Jamie Raskin: “Mr. Speaker, I am rising in strong support of H.R. 6715, the Child Predators Accountability Act of 2025. Mr. Speaker…”

“Mr. Speaker, I am rising in strong support of H.R. 6715, the Child Predators Accountability Act of 2025. Mr. Speaker, the decision that the distinguished gentleman from North Carolina references out of the Seventh Circuit, United States v. Howard, threatens to significantly limit prosecutors' ability to hold some of the worst child predators to account legally. The question may appear to be technical, but the human consequences are grave and brutally simple. Title 18 of the United States Code, section 2251(a), criminalizes the production of child sex abuse material. For decades, prosecutors have used the law to target predators who prey on children or who produce ghastly images of child sex abuse, but the Seventh Circuit's ruling in the Howard case in 2020 jeopardized prosecutors' ability to go after these dangerous people until they actually abuse the child and create an image of the abuse. The Howard decision narrowed the scope of section 2251(a), holding that the mere physical presence of the minor in a visual depiction of sexually explicit conduct does not automatically violate the statute. To obtain a conviction for production of CSAM in the Seventh Circuit, the child in the photo, video, or image must themselves be engaged in the explicit conduct. This is an absurd reading that we can and must legislatively resolve.”