In Clarity Act news today, the Senate Banking Committee voted 13-11 on May 14, 2026, to reject the Democratic-sponsored ethics amendment to the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, commonly referred to as the Clarity Act — which would have barred the President, Vice President, and members of Congress from owning or participating in the cryptocurrency business, with the defeated measure being sponsored by Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Sen. Bernie Moreno. (R-OH) led the opposition, arguing that the amendment was procedurally out of order and that its underlying allegations against the Trump family were unproven.
The Clarity Act itself advanced through committee by a vote of 15 to 9, with two Democrats, Sens. Ruben Gallego of Arizona and Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland, joining all 13 Republicans in supporting the underlying bill, even with the conflict-of-interest provision eliminated.
This is not just a procedural defeat of the Democratic amendment in a Republican-controlled committee. It’s a structural gap rooted in what may become the most significant piece of cryptocurrency regulation in U.S. history, a legislative framework that assigns broad new regulatory authority over digital asset markets to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) while containing no mechanism to constrain the financial interests of the officials who wrote and developed that framework and will eventually sign it into law.
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Clarity Act News: The structure of the amendment, what the Van Hollen measure would have done, who would have covered it, and the factual basis for the conflict of interest argument
The mechanism works as follows: The Van Hollen Amendment would have imposed two distinct obligations on the president, vice president, and sitting members of Congress — an explicit prohibition on ownership of or involvement in cryptocurrency companies while in federal office, and a mandatory public disclosure requirement of any existing cryptocurrency holdings or affiliations. The amendment was not formulated as a general measure to modernize ethics; It targeted a specific structural problem that Van Hollen said passing her Clarity Act would exacerbate, which is that officials responsible for creating a federal regulatory perimeter around digital assets may have direct financial interests in the assets being regulated.
The evidence presented by Van Hollen centered on the Trump family’s involvement in the crime Global financial freedomand a DeFi-oriented cryptocurrency project in which members of the Trump family have significant stakes, and on the Trump and Melania meme coins, which Van Hollen claimed generated billions of dollars in profits for the family while ordinary retail investors suffered billions in losses from the same projects.
The Trump meme is one of the most corrupt schemes we have seen from an American president.
Foreign actors use it to buy influence inside the White House, while at home, investors lose billions.
My edit was shutting down this scam. All Republicans voted against it. pic.twitter.com/XnZrYbeRk5
– Senator Chris Van Hollen (@ChrisVanHollen) May 18, 2026
The epistemological status of these numbers warrants attention: Van Hollen’s characterization reflects publicly stated estimates of the Trump family’s cryptocurrency gains, numbers that include reported earnings exceeding $620 million across World Liberty Financial, the memecoin launch, and related projects, but the exact amounts remain disputed, and Moreno explicitly classified the claims as unsubstantiated during the tokenization proceedings.
The vote was 13-11 to reject the amendment strictly along party lines, with every Republican present voting against the measure and every Democrat voting in favor.
A separate Van Hollen amendment imposing direct DeFi AML obligations and developer liability on DeFi protocols was also defeated in the same coding session, an outcome the cryptocurrency industry described as a reprieve, given the industry’s longstanding resistance to imposing banking-style compliance obligations on DeFi infrastructure. The double rejection leaves both the cryptocurrency ethics question and the DeFi AML framework as open legislative questions heading into a vote, the resolution of which, or continued absence, would directly impact the bill’s path to 60 votes.
Republican Opposition: Procedural and Substantive Arguments, and What the Party’s Vote Composition Reveals on the Issue of Conflicts of Interest in Cryptocurrency Regulation
Moreno’s primary objection was procedural: He argued that ethics restrictions on federal officials fell within the purview of the Senate Judiciary Committee, not the Banking Committee, and thus introducing such language while coding the structure of the cryptocurrency market was outside the scope of the law.
This framing allowed Republican members to oppose the amendment on structural grounds without directly engaging with Van Hollen’s substantive claims regarding Trump’s cryptocurrency holdings and the conflict-of-interest dynamics embedded in the current legislative process, an important distinction for how they will likely be litigated in subsequent debates.
image: Chris Van Hollen
We suspect that the decision to anchor Republican opposition on procedural rather than substantive grounds reflects a deliberate strategic calculation: Challenging Van Hollen’s claims about World Liberty Financial and memcoin operations on the basis of their merits would require either directly defending the Trump family’s cryptocurrency dealings or acknowledging the existence of a conflict of interest problem, neither of which serves the Republican conference’s interests in keeping the Clarity Act on a path toward White House signature.
By contrast, a jurisdictional objection allows the vote to be characterized as a matter of committee process rather than a ruling on whether top officials should be allowed to profit from the crypto assets they regulate, a framing that insulates individual Republican members from a politically costly position while maintaining the bill’s momentum.
The strict makeup of the 13-11 party line is itself a data point about how cryptocurrency ethics and the issue of conflicts of interest are tied to partisan bias: No Republican broke ranks to support the disclosure requirement, and no Democrat present voted against it, suggesting that the ethics provision has become a clean partisan fault line rather than a true deliberative question within the committee. This alignment will greatly complicate the calculation of the minimum bill.
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Disclaimer: Coinspeaker is committed to providing unbiased and transparent reporting. This article aims to provide accurate and timely information but should not be considered financial or investment advice. Since market conditions can change rapidly, we encourage you to verify the information yourself and consult with a professional before making any decisions based on this content.
Daniel Francis is a technical writer and Web3 educator specializing in macroeconomics and DeFi mechanics. A crypto native since 2017, Daniel brings his background in cross-chain analytics to author evidence-based reports and detailed guides. It is certified by the Blockchain Council and is dedicated to providing “information gain” that cuts through the market noise to find blockchain’s real-world utility.
