But the 2026 midterm elections are approaching quite soon (November 3, which is less than four months away) and lawmakers will have to confront their own base and flanks after their summer recess hiatus and entering the final turn of the campaign.
That means US President Donald Trump and the $1.4 billion he made from cryptocurrencies will be a key factor in the vote. More specifically, if there is no ethics provision, it is unlikely that enough Democrats will vote for the bill in the Senate. If the text to be released next week doesn’t even include a reserved space to address the ethics part, that may even be counterproductive to gaining full bipartisan support for the bill, one person said.
That means Trump will still need to sign an ethics agreement. Several of the sources CoinDesk spoke to last week said the White House had not been as engaged recently as it was earlier in the summer, but another person told CoinDesk in early July that it could simply be a matter of waiting to see if all the other outstanding issues are resolved first.
One silver lining for the bill’s proponents: Assuming the president did not veto the housing bill that was on his desk sometime between the filing of this bulletin and 12:00 a.m. Saturday, a provision will have gone into effect prohibiting the Federal Reserve from issuing a central bank digital currency for at least four years. Industry players expressed concern that House lawmakers could push to include a CBDC ban on Clarity if the Senate advanced the bill, further straining the negotiation process and timeline. But that issue should be resolved for now at least until 2030, with inclusion in the housing bill.
