Lummis’ allegiance to Trump led to failed vote on crypto bill

​​Editor’s note: This column has been heavily amended from the original owing to multiple errors. A detailed description can be found at the bottom of the piece.

Trump loyalty proved to be the politically unsavvy move last Thursday for U.S. Sen. Cynthia Lummis. The Wyoming Republican, known as the “Crypto Queen,” has the president to blame after the GENIUS Act — landmark legislation she co-sponsored to regulate the stablecoin industry — failed a key vote in the Senate.

Despite working on the issue for years and chairing the Senate’s Digital Asset Subcommittee, Lummis somehow missed that many of her colleagues are increasingly concerned that President Donald Trump is exploiting his position to profit from crypto. They want legislation that would ban elected officials and their families from making money from crypto assets such as stablecoins, CBS News reported.  .

The GENIUS Act bill would establish the first federal framework for regulating payment stablecoins — cryptocurrency tokens pegged to the value of the U.S. dollar. Although stablecoins have been widely used for more than a decade in both the crypto economy and traditional financial markets, a lack of regulation has led to uncertainty for businesses and consumers.

The measure — short for Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins — was a bipartisan bill before U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren led its derailment. A long-time champion of consumer protection laws, Warren agrees that stablecoins should be regulated. She just wants to ensure such regulation doesn’t inadvertently hand Trump and his family billions of dollars, real or crypto.

World Liberty Financial, co-founded in late 2024 by the president’s son, Eric Trump, developed USD1 stablecoin. MGX, which is owned by the United Arab Emirates, announced it will buy $2 billion worth of USD1 stablecoin and use it to invest in Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange. 

“The Trump family stablecoin surged to the seventh largest in the world because of a shady crypto deal with the United Arab Emirates — a foreign government that will give them a crazy amount of money,” Warren warned on social media. “The Senate shouldn’t pass a crypto bill this week to facilitate this corruption.”

In case you think this corruption talk is hyperbolic, consider this: Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal reported in March that Binance founder Changpeng Zhao — who recently served a four-month prison sentence for money laundering — was seeking a pardon from Trump amid discussions of a business deal between the president’s family and Binance. 

Zhao initially denied that he applied to Trump for a pardon, then admitted it on a podcast. Say, how many stablecoins does a presidential pardon cost these days?

Five Democrats on the Senate Banking Committee, including GENIUS Act co-sponsors Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland, joined GOP members in voting for the bill in April. But that was before news of the UAE’s deal with World Liberty Financial went public. (For the record, Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., told HuffPost last week that the Democrats’ latest opposition to the measure wasn’t tied to Trump.)

Warren called for Democrats to drop their support unless Republicans adopt stronger provisions on anti-money laundering, foreign issuers, national security and accountability for noncompliance. 

Warren logically contends Trump’s position as president gives World Liberty Financial an undue advantage and an upper hand in the market, given the Trump administration’s pro-crypto policies that could lead to insider trading.

In January, Trump signed an executive order establishing a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve for the U.S. and directed his administration to promote the use of blockchain.

Last week, Democrats asked Lummis to delay an important procedural vote to allow more time for negotiations. The chairwoman denied the motion, likely sealing the bill’s failure in a procedural vote.

Two days before the vote, Lummis reportedly left a meeting with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York full of optimism. “We had a great meeting, and I came away with the impression that they still truly do want to get something across the finish line,” she told the Washington Examiner.

Lummis, who stressed it wasn’t a partisan bill, sounded confident that it had enough Democratic support to pass. But it was a serious miscalculation on her part, and ignored how fed-up many Americans are with Trump’s never-ending schemes to make his devoted followers part with their money and enrich his family.

Prior to his presidency, Trump hawked Trump Wine and Trump Steaks, had ghostwriters pen Trump best-sellers, and enrolled dupes in Trump University. He went bankrupt building casinos and hotels before hosting NBC’s “The Apprentice,” forever solidifying his phony reputation as a business titan.

After losing the 2020 election, Trump’s money-making schemes were mostly ways to raise funds to pay enormous legal bills. They included $333 Trump gold sneakers with a “strict limit of three per customer,” Trump bibles, and a surreal line of Trump digital trading cards depicting him as superheroes and athletes.

Back in the White House in 2025, Trump is hustling to promote crypto any way he can. The U.S. Constitution prohibits Trump from seeking a third term, but it didn’t deter him from hosting a closed-door, $1.5-million-per-plate “Crypto & AI Innovators Dinner” campaign fundraiser at his Washington-area golf club. 

The president is also peddling his own $TRUMP meme coins. Such coins usually have no intrinsic value in the crypto world, but Trump has a different game plan. He’s offering a free dinner at the same club on May 22 to the top 220 owners of his meme coin. 

The top 25 will win a bigger prize: a chance to personally schmooze with the leader of the free world at a pre-dinner reception. News about the contest naturally sparked more trading activity and higher prices.

Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Oregon, calls the event “a profoundly corrupt scheme that endangers our national security and erodes public trust in government.” He’s right: People who want to cultivate influence with Trump can enrich him personally by buying cryptocurrency he owns or controls. 

On the Senate floor a few hours before the vote, Warren said the bill “runs a substantial risk of blowing up the U.S. economy and putting us once more in a position where taxpayers have to bail out the billionaires while they end up paying for risks that the rich people took on.”

The cloture vote needed 60 senators to agree to debate the bill for it to advance, likely toward a quick passage. But every Democrat and two Republicans voted no. The final tally was 48-49.

Warren signed on to Merkley’s common-sense bill to ban presidents, lawmakers and their families from financially benefiting by issuing, endorsing or sponsoring crypto assets, including stablecoins. The End Crypto Corruption Act directly targets Trump and his family’s crypto ventures.

The president’s crypto holdings now represent nearly 40% of his net worth — or approximately $2.9 billion. 

Lummis, obviously stung by the defeat of the legislation, hasn’t said much publicly. Her office issued this statement from the senator: “I’m deeply disappointed that we were unable to pass this important, bipartisan-crafted stablecoin legislation. Make no mistake, digital assets are the future and America must lead the way.”

I don’t doubt Lummis’ sincere belief in the bill, but if she wants some version to pass while Republicans control both the House and Senate, she must finally temper her support of every single thing Trump does and realize it was his crypto shenanigans that killed her bill.

Lummis did seem to acknowledge that when the New York Times asked her about Trump’s impact on the legislation. “It does give me pause because it complicates our work here,” she said.

That bipartisan legislation Lummis worked so hard on won’t be restored without major concessions from the GOP that prevent money laundering, improve consumer protections, and keep politicians like Trump from exploiting the law. 

It won’t be easy to rebuild the coalition that formed to support the GENIUS Act, but Lummis now knows there are pro-crypto Democrats out there. Warren remains probably the biggest skeptic, but she obviously has the most clout on the issue within her party.

If Lummis wants to broker a deal that the minority party will accept, she should concentrate on winning over the Massachusetts senator. The bill may be Lummis’ pride and joy, but Warren is the key to it becoming a law.

Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that the bill failed a procedural vote, but is not dead. The name of the Senate Digital Asset Subcommittee has also been corrected. A reference to a past meeting of the committee has been removed because the committee did not meet at that time. The column has also been corrected to better characterize Democratic opposition to the bill, as well as its impacts, along with the margin of the procedural vote. —Ed.