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Senators are running out of time to strike a bipartisan deal on one of Trump’s top legislative priorities — an industry-friendly overhaul of how agencies oversee cryptocurrency — before midterms sap their momentum.
“There’s going to be a fish-or-cut-bait time on that pretty soon here,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune told Semafor. “This thing’s going to have to come together fairly quickly.”
Outstanding issues include how to restrict Trump’s ability to profit from digital assets and how to fill empty seats on the SEC and CFTC, Thune said. He added that lawmakers “continue to massage” language governing yields on stablecoins.
“There’s a path there, it’s just that we’re kind of running out of time,” Thune said.
Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., one of the Democrats running point on another outstanding issue related to illicit finance, was less optimistic: “I’m pretty down on the lack of progress.”
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Lawmakers are still hoping to get a bill on the Senate floor in July, Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., told Semafor. She and Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, and Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., are among those trying to triangulate an ethics agreement with the White House that can win Trump’s approval while also delivering the Democratic votes necessary to pass the broader package.
The still-evolving deal is not expected to cover the president’s adult children, people familiar with the talks told Semafor on Wednesday, even though most of the Trumps’ crypto business is conducted by his sons and, as a result, would likely remain mostly unaffected. A Democratic staffer involved in the talks said “there’s no way” for lawmakers to write the adult children into the legislation, noting that “there’s not a single ethics rule or law that does so.”
“The president has to be included,” Warner said of the ethics provisions, “and it also has to be enforceable during his term.”
It’s still unclear exactly when the provisions, which officials have yet to present to Trump, would take effect. It’s also unclear how they would be enforced or whether they would extend to presidents’ spouses.
“My view is that safeguards against insider dealing should apply to all of us public officials” and “our partners are under that, especially in the case of the president,” Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., said. “They have all the inside information that raises questions in the public.”
One final hurdle: The House must also advance whatever the Senate passes. House Financial Services Chair French Hill, R-Ark., who just emerged from a bruising bicameral brawl over housing affordability legislation, has so far declined to commit to advancing the upper chamber’s proposal without changes, telling Semafor last month: “It’s not over til it’s over.”