The long-awaited CLARITY Act has been stalled in Congress since January, primarily due to disagreements concerning stablecoin rewards. Those involved in negotiating the crypto bill have said throughout the month that progress is picking up, with May potentially marking a key turning point in the Senate.
However, a recent Politico report suggests that the biggest hurdle may no longer be the inclusion of stablecoin-specific language. Instead, Democrats are vowing to block progress unless a bipartisan agreement on ethics provisions is reached, specifically restrictions aimed at preventing Trump from being involved in crypto activity.
CLARITY Act Crossroads
Senator Ruben Gallego, a Democrat who supports the overall legislation and has worked on the ethics negotiations, summed up the leverage Democrats are using. As he stated, there is “no final bill” and “no final movement” unless the ethics issue is agreed to in a bipartisan way.
The CLARITY Act’s ethics debate has grown more urgent because the Trump family’s crypto businesses are at the center of growing frustration among lawmakers on the left.
Those businesses are described as representing more than $1 billion of the family’s wealth, and critics argue that “a light-touch regulatory regime” for the digital asset industry could enrich the first family.
The White House has repeatedly said there is no conflict of interest for the President. Senate Republicans have also largely defended him against attacks tied to his family’s crypto holdings. Even so, both parties appear to understand that a deal is necessary to clear the path for the bill.
Per the report, there is a shared awareness that if Republicans lose either chamber of Congress, the long-standing industry push to restructure oversight—splitting responsibilities for crypto trading between Wall Street regulators—would become far harder to achieve.
At this point, it is still uncertain whether Democrats can secure an arrangement that both Senate Republicans and the White House accept—particularly one that would meaningfully limit the Trump family’s crypto business involvement.
Ethics Fight Becomes Last Major Hurdle
Another complication is the legislative process itself. Republicans on the Senate Banking Committee have said they want to move the CLARITY Act forward in the coming weeks, but the ethics fight is described as one of the last outstanding issues required for the bill to gain broader bipartisan support.
Because ethics policy is outside the Banking Committee’s jurisdiction, the committee’s CLARITY Act markup is not expected to include ethics language.
Even so, Gallego has said that there must be clarity before the crypto bill reaches the floor—specifically, a “clear explanation” of how the ethics provisions would be handled and incorporated by the time of a markup.
Featured image from OpenArt, chart from TradingView.com
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