Senate Republicans are privately warning that the chamber's bipartisan cryptocurrency measure, the CLARITY Act, is likely to fail when lawmakers return next week, Semafor reported Tuesday.
It would be only the latest embarrassment for a party that controls Washington yet keeps tripping over its own majority. Just last week, House Republican leaders nearly lost a routine floor vote when five conservatives revolted over a stopgap spending deal, and the rule survived 210-208 only because two Democrats, Jared Golden of Maine and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington, crossed the aisle to rescue Speaker Mike Johnson from a floor collapse. Leaders have since scrapped two of September's planned voting weeks, sending members home until after the midterms.
The crypto bill itself needs 60 votes to clear a filibuster, and there has been almost no movement on Democrats' central demand for ethics language governing how the president and his family cash in on crypto.
"If there's no interest in the White House in trying to bridge the gap on the ethics language, it is going to fail," Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) told the outlet. Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD) agreed about the odds, saying it "does not look good right now."
Democrats want to bar top officials from profiting off crypto while in office, and no official has profited more than Trump, whose 2025 financial disclosure reported over $1 billion in crypto income, much of it from the family-linked World Liberty Financial and his meme coin. The White House insists it already agreed to "the most comprehensive and wide-ranging ethics provision in history" and says Trump is "unequivocal" that Congress must pass the bill to keep America ahead of "foreign competitors."
The collapse would sting a lobby that spent more than $200 million in 2024 to build a friendlier Washington, and a failed vote could send that money flooding into Senate and House races ahead of November's midterms.
"There's nothing I can do with the crypto bill. Haven't heard a peep about it. Nobody back home is asking about it," said Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS).
