicit “digital forgeries” with up to two years in prison for images featuring adults, and up to three years in prison for images featuring children.
The bill applies the same penalties to “revenge porn,” a colloquial term describing when explicit images are shared to harm someone mentally, financially or reputationally. It’s commonly associated with bad breakups between boyfriends and girlfriends that had once shared nude images consensually.
The Take It Down Act also prohibits people from threatening to share someone’s nude images, which occurs in sextortion schemes.
Online sextortionists create fake social media accounts to solicit nude images from unsuspecting victims — frequently teenage boys. Once scammers get their hands on explicit photos, they blackmail victims for money in exchange for keeping the images hidden.
In February, sixteen-year-old Elijah Heacock took his own life after getting trapped in a sextortion scam. His mother, Shannon Cronister-Heacock, praised the Energy & Commerce Committee for passing the Act on Monday.
“In February, our family mourned the loss of our loving son and brother, Elijah Heacock, after he fell victim to an extortion scheme on the internet,” Cronister-Heacock wrote, continuing,
The bill would penalize threatening to share nude images of minors like Elijah by 30 months in prison, and threatening to share explicit pictures of adults by 18 months.
The House of Representatives must approve the Take It Down Act before the president can sign it into law. House Speaker Mike Johnson has previously voiced support for the bill:
“As the dark side of tech advances, these unspeakable evils of [explicit deepfakes, revenge porn and sextortion] become part of culture, and the laws have to keep up,” Johnson told a roundtable of supportive lawmakers last month.
“We are anxious to put it on the floor in the House and get it to President Trump’s desk for a signature,” he concluded.
The Daily Citizen will continue publishing updates as this important bill makes its way toward the White House.
Additional Articles and Resources
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Meta Takes Steps to Prevent Kids From Sexting
Instagram’s Sextortion Safety Measures — Too Little, Too Late?
Zuckerberg Implicated in Meta’s Failures to Protect Children
Instagram Content Restrictions Don’t Work, Tests Show
‘The Dirty Dozen List’ — Corporations Enable and Profit from Sexual Exploitation
Taylor Swift Deepfakes Should Inspire Outrage — But X Isn’t to Blame
