Expanding Public Lands Outdoor Recreation Experiences Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. CRUZ. Mr. President.

I support the objective of this legislation. I also appreciate the commitment that the Senator from West Virginia has made and also that Congressman Westerman has made to--if this bill were to pass today-- incorporate the changes that have been negotiated to improve it in the next Congress. In particular, these are changes dealing with the deployment of resources for broadband. Those negotiated changes would significantly improve and ensure that it operates the way it is intended to operate. I appreciate that commitment.

As the Senator from West Virginia knows, I am pressing very hard right now to pass legislation that is very important to me and very important to Texans. It is legislation called the TAKE IT DOWN Act. The TAKE IT DOWN Act is bipartisan legislation that I authored, along with Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar, to protect women and to protect teenage girls and young girls from a growing epidemic of nonconsensual intimate images online, both actual photographs and also a dramatically escalating problem of deepfake AI images that target real people.

We are seeing every day more and more women and more and more teenage girls targeted with false deepfakes made using AI that appear to be explicit photographs, explicit videos. They are victimized. The TAKE IT DOWN Act makes the publication of those nonconsensual, intimate images a crime, a Federal felony. Critically, it puts a Federal obligation on the tech platform to remove those images, remove those videos when notified by the victim.

You have a right to protect your privacy and not to be victimized. The women have a right.

That legislation, the TAKE IT DOWN Act, passed the U.S. Senate unanimously 100 to nothing. Every Senator, Republican and Democrat, agreed with the bill. That legislation is now at the House, and House leadership placed the TAKE IT DOWN Act in the continuing resolution that was introduced earlier this week. It is in the bill. I am grateful for that.

As the Presiding Officer knows, as the Senator from West Virginia knows, the path to passing the continuing resolution has proven to be challenging, and House leadership right now is actively negotiating and trying to find a path forward.

I very much want the TAKE IT DOWN Act passed by whatever vehicle gets it to the President's desk because we have an obligation to protect women and to protect teenage girls.

I have asked the House, as an alternative, to take up the TAKE IT DOWN Act on the suspension calendar. If it gets a vote on the floor of the House, it will pass. All it needs is a vote. So from my perspective, I am fine with it passing as part of the CR--if a CR passes with anything on it--or I believe it should pass on the suspension calendar and go to the President's desk.

The Senator from West Virginia and Congressman Westerman have both committed to me to use their full force and persuasion and leverage to ensure that, one way or another, the TAKE IT DOWN Act will pass out of the House and get to the President's desk, because all of us want to protect our constituents. We have an obligation to do so.

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Mr. CRUZ. I do not.

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