Democrats Cave, Prepare to Rubber-Stamp Trump Crypto Corruption [View all]

https://prospect.org/politics/2025-05-08-democrats-cave-prepare-rubber-stamp-trump-crypto-corruption/

Despite the twists and turns and drama-creation that accompanies political media, most of the actions taken in Congress are actually pretty tightly choreographed with a foregone conclusion. First you find the votes, then you take the votes, as the saying goes. But for a minute, there was a genuinely uncertain situation happening on Capitol Hill, as a handful of Democrats who wanted to give a big gift to the crypto industry had to weigh that against one of the most obvious and insane grifts in presidential history.

Unfortunately, they opted for the big gift, while teeing up a fake stab at accountability for Trump that is designed to fail and give pro-crypto Democrats a convenient alibi.

As we reported on Monday, a bill called the GENIUS Act would set up a relatively weak regulatory framework for stablecoins, digital assets pegged to the U.S. dollar and used mostly to facilitate crypto trading. It was almost destined for success, as a significant number of crypto-friendly Democrats, boosted by campaign contributions from the industry, were all set to sign on. But then reports about Trump’s family organization launching a stablecoin, and the United Arab Emirates using it in a $2 billion deal to purchase the digital currency exchange Binance started bubbling up. Suddenly, it seemed like terrible politics for Democrats to effectively rubber-stamp Trump’s crypto corruption.

And so nine pro-crypto Democrats vowed to vote against cloture and maintain a filibuster, thus blocking the bill, without changes. Some assumed that asking to address “concerns” was just a pretext to kill the measure. Others thought that the crypto Dems were just searching for a fig leaf they could use to say that their concerns were addressed and the bill could go forward.

*snip*


This really pisses me off