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Is The Senate Stablecoin Bill Dead? Dems Demand Treasury Info On Trump Citing Crypto “Bribery” Risks
Is The Senate Stablecoin Bill Dead? Dems Demand Treasury Info On Trump Citing Crypto “Bribery” Risks
Update (1405ET): CoinDesk’s Margau Nijkerk reports that Top House Democrats sent a letter to the U.S. Treasury Department Wednesday, asking its money laundering watchdog to hand over all suspicious activity reports (SARs) tied to President Donald Trump’s crypto ventures.
In a letter sent to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Reps. Gerald Connolly (D-Va.), Joe Morelle (D-N.Y.) and Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) – the ranking members of the House Oversight, Administrative, and Judiciary committees – called for an urgent investigation into Trump’s blockchain project World Liberty Financial and the $TRUMP memecoin, citing possible violations of campaign finance laws, bribery statutes and securities regulations.
“The Committees seek to determine whether legislation is necessary to prevent violations of campaign finance, consumer protection, bribery, securities fraud, and other anti-corruption laws in connection with fundraising by candidates for federal office and federal officeholders and to guard against deceptive and predatory campaign fundraising practices, illicit foreign influence over federal officials, and other financial misconduct connected to prospective or current federal officials,” the leading Democrats on the committees wrote in a press release shared with CoinDesk.
The request marks an escalation in congressional scrutiny on whether President Trump and his entourage are abusing their positions of power to benefit their crypto businesses. Senate Democrats pointed to Trump’s crypto ventures last week as part of their reason for not voting to advance stablecoin legislation that previously saw bipartisan support.
The inquiry zeroes in not only on the Trump family’s September 2024 launch of World Liberty Financial and the $TRUMP memecoin launched just days before his inauguration, but also Elon Musk’s America PAC and whether they are using Trump’s name to solicit donations under false pretenses.
As Sander Luz reported earlier via Decrypt.co, it was supposed to be a slam dunk.
The American crypto industry, flush with more political capital than it has ever had (and perhaps will ever have), was to get its long-awaited “regulatory clarity” on stablecoins last week.
And yet the Senate failed to pass a key procedural vote on the marquee stablecoin legislation.
As the bill, dubbed the GENIUS Act, languishes in legislative purgatory, should it be considered functionally dead—or might there be hope yet for its passage?
It depends who you ask.
Technically speaking, according to the Senate’s rules, the window to file a motion to reconsider the bill—which would establish a legal framework for offering stablecoins in the United States—has already passed.
Such a motion would have had to be filed by Monday evening, and no senators did so in time.
A source familiar with the Senate’s rules of procedure confirmed this state of affairs to Decrypt.
Stablecoins are a key component of the crypto economy. They are essentially digital dollar-equivalents that allow their users to enter and exit digital asset trades, and send payments or remittances overseas, without the need to access dollars directly.
It’s expected that once these assets are anointed by the U.S. Congress, rules of the road signed into law by President Donald Trump, banking giants and Wall Street titans will join the fray and enter the stablecoin market—bringing billions if not trillions of dollars into crypto. That’s why the lobbying arm of the crypto industry has been pushing so hard for this legislation.
But the GENIUS Act has not been taken up for a cloture vote this week because, functionally, political calculus has not changed on the topic since Thursday.
A small cadre of pro-crypto Democrats still have yet to reach a deal with Republican leadership over the bill’s language. Republicans are confident, however, they will be able to take advantage of “other procedural opportunities” to get the GENIUS Act back to the Senate floor if such a deal is made, sources told Decrypt.
After a largely uneventful weekend, key Democratic and Republican stakeholders are resuming talks this week over the contents of the bill, sources familiar with the plans told Decrypt. Both sides are remaining exceptionally tight-lipped, however, about what exact language is holding up progress.
Five Senate Democrats who voted against the bill last week previously voted to advance it from the Senate Banking Committee. Two of the Democrats who opposed the bill on Thursday, Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD), are consponsors of the legislation.
In a statement issued last weekend, pro-crypto Democrats blamed their withdrawal of support for GENIUS on portions of a new draft of the bill, which they said contained insufficient anti-money laundering and national security protections. But optics appear to also be playing a significant role in their change of tune.
In the last two weeks, President Donald Trump and his family have made multiple flashy crypto and stablecoin-related announcements that have animated Democrats over perceived conflicts of interest in the White House.
That line of attack has only been exacerbated since the weekend, with Trump announcing Monday that he intends to personally accept a $400 million Boeing jet as a gift from the Qatari government.
The Senate’s decision to block the GENIUS Act on Thursday drew immediate condemnation from Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who warned the vote could jeopardize the U.S.’s position in the global digital assets race.
“For stablecoins and other digital assets to thrive globally, the world needs American leadership,” Bessent posted on X.
“The Senate missed an opportunity to provide that leadership today by failing to advance the GENIUS Act.”
Multiple crypto policy leaders told Decrypt Tuesday they are growing increasingly worried that the political stakes involved pose a very real threat not just to any chance of salvaging the GENIUS Act, but also the rest of the industry’s legislative agenda.
A parallel stablecoin bill is currently making its way through the House, and foundational market structure legislation is pending in both chambers of Congress.
The policy leaders all agreed that this week is do or die for crypto’s political momentum in Washington.
Should the GENIUS Act fail to make significant progress by Friday—as in, pass the cloture vote it failed last week—the situation could become terminal, they warned.
“Grim if something doesn’t give soon,” one D.C. insider put it.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 05/14/2025 – 15:25
Trump Administration Launches Civil Rights Probe Into Anti-Semitism at Northwestern
The Department of Health and Human Services is investigating Northwestern University over allegations that Jewish students have faced systemic discrimination on campus.
HHS’s Office for Civil Rights will probe whether Northwestern “complied with its obligations under Title VI not to discriminate against Jewish students, such that it denied them an educational opportunity or benefit,” the agency announced Tuesday. It noted that the investigation was launched after an advocacy organization filed a complaint alleging “systemic concerns” about the university’s ability to ensure nondiscrimination.
The probe is part of a broader effort by the Trump administration’s Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism. Tuesday’s announcement didn’t name the organization and only referred to the targeted school as a “prestigious Midwest university,” but a Northwestern spokesman confirmed it was the subject of the investigation.
“We are currently reviewing the request from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights for information around specific events, policies and procedures.”
“There is no place for antisemitism at Northwestern and the steps we have taken since last summer have dramatically improved the safety of our Jewish students,” the spokesman said. “As detailed in a recent progress report on Northwestern’s efforts to combat antisemitism, the University strengthened its Student Code of Conduct and other University-wide policies over the summer and has enforced these policies during this academic year.”
The Northwestern spokesman touted the university’s efforts to combat anti-Semitism, saying they “have had an impact,” and echoed claims from the March 31 progress report.
“We have also instituted and begun mandatory yearly antisemitism trainings for faculty, staff and students and have adapted the IHRA definition of antisemitism into our conduct process. These steps have had an impact – there has been a significant decrease in reports of discrimination or harassment based on antisemitism or shared Jewish ancestry in the current academic year.”
Those trainings, however, rely on unverified data from the Council on American-Islamic Relations that inflate Islamophobic attacks, giving the false impression that those attacks vastly outpace anti-Semitic hate crimes, the Washington Free Beacon reported in February. And while the progress report points to a “significant decrease” in reports of discrimination or harassment against Jewish students, a Daily Northwestern poll published last week found that over 60 percent of Jewish students and 30 percent of all students saw campus anti-Semitism as a “serious problem.”
The probe comes a month after the Trump administration froze $790 million in federal funding to Northwestern and as the university faces a separate Department of Education civil rights investigation into alleged anti-Semitism and racial discrimination. The House Committee on Education and Workforce also demanded a meeting on anti-Semitism with Northwestern’s president, the Free Beacon reported.
Lisa Fields Lewis, the mother of a Northwestern student and national chair of the Coalition Against Antisemitism at Northwestern, told the Free Beacon that Tuesday’s announcement marks a significant step forward.
“The launch of this federal civil rights investigation is a historic and necessary step toward justice. For too long, Jewish students at Northwestern have faced discrimination, harassment, and administrative indifference,” Fields Lewis said. “HHS’ action sends a powerful message: universities that accept federal funding cannot turn a blind eye to antisemitism. We commend the Office for Civil Rights for acting swiftly and decisively, and we urge Northwestern to cooperate fully with this investigation and finally uphold its legal obligations under Title VI.”
The launch of the HHS investigation follows a stretch of anti-Semitic incidents at Northwestern. During Passover last month, anti-Semitic vandals at Northwestern used red paint to write “Death to Israel” and drew Hamas triangles on Kresge Centennial Hall, a campus building that houses the school’s Holocaust center, the Free Beacon reported.
Earlier in April, Northwestern’s Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter hosted an anarchist training session featuring two pamphlets that included propaganda from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terror group. Unity of Fields—a self-described “militant front against the US-NATO-zionist axis of imperialism” that has vowed to bring violence to America—created one, which quoted a PFLP leader and called on students to “build an Intifada” so that they could “destroy amerika [sic].” The other, crafted by the SJP chapter, featured a PFLP cartoon on the cover and encouraged students to “channel [their] anger” so that they could “aid in the fight” against Israel.
Northwestern is taking some action against anti-Semitic groups, however. The university warned its Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) chapter that its constitution, which bars Zionist Jews from joining, violates the school’s new anti-discrimination policy, the Free Beacon reported. Northwestern didn’t say how long JVP had to amend its rules or what consequences the recognized student group would face if it failed to comply.
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