{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.cruz.senate.gov/newsroom/blogs/e-newsletter-week-of-december-13th", "e-Newsletter: Week of December 13th", "2024-12-13", "2024", "2024-12", "Republican", "Senate", "TX", "Ted Cruz", "C001098", "www.cruz.senate.gov", "cruz", "https://www.cruz.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases", "scraper", "Good Evening,\n\nLast week, the Senate unanimously passed my TAKE IT DOWN Act\u2014a monumental step toward empowering innocent victims, particularly teenage girls, to seek justice against those who exploit them by publishing abusive images. This week, I stood proudly with my colleagues, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.), and alongside courageous victim advocates to urge the House of Representatives to take immediate action and pass this legislation. The TAKE IT DOWN Act will criminalize the publication of non-consensual intimate imagery, including AI-generated \"deepfakes,\" ensuring that perpetrators are held accountable. At the press conference, victim advocates shared powerful stories, highlighting how this legislation can spare countless women, teenage girls, and boys from enduring similar trauma. I am determined to see it passed into law before the end of this Congress. The time to act is now.\n\nICYMI: Victim Advocates Join Sens. Cruz and Klobuchar to Urge House to Pass the TAKE IT DOWN Act\n\nREAD: Ted Cruz urges House to OK bill requiring websites to cut AI-generated nonconsensual imagery\n\n\u201c[The TAKE IT DOWN Act] has passed the Senate unanimously. 100 to nothing. Amy and I worked on both sides of the aisle. Every single Democrat in the Senate supported it. Every single Republican in the Senate supported it. \u2026 All of us have spoken to House leadership urging the House to take it up and pass it before the end of the year. \u2026 If this bill gets a vote in the House it will pass. The only question is, will it get a vote or not? We\u2019re here today on behalf of the victims, on behalf of women, on behalf of teenage girls across this country to say: bring this up for a vote. Pass it and put it on the President\u2019s desk. We can get it done and we can get it done before the end of the year.\u201d\n\nAs a father of two teenage girls, I am appalled by the pain and trauma inflicted upon women and teenage girls who experience non-consensual AI-generated intimate images published of them on social media. In today\u2019s hyperconnected world, such exploitation is not just harmful\u2014it\u2019s devastating. This year, I had the privilege of meeting fifteen-year-old Elliston Berry, a courageous victim advocate from Aledo, Texas, whose story exemplifies the urgent need for change. When Elliston was in 9th grade, she became the victim of a deepfake image. Despite her mother\u2019s repeated pleas to Snapchat, it took over nine agonizing months\u2014and one call from my office\u2014to have the image removed. It should not require intervention from a sitting senator to achieve what Big Tech companies are fully capable of doing immediately. The TAKE IT DOWN Act will mandate that social media platforms and similar websites promptly comply with users\u2019 requests to remove non-consensual imagery, ensuring no one else endures what Elliston and her family went through. This legislation is essential to holding tech companies accountable and protecting victims.\n\n\u201cI will say one of the real keys to this getting passed has been Elliston just telling her story. There's another, another teenage girl [in New Jersey], Francesca Mani who had almost the identical thing happen to her, at almost the exact same time. Both of them were freshmen in high school, [and] both of them [experienced] a boy in their class taking innocent pictures from social media and using an AI app to create fake naked pictures of them. In Elliston\u2019s case, [the photos were] sent to everyone of her classmates. It is hard to be a teenager period today, but the nightmare of going through that it's fundamentally wrong.\n\n\u201cWhen Elliston and her mom came to meet with me several months ago in my office, \u2026 I asked, \u2018What's happen with the pictures now?\u2019 They said, \u2018They're still up [and] it's been nine months.\u2019 Elliston\u2019s mom said she'd called Snapchat, she'd email them, and they wouldn't do anything. I turned to my team, and I said, \u2018I want you to get the CEO of Snapchat on the phone today. I want those photographs down today.\u2019 Within an hour, they pulled them down. \u2026 It shouldn't take a sitting senator making a phone call. Elliston should have the right to say, this is garbage. This is me. I didn't consent. Take it down.\u201d\n\nI am confident that with President Trump back in the White House and a Republican majority in both chambers of Congress, we will deliver real and meaningful change for the American people. The nation has spoken with a clear mandate: it\u2019s time to restore order, accountability, and common sense to Washington. Together, we will secure our borders, tackle inflation, and wars across the world. The failures of Joe Biden and the Democrats have left America weaker and more vulnerable, but we stand ready to clean up their mess and rebuild a stronger, safer, and more prosperous nation. The time for action is now, and we are ready to get to work.\n\n\u201cWe have a real obligation to deliver on our promises. \u2026 Number one, we will secure the border. I think Texans and people across the country are deeply dismayed with Joe Biden and the Democrats open borders. \u2026 We're going to follow it up by having Congress pass legislation providing funding to ensure that we secure the border and keep our communities safe.\n\n\u201cI think there\u2019s also a clear mandate to get the economy moving [and] to get inflation under control. There are a lot of elements of that. One is reining in out-of-control spending from Washington, but another critical element of that is ending the Biden administration's war on energy and Texas oil and gas.\n\n\u201cAnd finally, when it comes to foreign policy and national security, when Trump was president last we had peace and prosperity. We saw peace flowering in the Middle East, and [then] Joe Biden and the Democrats came into office. They produced utter chaos [and] two major wars waging simultaneously across the globe. I believe [both of those wars] \u2026 because that's what happens when you have a strong commander in chief who our enemies are afraid of.\u201d\n\nThe chaos at our southern border under Democratic leadership is unprecedented and unacceptable. As of July 2024, ICE has released an astonishing 650,000 criminals into the United States\u201414,944 of them murderers, 20,061 convicted of sexual assault, and 105,461 with assault charges. This staggering failure has put countless American lives at risk. Under a renewed Trump administration, we will take decisive action to deport illegal aliens and restore safety and security to our communities.\n\nThis week, the Senate Judiciary Committee heard the devastating testimony of Patty Morin, the mother of Rachel Morin, who was tragically murdered by an illegal alien due to Joe Biden's reckless open border policies. Patty's story is a chilling reminder of the human cost of this administration's negligence. I am confident that with President Trump\u2019s leadership, we will end the wave of violence, murders, and assaults to ensure that no other American family endure such unimaginable loss.\n\n\u201cElections have consequences. For the last four years, we have seen the most radical experiment in open borders this nation has ever seen. \u2026 I would ask my Democrat colleagues if they were here, why does the Biden administration not go and arrest every one of these criminals and deport them? What rational world says America is better off with more criminals?\n\n\u201cMs. Morin, thank you for being here. The country grieves the loss of your daughter. Your daughter was beautiful. She was a mom, who I know loved her kids, and she's not with us today. She was raped and murdered because this administration chose to release a violent criminal into America. \u2026 I cannot imagine the pain. \u2026 No parent should have to bury their child. Children should bury their parents, not the other way around.\u201d\n\nRest assured, change is coming for our country. God Bless!\n\nKeep Texas Strong,\n\nMORE FROM SEN. CRUZ:\n\nICYMI: Sens. Cruz, Bennett, Cornyn, Hickenlooper, Colleagues Pass Resolution Celebrating Hispanic Restaurant Industry\n\nREAD: Sen Cruz: How the Media Will Cover Illegal Alien Deportations\n\nICYMI: Sen. Cruz Introduces Bill Memorializing Corpus Christi Post Office in Honor of Capt. Robert E. \u2018Bob\u2019 Batterson\n\nState Spotlight\n\nTexas Tuesday with Team Cruz\n\nVisit https://cruz.senate.gov/texas-tuesday-with-ted-and-staff to sign up to attend the next Texas Tuesday event!\n\nTexas Bankers Association\n\nCommerce Corner\n\nTed Sarandos, CEO, Netflix", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-07T22:13:55Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.cruz.senate.gov/newsroom/blogs/e-newsletter-week-of-december-13th"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.47687504068017, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}