Sponsors (19)
The bill strengthens federal criminal tools to deter and punish use of child sexual images and even bluff threats—improving protection for children and aiding prosecutors—while increasing risks of wrongful prosecution, higher incarceration and enforcement costs, privacy intrusions, and unequal impacts on marginalized defendants.
Children and other potential victims: the bill makes threatening to distribute child sexual abuse material prosecutable even when no real image exists, extending legal protection to victims of bluff threats.
Children, families, and victims: offenders who use sexual images (or threats of them) to intimidate, coerce, extort, or cause severe emotional harm face up to 10 additional years in federal prison, increasing deterrence against aggravated uses of such material.
Law enforcement and prosecutors: the bill clarifies and strengthens federal sentencing authority for aggravated, image-related intimidation/extortion offenses, helping consistency in prosecutions across jurisdictions and aiding investigations.
Accused individuals and free-speech advocates: criminal liability based on claims of threatened distribution (even without any actual image) and unclear boundaries of what counts as a 'threat' raise wrongful-prosecution, free-expression, and due-process concerns.
Taxpayers and the federal budget: substantially higher maximum sentences are likely to increase prison populations and related incarceration and supervision costs.
Marginalized and low-income defendants: expanded criminal penalties risk disproportionately harming racial-ethnic minorities and low-income individuals if charging and sentencing practices vary by community.
Based on analysis of 4 sections of legislative text.
Makes threatening to distribute sexual images of minors a federal crime even if no image exists, and adds a 10-year sentencing enhancement when depictions are knowingly used to intimidate, coerce, extort, or cause substantial emotional distress.
Official title: Amend title 18, United States Code, to criminalize intentional threats to distribute child sexual abuse material, and to provide appropriate penalties for the use of child sexual abuse material to extort or coerce victims.
Introduced December 9, 2025 by Charles Ernest Grassley · Last progress December 9, 2025
Makes it a federal crime to threaten to distribute sexual images of minors even when no actual image exists, and increases prison terms by 10 years when someone knowingly uses a sexual image or child pornography of a minor to intimidate, coerce, extort, or cause substantial emotional distress. Also separates and strengthens penalties for registered sex offenders and includes a severability clause so the rest of the law remains if part is struck down.