We covered today's Clarity Act vote in detail in this week's main piece. But some things are worth reading in full rather than summarised. Below are the complete floor speeches from Senator Elizabeth Warren, who argued against the bill, and Senator Cynthia Lummis, who argued for it, transcribed directly from the Senate floor. Judge the actual words for yourself. The full story, including what happens next, lands tomorrow.
Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)
In 2025 alone, Trump and his family made $1.4 billion from their crypto ventures. In fact, Donald Trump made more from crypto last year than any publicly traded crypto company in America. There is no one else.
So, Trump won big time on crypto. Who lost? The working people who followed their leader. People who bought into Trump’s crypto ventures have lost billions of dollars. For example, the fans who bought Trump’s meme coins have lost nearly $4 billion.
And Trump just keeps pumping the crypto industry. He has disbanded the DOJ’s crypto enforcement team. He has dropped crypto enforcement actions against companies that donated millions of dollars to his campaign, and he has given multiple presidential pardons for crypto executives convicted of serious crimes. Trump’s corruption is so extensive that he has infected crypto’s entire financial regulatory framework.
Now, Republicans are not only turning a blind eye to Trump’s corruption, now they want to vote today to boost that corruption. Late on Sunday night, the Republicans released a new ethics provision that the Republicans negotiated with the White House. They read exactly like what the most corrupt president in our history would bless, a tiny little fig leaf that claims they’re doing something about corruption, but that is carefully written to make sure that it will not prevent Donald Trump from making his next $1.4 billion in crypto profits.
First, the new text guarantees that Donald Trump will never ever be held accountable under the law. Why? Because Trump’s lap dogs would have the power to shut down any enforcement of the ethics provisions against Donald Trump. The text says the attorney general, you know, that is the guy who at his confirmation hearing said, quote, “I am Trump’s lawyer, not America’s lawyer, Trump’s lawyer.” This is the guy who would decide whether to bring an enforcement action against the president. The bill would not allow state attorneys general to bring any enforcement actions against the president. All they could do is try to sue Trump’s former personal lawyer, the attorney general, to do something about it. And here’s the kicker, nobody thinks that the attorney general is going to bring an action against Donald Trump, but this bill has belt and suspenders built right in to ensure that Donald Trump’s money-making schemes just keep right on rolling. The bill says that Trump’s handpicked cronies at his Office of Government Ethics can wave a magic wand by issuing a legal opinion. And then, as if by magic, Donald Trump would suddenly be protected from any enforcement at all against his next round of crypto profits. An ethics restriction that the president himself can have completely waved is not an ethics restriction.
Now, second, even if these provisions were enforceable, there are massive loopholes in them that would allow Trump to continue juicing his crypto empire. Under the new text, Trump would be allowed to continue making hundreds of millions of dollars from his crypto ventures, including World Liberty Financial and his meme coin. Not only would Trump easily be able to keep or restructure his existing crypto ventures, he would also be able to create new ones, extra corruption. For example, this new text does nothing to stop Donald Trump from becoming the first president in American history to own and regulate his own bank. And lastly, Trump could just put his holdings in a blind trust in name only while still knowing exactly what assets are there and still in charge of the regulators who can juice the value of Donald Trump’s crypto investments. Trump has already made $1.4 billion in 2025 alone as a crypto dealer, and the bill that the Republicans want to vote on today would make sure that he can just keep raking in the dough.
It’s not just the ethics provisions that are terrible. This bill would make it easier for terrorist organizations, for drug cartels, and for scammers to cheat Americans and harder for law enforcement to catch them. Easier for Iran and North Korea to evade sanctions and harder for law enforcement to catch them.
This bill would put us all at risk of a crypto-fuelled economic crash. The crypto bill has become a Christmas tree with gifts for other high-risk scammers. The bill, for example, would blow a massive hole in our nearly century-old securities laws by allowing and encouraging companies that have nothing to do with crypto to throw their assets on a blockchain to escape the investor protections that apply to traditional securities, you know, like stocks, the stock protections that were put in place after the Great Depression. In fact, unions are opposed to this bill specifically because they see it as putting workers’ hard-earned pensions at risk. And really, you should just ask yourself, what does this have to do with crypto? Why are we putting provisions in place to blow up protections on the stock market? Because a handful of crypto bros want it.
This bill would give banks a green light to use Americans’ banking deposits to engage in a brand new list of risky crypto activities: lending against crypto as collateral, buying crypto directly, trading crypto derivatives, operating blockchain nodes, selling crypto software. The list goes on and on. Think about how the price of crypto shot up and down and up and down in just the last couple of years alone. And then imagine what happens when the biggest banks in America use the money in your savings account to load up on that kind of crypto.
The bill also blocks states and tribal nations from enforcing their own laws on the books to protect their citizens from getting scammed. The president of the Indian Gaming Association calls this bill, quote, the greatest threat to tribal sovereignty in a generation.
This is not what the American people want. They want Congress to do something about the affordability crisis. They want an end to Trump’s war in Iran. They want their elected leaders to step up and regulate AI. According to a survey by crypto news outlet CoinDesk, just 1% of respondents rank crypto as their top concern. Another poll found that if there’s anything that voters want to do on crypto, it’s to put in place meaningful anti-fraud and anti-corruption measures. That’s the kind of thing this bill glaringly fails to do.
So you got to ask yourselves, why are we here? We need crypto regulation, yes we do, but we do not need a crypto bill written by the crypto industry to benefit only the most extreme voices. Negotiate a real bipartisan crypto bill, but until then, I urge my colleagues to vote no.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
… followed shortly by…
Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.)
Preliminary floor business omitted: unanimous consent requests unrelated to the bill
Mr. President, in a few minutes, the Senate will vote on one of the most important, consequential, bipartisan financial services bills in a generation, the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act. Before we do, my colleagues need to understand exactly what’s at stake. I have spent every single day of the past year fighting to get the Clarity Act ready for prime time, because Wyoming did not send me to Washington to watch America fall behind. My state sent me here to make sure we lead. Today, this body decides whether we keep that promise or sideline American leadership.
Wyoming wrote the blueprint for regulating digital assets in the United States, and in many ways the world. In 2017, the Wyoming legislature embarked on a mission to create a first-of-its-kind regulatory framework for digital assets that protects consumers and promotes responsible innovation. The Wyoming legislature was the first legislative body in the United States to draw the line between a security and a commodity. Was the first to safely integrate digital assets into our nation’s banking system in a safe and sound way through special purpose depository institutions, and Wyoming was the first jurisdiction in the nation to create a new legal entity for decentralized unincorporated nonprofit associations. A Wyoming special purpose depository institution was also the first depository institution in the history of our banking system to earn a master account from the Federal Reserve.
The successful Wyoming blueprint is the foundation of the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act. Today, this is not a partisan bill, not even close. Democrats secured 126 separate concessions in this text, and they wrote more than half of the 630 pages in front of you. This bill started at 300 pages. It stands at 635 because I sat across the table from my colleagues for an entire year and took every objection seriously and built those changes into the bill ourselves. That’s not capitulation. That’s what legislating in good faith looks like, something this body far too often forgets how to do.
Nowhere, absolutely nowhere, have we given more than on ethics in this bill. In July, President Trump voluntarily put himself, the vice president, every judge, federally elected official, and their spouses under the strictest ethics restrictions this country has ever seen. Almost no one in Washington would have offered that on their own.
But Democrats still wanted more. They wanted independent outside enforcement. So President Trump went back to the table and he gave more. This final text reflects substantially all of the Tillis-Gallego framework, built on top of what was already historic. State attorneys general now have direct authority to enforce these ethics rules against federal officials themselves. They can go after exchanges and issuers under consumer protection law. So bad actors get hit coming and going. No president has ever gone this far, and this president did it twice.
Let’s be honest about what a no vote actually is today. It’s not a principled stand against the president. It’s not a vote against a bill that has had a partisan flare. It’s a vote to protect politicians’ personal crypto holdings from the very limits Democrats demanded and got. It’s a vote against the consumer protections American families are counting on. And it’s a vote to hand the future of financial innovation to a foreign competitor who will not be foolish enough to waste this chance to lead our global digital economy, and onshore this industry and the good paying jobs it creates.
This country put the first man on the moon. We built financial institutions, and we built the internet. We do not watch history happen to us. We make history. We should not stop that tradition today.
635 pages. A full year of daily negotiations, daily, even on weekends. 126 Democrat wins written into law. The strongest ethics restrictions any president has ever accepted, in writing, right here. This is what good faith looks like. This is what compromise looks like. And in a few minutes, my colleagues will decide whether or not it meant anything at all.
I have given this fight everything I have from the moment I was sworn in as a US senator, and especially over the last year. For so long, this fight has been mine and that of my incredible partner and dear friend, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, and Chairman Scott and Chairman Boozman, Senator Tillis, Senator Moreno, and many of my colleagues who have walked alongside me in this fight for this industry to bring us to this moment today. This fight belongs to the whole body. President Trump gave more than anyone in this town expected, twice. It’s time for this body to take yes for an answer. Take the win.
Stand with American innovation. Stand with American consumers. Stand with American leadership. Do not let this day be the day we handed our future to someone else because we were too afraid to finish what we started.
Let’s vote yes. Let’s not only join the 21st century economy, let’s not only join the digital age, let’s lead it. Let’s define it. Let’s make it work for America and the world. Let’s vote yes. Let’s get this done.
Madame President, I yield back, and I ask unanimous consent to waive the mandatory quorum call with respect to the cloture motion for H.R. 3633.
Source: live Senate floor coverage, September 15, 2026. Transcribed for research purposes.