Cruz gets heated after Booker blocks deepfake revenge porn bill

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz (R) vented his frustration on the Senate floor Wednesday evening after Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), in an unusual exchange, objected to a bipartisan bill sponsored by Cruz that would crack down on fake revenge porn generated by artificial intelligence.

The clash is a sign that Democrats don’t want to give the embattled Texas incumbent any legislative victories before Election Day.

The Cruz-sponsored bill, the Take It Down Act, appeared headed for passage as part of a routine legislative wrap-up session before Congress leaves Washington for six weeks of recess for the 2024 presidential election.

But Booker filed a last-minute objection to Cruz’s bill, which is co-sponsored by Democratic Sens. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), Richard Blumenthal (Conn.), Jacky Rosen (Nev.), Laphonza Butler (Calif.), John Hickenlooper (Colo.), Raphael Warnock (Ga.) and Martin Heinrich (N.M.).

Booker didn’t provide any reason for the objection, leaving Cruz — who is in the middle of a tough reelection race — fuming on the Senate floor.

“I am saddened that the senator from New Jersey chose to give no explanation for his objection,” Cruz said, pointing out that New Jersey native Francesca Mani had testified before the Commerce Committee about the dangers of deepfake revenge porn.

“He chose to give no reason to Francesca why she’s being denied,” Cruz said after Booker objected.

Usually, senators explain their objections on the floor.

A frustrated Cruz said he suspects politics played a role.

He wondered aloud whether Booker was trying to score “partisan political points” by denying him a legislative victory while he’s in the midst of the campaign.

“It’s not lost on anyone that this is an election year, and I will say absent a single substantive objection, the obvious inference is that this objection is being made because we’ve got an election in less than six weeks,” he fumed.

“I sure hope he’s not standing up here denying victims of this abuse relief simply to score partisan political points. I would like to think he wouldn’t do such a thing. But in order to believe he wouldn’t do such a thing, he needs to actually explain some reason for his objection,” he said.

Booker is a longtime ally of Cruz’s opponent in the general election, Rep. Colin Allred (D-Texas), who reported raising a whopping $41.2 million for his Senate campaign at the end of June.

Booker made an impassioned fundraising pitch for Allred on the social platform X last year.

“I’ve known this guy for years. So trust me when I say this: We need people like Colin in the Senate,” Booker said in a video pitch, standing alongside the Texas congressman in November.

Cruz noted Wednesday evening that he circulated his bill to Democratic and Republican colleagues two weeks ago to smooth away any potential objections.

He expected it to be included in the list of uncontroversial items that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Republican leaders agreed to include in the wrap-up of unfinished bills before leaving town for the fall campaign. 

But Booker’s late objection stopped it in its tracks.

“It cleared 99 senators. He had a week and a half to object. Yesterday, this legislation was about to pass, and an hour before it was going to pass, the senator from New Jersey raised his objection,” Cruz said on the floor, exasperated that Booker had blocked the bill at the last minute. 

Jeff Giertz, a spokesperson for Booker, accused Cruz of staging the floor confrontation to score his own political points.

“Sen. Cruz refused to work together to resolve Sen. Booker and other senators’ legitimate concerns with the bill. It’s clear from Sen. Cruz’s social media posts that his floor stunt was not about advancing bipartisan legislation but a cynical attempt to score political points in his tight race with Colin Allred. Sen. Cruz is trying to create controversy where there has been none and should only be cooperation and collaboration — something he clearly has no interest in,” he said.

The Booker aide said, “The sharing of nonconsensual explicit images online is a serious and urgent problem that Sen. Booker has built a record working to address.”

The Cruz bill would criminalize the publication of deepfake porn, known as “nonconsensual intimate imagery,” and require big tech companies to put systems in place to remove such images within 48 hours of receiving a valid request from a victim.

The legislation is intended to protect victims such as Mani, a 15-year-old New Jersey high school student who learned last year that boys in her class had used artificial intelligence (AI) to fabricate nude images of her and her classmates to disseminate on the Internet.

Mani testified before the Commerce Committee in June that “without Sen. Cruz’s bill, we’ll continue to have teens making AI deepfake images of girls.”

“The obvious lack of laws speaks volumes. We girls are on our own, and considering that 96 percent of deepfake AI victims are women and children, we’re also seriously vulnerable and need your help,” she told senators.

Cruz pointed out on the floor that his bill includes some of the same language that Booker requested in another bill, the Shield Act, which is sponsored by Klobuchar. The Senate passed that bill by voice vote July 10. It would establish federal criminal liability for individuals who share private, sexually explicit or nude images without consent.

Cruz’s and Klobuchar’s Take It Down Act would go further by criminalizing AI-fabricated sexually explicit images.

“The Shield Act was significantly modified at the request of my colleague from New Jersey before he would allow that to pass,” Cruz said. “Now it appears the senator from New Jersey no longer supports the language he has voted for and the language he negotiated and helped draft.”

Klobuchar said, after the floor exchange, she didn’t know precisely why Booker objected.

“We’ll have to get it done by the end of the year. I’m going to try to talk to Cory,” she said. “There’s something different for Cory than was in the bill [the Shield Act] that passed the Senate. … I don’t know. I’m going to talk to him.”