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Last week, Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., once a presidential hopeful, became relevant again by blocking the Take It Down Act, introduced by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas. The bill would have criminalized AI-generated deepfakes of revenge porn involving minors. When the bipartisan bill came up for a vote, Booker filed a last-minute objection that prevented its passage. When asked to explain what his objection actually was, he said nothing.

This has led observers to conclude that Booker’s primary motive was to deny Cruz a legislative victory during an election, since Booker is good friends with Rep. Colin Allred, Cruz’s opponent in this year’s Texas Senate race. Cruz understandably sounded off on this likelihood: “I sure hope he’s not standing up here denying victims of this abuse relief simply to score partisan political points … in order to believe he wouldn’t do such a thing, he needs to actually explain some reason for his objection.” 

Even more angry was 15-year-old Francesca Mani, who, according to Time magazine, “learned that boys in her class had used AI software to fabricate sexually explicit images of Mani and her female classmates.” Despite being one of Booker’s constituents in New Jersey, she ended up working with the senator from Texas to help bring justice for the victims of this harassment and “sextortion.”

If Cruz’s bill amounted to useless political virtue signaling, Booker’s dissent might have more merits. However, as Mani’s experience attests, the Take It Down Act really does address a growing problem. Cruz also mentioned the tragic story of Gavin Guffey, who was blackmailed by a scammer threatening to publicize explicit photos of him to his classmates. Eventually, he committed suicide. Although the photos were real, not AI-generated, the impact on his reputation and mental well-being was effectively the same.

Parents Need Legislative Help

Even so, it’s tempting for some to dismiss this whole issue as something that’s better resolved with more watchful parenting and safer school environments than another federal law. Speaking as both a parent and a high school English teacher, such thinking is seriously misguided.

It should be understood from the outset that we are well past the point of handling online bullying and harassment in-house, mainly because much of what falls under the rubric of cyberbullying is far worse than the typical adolescent delinquency. This is nothing less than sexual exploitation and the production of pornography, activities that are already punishable with heavy jail time for adults.

And at the moment, there’s little that parents and teachers can really do about this. Already we have countless advisory lessons over the dangers of sexting, cyberbullying, and everything in between, and most parents are well aware of the online predators and what can happen online. Nevertheless, even the most careful student can fall victim if a predator is motivated enough.

Contrast this with the relatively innocent times of the 1990s and early 2000s when I was a student. Instances of bullying were largely put down with anti-bullying campaigns and strict protocols for bullying on campus — sometimes too strict, as zero-tolerance policies made my school feel like an oppressive police state. This is impossible to recreate today since cyberbullying exists outside the boundaries of most adult supervision.

Thus, there needs to be some legal recourse for the victims of cyberbullying and sexual exploitation, which is why Cruz’s bill was so important. Sadly, for obviously political reasons, Cory “Spartacus” Booker torpedoed this effort.

How Democrats Operate

What’s ironic (but unsurprising) is this kind of political sabotage is the same thing Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris routinely accuses Donald Trump of doing with the border. In her telling, Trump directed Republicans in Congress to vote against the Democrats’ border bill last year so that he could make his opponent look weak on the border. Unlike Booker though, Trump and the rest of the GOP had very good reasons for voting against the bill, the biggest one being that Biden and Harris already have all the power they need to close the border now.

Hypocrisy and projection aside, Allred will now be accusing Cruz of “getting nothing done” as a senator so he can nab a few more votes. Because he’s trying this on a well-known conservative like Ted Cruz — and not an empty-suit like the other Texan senator John Cornyn — it’s hard to see such a charge going anywhere. More than anything, it’s yet another lesson in how Democrats operate and what Americans can expect if they vote for them this November.

Auguste Meyrat is an English teacher in the Dallas area. He holds an MA in humanities and an MEd in educational leadership. He is the senior editor of The Everyman
, a senior contributor to The Federalist, and has written for essays for The American Mind, The American Conservative, Religion and Liberty, Crisis Magazine, and elsewhere. Follow him on X.