Newsletter: The supposedly “unprecedented” ethics restrictions in the industry-written Clarity Act exempt Trump’s crypto businesses and leave enforcement to his loyalists. Senators must vote no on cloture tomorrow.
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The Senate must reject the Clarity Act’s ethics charade
The supposedly “unprecedented” ethics restrictions exempt Trump’s crypto businesses and leave enforcement to his loyalists
![A campaign worth $10 million was funded by Washington State through the Washington Apple Commission and other agencies to promote the new apple variety,[11] using the taglines "Imagine the Possibilities" and "The Apple of Big Dreams".[1] Said to be the largest marketing campaign in the history of the apple industry,[25] it included payments to social media influencers and a partnership with a touring children's production of Johnny Appleseed.[26][13] The term "Cosmic Crisp" is trademarked.[1]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:exrxvyu6bpoym6mbnctke5tn/bafkreigcxy46qfq2fworcaxhdl35zqj4r6eeuuzzpn47la5z4jjbxm4ipu)
![The bill’s proponents describe the Clarity Act as providing “clear rules of the road” for digital assets, painting Democrats who oppose to a bill as inexplicably standing in the way of clear guardrails for crypto. “A no vote tomorrow kills the toughest ethics reform this country has ever put on the books, kills consumer protections for every American holding digital assets, and hands the future of this industry to our foreign competitors,” threatened Senator Lummis on Twitter.11
But regulations were previously, if belatedly, being enforced in the crypto sector by the SEC, which applied laws that cover a broad range of financial assets that fit the definition of an investment contract. Courts repeatedly upheld this application to the crypto sector — much to the chagrin of deep-pocketed crypto firms like Coinbase, Ripple, and Gemini, who responded with hundreds of millions in lobbying and saw their cases dropped under Trump [Quid pro quo]. Facing what they viewed as an existential threat from an SEC demanding they play by the same rules as other industries, the crypto sector spent hundreds of millions of dollars lobbying for the Clarity Act and electing lawmakers who would let them write their own rules. The result is not “clear rules of the road”, it’s industry-drafted deregulation with a loophole-ridden ethics section bolted on only after Republicans realized that even the pro-crypto Democrats installed with the help of $130 million in industry spending wouldn’t sign off on a bill placing no limits on Trump’s historic grift.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:exrxvyu6bpoym6mbnctke5tn/bafkreihs7egzwealhou5yd64db7rgm74prlm2hcskcoqormzkn3m6iomz4)
![Fairshake’s attempt to defeat Democratic opponents by linking them to ICE mirrors their similarly unsuccessful strategy against Illinois Senate candidate Juliana Stratton earlier this year [I102]. Of course, the ads talk about ICE because these PACs know that running ads about crypto would only alienate the voters they’re chasing. They don’t care about ICE whatsoever; Fairshake’s Republican arm has dumped more than $7 million behind Kentucky’s Republican Senate candidate, Andy Barr, who’s been running ads in which he proclaims, “I love ICE... Cheers to ICE.”19](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:exrxvyu6bpoym6mbnctke5tn/bafkreiep4zueqmik7ebvcv5njnxonlirrvchnhrw6724wqdovnub7eywwu)
