President Trump agreed to the core of a bipartisan ethics provision in the sweeping Clarity Act crypto bill, granting state attorneys general enforcement power and requiring divestiture of federal officials' crypto holdings — but the word "significant" in the divestiture rule does all the heavy lifting, and the senators announcing this "tough" reform are the same ones who wrote the bill.
Sens. Cynthia Lummis, Tim Scott, and John Boozman — the bill's main Republican authors — announced Sunday that Trump agreed to a "meaningful role" for state AGs in enforcing the measure. A senior GOP aide said Trump signed off on "about 80%" of the proposal from Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), who demanded state AG enforcement alongside several Democrats whose votes are needed to advance the bill in a key vote Tuesday.
The updated bill requires officials to either divest or place in a blind trust any "significant" financial interest in an entity that issues cryptocurrencies. It also allows state AGs to sue exchanges that list barred digital assets.
That word — "significant" — is the whole ballgame. Who defines the threshold? What counts as significant? Without a hard line, this provision stretches to fit whoever needs cover.
The original bill barred federal elected officials, their spouses, and federal judges from issuing digital assets. Democrats and Tillis said that didn't go far enough to address conflict-of-interest concerns around Trump's own crypto wealth. White House officials privately worried state AG enforcement would be weaponized — Democratic attorneys general targeting Republicans, and vice versa — according to two people with knowledge of the discussions.
White House crypto adviser Patrick Witt cast the agreement as good faith: "At every step of the way during the Clarity Act negotiations, the White House and Senate Republicans have been responsive to Democrats' stated policy objectives," he wrote on X.
Meanwhile, the same president cutting deals on crypto ethics rules that apply to his own holdings is promising $5,000 "dividend" checks to every American adult — a $1.2 trillion proposal. Speaker Mike Johnson admitted Sunday that Congress would need to authorize the payments. "I would assume, yes, he'd need Congress to act, and that's a creative idea," Johnson said. Trump insisted otherwise: "The 5,000's going to happen, 100%."
Marc Goldwein, senior policy director at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, cut through the math: the U.S. runs $2 trillion annual deficits and holds $40 trillion in debt. "The idea that we've had fiscal success is backwards and bordering on laughable," he told the AP.
The Dallas Morning News and Chicago Tribune framed the dividend as a "dubious election-year gambit" straining the $1.8 trillion annual deficit. The Washington Examiner noted Johnson said the party had "zero time" to process the idea. Newsweek highlighted Johnson wouldn't guarantee the checks, with former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg arguing the speaker's hesitation proves it's "just not going to happen."
When Lummis, Scott, and Boozman — the Clarity Act's own authors — announce a bipartisan ethics "fix" to their own bill, working Americans should ask whether this is accountability or the regulatory architecture incumbents survive and upstarts can't navigate. The vote comes Tuesday.
