House Republican leaders have bottled up a bipartisan bill protecting deepfake porn victims to keep Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) from claiming a win before a possible 2028 presidential run, according to a new report.
The Disrupt Explicit Forged Images and Non-Consensual Edits Act — known as the DEFIANCE Act — would let victims of nonconsensual, sexually explicit deepfakes sue their abusers in civil court. The Senate passed it unanimously twice, most recently in January 2026, according to Senate records.
The bill has nearly 60 bipartisan co-sponsors in the House, according to Politico, where Ocasio-Cortez leads it alongside Rep. Laurel Lee (R-FL).
Four people working closely on the legislation told Politico that Republican leaders are ‘scuttling’ it rather than ‘handing AOC a major legislative victory.’
“It’s a shame that this bill isn’t law because they are unwilling to give AOC a win,” one person said. “When you look at it, everything is aligned for it to pass, except that they don’t want her to have this.”
“We’re depriving many, many people of the ability to set their lives right just to prevent one member of Congress from being able to pass a bill,” a second person said.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) acknowledged to Politico that no committee action is in the works.
“We’re talking to Laurel about it,” Jordan said, calling it a “very important piece of legislation” — with no timeline offered.
Politico’s Will Steakin reported the bill ‘would look splashy on a potential 2028 presidential résumé,’ ‘boosting AOC’s bona fides as the tough-on-Big-Tech Democrat.’ Ocasio-Cortez told Playbook this week she is “not ruling out” a 2028 presidential run.
Conservative USA Today columnist Dace Potas warned this week that Ocasio-Cortez has “a legitimate shot at the 2028 nomination” and that conservatives should treat her as “a serious threat.”
Lee, the bill’s lead Republican, said she has “growing concern” over the stall. “I do not think, on any level, that should be a barrier to us getting a vote on this bill,” she said.
In a Rolling Stone interview published in April 2024, Ocasio-Cortez described seeing a sexually explicit deepfake of herself and said her first thought was “I need to get this off my screen.”
“As a survivor of physical sexual assault, it adds a level of dysregulation,” she said. “It resurfaces trauma, while I’m trying to — in the middle of a f— meeting.”
“And once you’ve seen it, you’ve seen it,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “It parallels the same exact intention of physical rape and sexual assault, [which] is about power, domination, and humiliation. Deepfakes are absolutely a way of digitizing violent humiliation against other people.”
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