WASHINGTON — My last exclusive interview with Lindsey Olin Graham was on March 4, though I didn’t know it at the time, because you never do. I’d asked the senior senator from South Carolina his message to Speaker Mike Johnson about putting the Defiance Act on the House floor for a vote. “Yeah, do it. Do it. Do it. Do it. Get on with it,” said Graham:
Graham died this month, at 71; and Defiance Act, his landmark bipartisan Ai civil rights bill, is slowly being killed in the House by Johnson and Judiciary Committee chairman Jim Jordan despite a sincere and deeply personal lobbying effort by Paris Hilton. First Lady Melania Trump could be the final nudge the bill needs, but so far the First Lady is mum on Defiance Act.
Two Unanimous Consents
Killing the Defiance Act — the Disrupt Explicit Forged Images and Non-Consensual Edits Act — is a choice by House GOP leaders, not an accident. The bill is straightforward, uncomplicated, non-controversial, creating a federal civil right of action for people whose likenesses are turned into AI-generated sexual forgeries: a minimum of $150,000 in liquidated damages, $250,000 if the forgery is tied to assault or stalking, the right to sue under a pseudonym, a decade to discover the harm and still sue over it.
Graham and Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., passed a version of it by unanimous consent in the Senate during the last Congress, in July 2024. Johnson wouldn’t put it on the floor so it died when the term expired. So Durbin and Graham teamed up again, introducing Defiance Act fresh as S. 1837, with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Rep. Laurel Lee, R-Fla., carrying the House companion, H.R. 3562.
On Jan. 13, Durbin returned to the Senate floor for a second time with a unanimous consent request for Defiance Act. No one objected. The bill passed unopposed for a second time and twice, the bill went to the House to wait for either a floor vote where its sure to pass by a broad bipartisan margin, or to be slowly, quietly, politically killed again by Republican leaders, namely Johnson and Jordan, who have led their House GOP conference into what is expected to be an electoral bloodbath in November’s midterm election.
Ms. Hilton Goes to Washington
Rep. Lee and Rep. Ocasio-Cortez brought Paris Hilton to the Capitol on Jan. 22 to make the case in person. Hilton was seventeen when a stolen sex tape made her a punchline before anyone thought to ask if she’d survived something.
From Hilton’s remarks —
“People called it a scandal. It wasn’t. It was abuse. There were no laws at the time to protect me. There weren’t even words for what had been done to me. The internet was still new, and so was the cruelty that came with it. They called me names, they laughed and made me the punchline. They sold my pain for clicks, and then they told me to be quiet, to move on, to even be grateful for the attention.”
“These people didn’t see me as a young woman who had been exploited. They didn’t see the panic that I felt, the humiliation or the shame. No one asked me what I lost.”
“Too many women are afraid to exist online, or sometimes, to exist at all... This isn’t just about technology, it’s about power.”
“I would go to the ends of the earth to protect her [her daughter], but I can’t protect her from this, not yet, and that’s why I’m here, because this isn’t about just technology. It’s about power. It’s about someone using someone’s likeness to humiliate, silence and strip them of their dignity. But victims deserve more than after-the-fact apologies. We deserve justice.”
The Runaround
In March, I asked AOC for an update on Defiance Act:
AOC: Yeah, so I think what we need next is the Judiciary Committee. We have to make sure that Republicans on the Judiciary Committee, including their chairman, give it the green light. This is a bipartisan bill. We have a lot of Republican support; we just need Republican support in that committee. This is one of those circumstances where we need to nudge it along. We need to say, “Hey, listen, there are some circumstances where we can put aside our differences, and we’ll celebrate anyone and everyone who helps get this past the finish line.”
On May 21, the bill was formally referred to the House Judiciary Committee, chaired by Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, who has basically ignored it since. I asked Jordan in June if the Judiciary Committee he leads will take up the bill. “I don’t know,” he said.
A month later, I checked in again with AOC:
PabloReports: Have you heard anything about the Defiance Act from Speaker Johnson or Jim Jordan?
AOC: I think we’ve had some developments here in terms of support. What remains a question is Chairman Jordan, but I do think things are hopefully moving in a good direction.
PabloReports: Are you concerned they are trying to run out the clock?
AOC: Of course I am. We are trying to figure out how to best navigate it.
“We’ve Had a Very Busy Week”
Last week, I asked House Majority Leader Steve Scalise about Defiance Act:
PabloReports: Do you think the Defiance Act will make it to the floor?
Scalise: Which one is that?
PabloReports: The deepfake bill that Paris Hilton and Laurel Lee are—
Scalise: I hope so. I’ve worked with Paris Hilton on some important bills to stop trafficking in the past.
Minutes later, I ran into Laurel Lee on her way to an evening House vote and asked her the same question I asked Scalise:
Lee: I’m very hopeful that we’re going to get the Defiance Act to the floor. It’s such important legislation with bipartisan support.
PabloReports: Why won’t Mike Johnson put it on the floor? It passed by unanimous consent in the Senate in January.
Lee: We’ve had a very busy week.
In the end, the only person who can definitively answer a question about timing on a House vote is the Speaker, so I tracked down Mike Johnson that same night and put him on the spot as he was leaving his Capitol suite:
PabloReports: Do you think the Defiance Act on deepfakes will make it to the floor? It passed in January by unanimous consent in the Senate.
Mike Johnson: I don’t know. I’m obviously in favor of that. We’ll have to see.
Two days later, Politico Playbook author Will Steakin reported that Republican leadership’s real objection isn’t the bill — it’s who gets credit for it. Handing Ocasio-Cortez a bipartisan win, the reporting suggested, is a bigger problem for Johnson than the deepfakes themselves.
Later that same day, Ocasio-Cortez told The Independent’s Eric Garcia she’d welcome help from an unlikely direction: “She has absolutely been a champion on this issue. I think that this is a really great opportunity, just as we have in the House, to be able to champion and for women to uplift one another across party lines.”
“Whip Smart and Not Reticent”
Graham and Durbin ran this same play twice — bipartisan Senate Judiciary leaders, opposite parties, one bill, two Congresses, two unanimous consents. I asked some of Graham’s Republican colleagues on June 27 what made that work.
Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo.: “The fact that he succeeded is just a testament to how far his reach was with his colleagues because he could work deals with Democrats, Republicans, conservative Republicans, moderate Republicans, and Defiance Act is a great example of how we was so effective.”
Sen. John Kennedy, R-La.: “Lindsey was a small earthquake and I’m gonna miss him.” On what made Graham effective: “He was whip smart and he was not reticent in terms of telling you were he stood.”
Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan.: “I don’t know that Lindsey had to work too hard to get me on board with [the Defiance Act]. I love it, especially to help any youth attacked in this way.”
Sen. Jim Banks, R-Ind.: “He was very effective on the job. There was no one more skilled at it. I hope I get to that point one day.”
The Missing Nudge
So here is where it sits: Johnson does not need Jordan’s permission. He can bring the DEFIANCE Act to the floor under suspension of the rules whenever he wants, Judiciary Committee sign-off or not. A source on the committee tells me Jordan has no intention of ever taking it up on his own. That leaves Johnson holding a bill with 57 cosponsors and counting — 29 Democrats, 28 Republicans — that would pass by a wide margin the moment it’s called, and no apparent reason not to call it, except the one Politico already named.
Which is why the shape of what happens next may not run through the Capitol at all. A public nudge from the White House — Melania Trump, who has been the administration’s most visible face on synthetic image abuse through her advocacy for the TAKE IT DOWN Act, or even Ivanka, the president’s daughter — would hand Johnson exactly the cover Politico says he’s missing: a big chunk of the credit for the bill that doesn’t go to Ocasio-Cortez.
The White House did not respond to multiple requests for comment on whether the first lady would extend that advocacy to the Defiance Act specifically.
Without the right nudge, Defiance Act will mostly likely run the clock again, the same way it did the first time Graham and Durbin pushed it through.
The late-Sen. Lindsey Graham answered more than a hundred of my questions in five years on the Hill — including his last one on the record. This is what that access is for: knowing exactly where his last bill is buried, and who’s sitting on the shovel. If you want the next update before Politico gets it, this is the subscription that gets you there.
