It’s Friday and I’ll keep this short. David Dayen has a great piece out for The American Prospect that highlights that House Democrats stop with the “business as usual” bull shit while my U.S. Senator Alex Padilla (D. CA) was illegally being hauled off when trying to confront Fascist Barbie and Orange Hitler for illegally sending in the National Guard to kidnap innocent people in my city. Dayen also highlights that there’s a way to get U.S. Senate Minority Chuck Schumer (D. NY) and Senate Democrats to actually stop the business as usual. And it involves the pro-crypto bill, The GENIUS Act:
The Senate will have plenty of chances to take the authoritarianism in their midst seriously. In fact, they’ll even have a chance on the GENIUS Act, which even if it’s completed on schedule by next Monday, will likely have to come back to the Senate for a vote.
This morning, the Congressional Progressive Caucus, after a survey of its members, is formally coming out in opposition to the GENIUS Act, which deals with stablecoins, and the CLARITY Act, a market structure bill that passed the relevant House committees last week. The latter bill would downshift oversight of most digital assets to the crypto-friendly Commodity Futures Trading Commission, rather than the Securities and Exchange Commission. As currently drafted, the CPC says the bills “allow the President and his family to enrich themselves, engage in corruption, and sell access to the White House through cryptocurrency.”
House sources expect that those two bills will be combined, or at least sequenced, for votes sometime in this June work period. That means the whole package will have to come back to the Senate, where there aren’t enough Republicans to pass normal legislation on their own. Senate Democrats therefore have a choice: Ignore the pummeling of one of their own colleagues or withhold their votes until this behavior changes.
Unlike Senate Democrats, the Progressive Caucus’s votes aren’t needed to pass crypto legislation. And a similar bill to the CLARITY Act got dozens of Democratic votes last year. But even crypto-friendly Democrats have balked, after significant public pressure, at handing over to Donald Trump the means for crypto self-enrichment. As I wrote earlier this week, Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT), a good bellwether for this thing, said that “Those of us who might be inclined to support this thing so that it can be bipartisan are not going to add our names to something that is associated with the rank corruption that we see out of the White House.”
Padilla being dragged out and assaulted by law enforcement is an excellent reason for Democrats to not continue with business as usual. Obviously, “business as usual” should’ve ended with congressional Democrats the minute Trump stepped back into the White House. But there’s an opportunity here to get the Senate to grind to a halt as Dayen points out. That’s by throwing a wrench in the crypto industry’s plans and we can put pressure on Senate Democrats to oppose this. Yes, it’s true the crypto industry spent a lot of money in last year’s election but if the crypto industry wants congressional approval on anything, they need to mount pressure on Trump with the bull shit he’s doing. We’ve seen Trump cave to big business and Wall Street on tariffs (for now), and Dayen points out that even the bosses of migrant workers might be able to get him to lay off on their employees:
So why not mount pressure on both Senate Democrats and the crypto industry? Plus, Dayen proves that public pressure works more effectively when constituents are calling their representatives on a specific piece of legislation and not just a generic “stand up and fight Trump” message. Speak to them in their language. I for one will be calling both my Senators, Padilla (to also thank him) and Schiff to oppose the GENIUS Act and the CLARITY Act until this illegal raid on Los Angeles is stopped and ICE releases their detainees. Click here to contact your Democratic Senator and remember, keep it focused on the GENIUS Act and CLARITY Act.
