First Lady Melania Trump is expected to speak publicly on Monday for the first time since her husband returned to office, highlighting her support for a bill aimed at protecting Americans from deepfake and revenge pornography.Trump will hold a roundtable discussion on Monday on Capitol Hill, according to the office of the first lady, to shine a light on the "TAKE IT DOWN" Act, which boosts protections for victims of non-consensual sharing of sexual images, including content generated by artificial intelligence, also known as deepfake porn.In the past year, targets of AI-generated, non-consensual pornographic images have ranged from prominent women such as Taylor Swift and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to high school girls.
First lady Melania Trump is expected to speak publicly on Monday for the first time since her husband returned to office. (Getty)The bill, introduced by Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, "would criminalize the publication of non-consensual intimate imagery (NCII), including AI-generated NCII (or 'deepfake pornography'), and require social media and similar websites to have in place procedures to remove such content upon notification from a victim," according to Cruz's office.It passed the Senate with bipartisan support during the last session of Congress but did not pass the House.Cruz and a bipartisan group of lawmakers, including Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Rep. Madeleine Dean of Pennsylvania, are reintroducing the bill, and the first lady is now lending her support to the effort.All the looks from the Oscars red carpetView GalleryDuring President Donald Trump's first term, Melania Trump unveiled her "Be Best" platform, which included a focus on online safety. She indicated in an interview shortly before the November election that she was interested in reinvigorating those efforts, and suggested she could take on "new issues.""Children are suffering. We need to help them and educate them," she told Fox News in October.The first lady has so far spent limited time in Washington during her husband's second term.After attending the inauguration and joining her husband on a trip to North Carolina and California, states that have recently been impacted with natural disasters, Melania Trump was absent from the White House between January 24 and February 22, when she reemerged to host a dinner with the nation's governors.
The first lady has so far spent limited time in Washington during her husband's second term. (Getty)The first lady was expected to spend a majority of her time between New York, where son Barron is attending college, and Florida, CNN reported during the presidential transition.Sources familiar with her thinking said at the time that she would still be present for major events and would have her own platform and priorities as first lady.Even as she's been open about traversing the East Coast, the first lady has previously emphasized that she'd be in DC.Asked where she planned to spend her time in a January 13 interview with Fox News' Ainsley Earhardt, Trump said, "I will be in the White House. And, you know, when I need to be in New York, I will be in New York. When I need to be in Palm Beach, I will be in Palm Beach."She continued, "But my first priority is, you know, to be a mom, to be a first lady, to be a wife, and once we are in on January 20, you serve the country."The president has also spent significant time in Florida since Inauguration Day, traveling to Miami or Palm Beach for his first four weekends in office.