But the 2026 midterm election is coming up quite soon — Nov. 3, so less than four months from now — and lawmakers will have to face their own base and flanks after they break for the summer recess and go into the final campaign swing.
That means that U.S. President Donald Trump and the $1.4 billion he made off crypto will be a key factor in the floor vote. More specifically, if there isn’t an ethics provision, it’s unlikely that sufficient Democrats will vote for the bill in the Senate. If the text that drops next week doesn’t even include a placeholder to address the ethics portion, that may even be counterproductive to getting full bipartisan support for the bill, an individual said.
That means that Trump will still need to sign off on an ethics agreement. Several of the sources CoinDesk spoke to last week said the White House had not been as engaged recently as it had earlier in the summer, but another individual told CoinDesk in early July that it may just be a matter of waiting to see whether all the other outstanding issues are resolved first.
One bright side for the bill’s proponents: Assuming the President did not veto the housing bill sitting on his desk sometime between this newsletter’s filing and 12:00 a.m. on Saturday, a provision banning the Federal Reserve from issuing a central bank digital currency for at least four years will have taken effect. There was concern from industry players that House lawmakers might push to include a CBDC ban in Clarity if the Senate advanced the bill, which would further strain the negotiation process and timeline. But that issue should be resolved for now through at least until 2030, with the inclusion in the housing bill.