Elizabeth Warren

Mr. President, I come to the Senate floor today to oppose my Republican colleagues' efforts to jam through the Clarity Act. I believe we can get crypto legislation that both Republicans and Democrats can agree on but not this bill.

This bill poses a massive risk to families, to our economy, and to our national security. We need crypto legislation that stops political self-dealing, and I know that many in the crypto industry agree with that. But this bill would turbocharge Donald Trump's unprecedented corruption.

Donald Trump's primary campaign promise was that he would lower prices beginning on day one--his promise, his words. Instead, Trump's tariffs, Trump's forever war halfway around the world, Trump's healthcare cuts, Trump's closing cheaper, clean energy--Trump's policies are boosting the cost of everything. From groceries, to gas, to healthcare, to utilities, they are all going up, up, up.

While Donald Trump is raising costs for working people, Trump is also using the Presidency to make himself richer, and he has added crypto to his ways to cash in. Instead of doubling down on efforts to prosecute crypto scams and to block terrorists and drug traffickers from using crypto, Donald Trump has used his office to promote crypto. He has talked up crypto. He has held crypto contests with the prize being dinner with the President, and he has appointed crypto-friendly regulators.

And the money has just rolled in for him. Shortly before he was sworn in as President the second time, Trump opened his own crypto business, and boy, what a launch that man had. As he talked up crypto, the money just kept rolling in. In 2025 alone, Trump and his family raked in $1.4 billion from their crypto ventures. In fact, Donald Trump made more from crypto last year than any publicly traded crypto company in America. There is no one who has more to gain personally from this bill than the President of the United States.

OK. So Trump won big time on crypto. Who lost? The working people who followed their leader. People who bought into Trump's crypto ventures have lost billions of dollars. For example, the fans who bought Trump's meme coins have lost nearly $4 billion.

Trump just keeps pumping up the crypto industry. He has disbanded the DOJ's Crypto Enforcement Team, he has dropped crypto enforcement actions against companies that donated millions of dollars to his campaign, and he has given multiple Presidential pardons for crypto executives convicted of serious crimes. Trump's corruption is so extensive that he has infected crypto's entire financial regulatory framework.

Now Republicans are not only turning a blind eye to Trump's corruption; now they want to vote today to boost that corruption. Late on Sunday night, the Republicans released new ethics provisions that the Republicans negotiated with the White House. They read exactly like what the most corrupt President in our history would bless--a tiny, little fig leaf that claims it is doing something about corruption but that is carefully written to make sure it will not prevent Donald Trump from making his next $1.4 billion in crypto profits.

First, the new text guarantees that Donald Trump will never ever be held accountable under the law. Why? Because Trump's lapdogs would have the power to shut down any enforcement of the ethics provisions against Donald Trump.

The text says the Attorney General--you know, that is the guy who at his confirmation hearing said, ``I'm [Trump's] lawyer''--not America's lawyer; Trump's lawyer. This is the guy who would decide whether to bring an enforcement action against the President.

The bill would not allow the State attorneys general to bring any enforcement actions against the President. All they could do is try to sue Trump's former personal lawyer, the Attorney General, to do something about it.

Here is the kicker: Nobody thinks the Attorney General is going to bring an action against Donald Trump, but this bill has belt and suspenders built right in to ensure that Donald Trump's moneymaking schemes just keep right on rolling. The bill says that Trump's handpicked cronies at his Office of Government Ethics can wave a magic wand by issuing a legal opinion, and then, as if by magic, Donald Trump would suddenly be protected from any enforcement at all against his next round of crypto corruption. An ethics

restriction that the President himself can have completely waived is not an ethics restriction.

Second, even if these provisions were enforceable, there are massive loopholes in them that would allow Trump to continue juicing his crypto empire. Under the new text, Trump would be allowed to continue making hundreds of millions of dollars from his crypto ventures, including World Liberty Financial and his meme coin. Not only would Trump easily be able to keep or restructure his existing crypto ventures, he would also be able to create new ones--extra corruption. For example, this new text does nothing to stop Donald Trump from becoming the first President in American history to own and regulate his own bank.

Lastly, Trump could just put his holdings in a blind trust in name only while still knowing exactly what assets are there and still in charge of the regulators who can juice the value of Donald Trump's crypto investments.

Trump has already made $1.4 billion in 2025 alone as a crypto wheeler-dealer, and the bill the Republicans want to vote on today would make sure he can just keep raking in the dough.

It is not just the ethics provisions that are terrible; this bill would make it easier for terrorist organizations, for drug cartels, and for rogue states to buy and sell weapons and pay off government officials--all using crypto; easier for terrorists to finance their operations and harder for law enforcement to catch them; easier for scammers to cheat Americans and harder for law enforcement to catch them; easier for Iran and North Korea to evade sanctions and harder for law enforcement to catch them.

This bill would put us all at risk of a crypto-fueled economic crash. The crypto bill has become a Christmas tree with gifts for other high- risk scammers. The bill, for example, would blow a massive hole in our nearly century-old securities laws by allowing and encouraging companies that have nothing to do with crypto to throw their assets on a blockchain to escape the investor protections that apply to traditional securities--you know, like stocks, the stock market. Now, that could drain billions of dollars out of our stock market that families depend on to fund their retirement savings, and it could decimate the guardrails that were put in place after the Great Depression. In fact, unions are opposed to this bill specifically because they see it as putting workers' hard-earned pensions at risk.

Really, you should just ask yourself, what does this have to do with crypto?

Why are we putting provisions in place to blow up protections on the stock market because a handful of crypto bros want it?

This bill would give banks a green light to use America's banking deposits to engage in a brandnew list of risky crypto activities: lending against crypto as collateral, buying crypto directly, trading crypto derivatives, operating blockchain notes, selling crypto software. The list goes on and on.

Think about how the price of crypto shot up and down and up and down, in just the last couple of years alone, and then imagine what happens when the biggest banks in America use the money in your savings account to load up on that kind of crypto.

The bill also blocks States and Tribal nations from enforcing their own laws on the books to protect their citizens from getting scammed. The president of the Indian Gaming Association calls this bill ``the greatest threat to Tribal sovereignty in a generation.''

This is not what the American people want. They want Congress to do something about the affordability crisis. They want an end to Trump's war in Iran. They want their elected leaders to step up and regulate

Mr. President, tomorrow, the Senate will vote on a crypto bill that poses massive risks to our families, to our national security, and to our economy. And if that is not bad enough, while Americans across this country suffer from an affordability crisis, this bill will turbocharge President Donald Trump's ability to rake in billions and billions of dollars from crypto.

Late last night, we got the details of President Trump and the Republicans' final offer on ethics on this bill, and it reads exactly like what you would expect the most corrupt President in our history to bless: a weak fig leaf that will do nothing to stop him from making his next $1.4 billion in crypto profits.

First, it makes sure that the law could never be enforced against Donald Trump because it gives his political appointees the power to turn off enforcement of all of these ethics provisions.

Second, it contains major loopholes designed to allow President Trump to keep earning billions of dollars from his crypto business, including World Liberty Financial and his new bank. Yeah, you heard that right.

On August 14, World Liberty Trust Company received preliminary approval for a Federal banking charter. Donald Trump and his family own 38.25 percent of the bank. An investment fund backed by the UAE's National Security Advisor and brother of the UAE's President reportedly owns 49 percent of the bank. The bank charter was conditionally granted by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, a Federal banking Agency controlled by--wait for it--Donald Trump.

Donald Trump is now the first President in American history to own and oversee his very own bank. It may be the most brazen act of self- dealing that our financial system has ever seen. The bank can serve as the financial hub of the President's web of corruption. With a bank charter, World Liberty will be able to operate nationwide, offer families and businesses financial products and services, and enjoy the credibility that comes with having the Federal Government's stamp of approval.

The bank's primary product is the USD1 stablecoin, which is currently issued by a third party bank partner under a licensing agreement with World Liberty. The stablecoin arrangement earned President Trump $200 million last year. You know, that is a big chunk of the $1.4 billion that he earned from his various crypto ventures just in 2025 alone.

USD1 is already the fifth largest stablecoin in the entire world, and now, with the Federal banking charter, World Liberty can issue the stablecoin directly without a separately regulated bank partner. The charter could supercharge the growth of USD1, increase its interconnectedness with the U.S. financial system, and, as a result, drive even greater profits for President Trump and his family.

Donald Trump's bank is a new vehicle for billionaires, corporations, and

foreign countries to bribe him. These entities could cut Trump into everyday transactions and business deals by making payments using USD1 instead of, you know, traditional checks or debit cards or wire transfers. Trump could charge transaction fees, similar to Visa and MasterCard, and generate interest on the cash deposited with World Liberty in exchange for the USD1 stablecoin, similar to the business model of a traditional bank.

Look, this is not hypothetical. We already saw this play out last year in a trial run before World Liberty actually got its bank charter. MGX, which is a UAE state-owned investment fund, made a $2 billion investment in the crypto exchange Binance. Instead of using fiat currency--ordinary money like the U.S. dollar--to purchase stock in Binance, MGX paid Binance using USD1, cutting Trump in on the deal.

Coincidentally, President Trump pardoned the founder of Binance, who had pleaded guilty to failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering program. Trump has also provided an array of foreign policy favors to the UAE, including giving the UAE a special exemption from U.S. export controls and approving the sales of advanced AI chips to UAE companies despite repeated warnings from our own national security officials that the technology could be diverted to China. So now, with Trump's Federal bank charter, we could just see more of the same thing.

Even setting aside the clear conflict of interest and the corruption, World Liberty's charter application would have been flatly denied under any previous administration, Republican or Democrat, due to its national security risks, anti-money laundering vulnerabilities, and lack of competent management.

So consider this: A foreign intelligence official backed a minority investment in the entity behind Trump's bank. Companies affiliated with the bank--Trump's bank--reportedly sold millions of dollars' worth of tokens to buyers that conducted business with North Korean state- sponsored hackers, with sanctioned Russian money laundering entities, and with other illicit actors; partnered with a venture whose main project was led by individuals sanctioned by the U.S. Government; and accepted $100 million from a businessman reportedly under investigation for money laundering by the United Kingdom. That is who Trump is in bed with in order to do this banking deal.

Most of the executives in charge of Trump's bank have little or no experience in banking. The bank's founder and proposed president, Zachary Witkoff, also happens to be the son of President Trump's Middle East Envoy Steve Witkoff, and he has never worked before in a senior banking role.

One of the bank's board members was the chairman and CEO of an accounting company that was subject to multiple SEC and PCAOB enforcement actions, including for ``systematic quality control failures and violations of audit standards.''

In other words, there is one person here who has some experience, and that is the person who has already been called out for systematic quality control failures and violations of audit standards.

Then there is the chief compliance officer of Trump's bank, who previously served as the chief compliance officer of a large crypto platform that blew up in 2022 called Voyager Digital. The platform faced multiple enforcement actions from State and Federal regulators for compliance failures, including luring customers to store their money on the platform by falsely claiming that the money would be FDIC insured.

So that is who Donald Trump has pulled together. But Donald Trump owns the bank, and he controls the Federal banking Agency that is responsible for approving the charter of that bank, and the application miraculously was approved.

Now it is on to Congress to step in and terminate this corrupt bank charter, and that is exactly what the Ending Presidential Corruption in Banking Act would do. The bill would prohibit Federal banking Agencies from approving various types of banking applications when the applicant is owned or controlled by a range of senior government officials. It would also require the termination of any such charters or applications that have been granted since January 20, 2025, which includes World Liberty's national bank charter.

Look, this is just common sense. It is the least that Congress could do to start unwinding President Trump's web of corruption.

Now, unfortunately, my Republican colleagues want to move in exactly the opposite direction. They seem intent on furthering President Trump's corruption. Look no further than the Senate's first order of business after the August recess. Here we are. We have been away for weeks. We come back, and what do the Republicans in the Senate put on the floor for us to work on? Is it a bill to make life more affordable for American families? No, not that. Is it a bill to end Donald Trump's dangerous war in Iran? Oh, not that. Is it a bill that would juice the value of President Trump's crypto empire and reward the crypto billionaires who have facilitated his corruption? Bing, bing, bing-- that is what the Republicans put on the floor. As if the latest glaring loopholes in the ethics provision weren't enough, it doesn't even apply to Donald Trump's new bank.

So here is the deal: Instead of further enriching the President, maybe Congress should curb this corruption--just clean up a little bit here--and let's start by passing my bill, the Ending Presidential Corruption in Banking Act. Let's make sure that we do not pass a crypto bill that will let Donald Trump continue to rake in billions of dollars in crypto profits while working families across this country struggle to deal with higher prices and an economy that gets worse by the day.

Mr. President, as if in legislative session and notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. 5389, introduced earlier today; that the bill be considered read a third time and passed; and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. President, I just know there were some words I didn't hear in the objection. I never heard anything about the $1.4 billion in profits that Donald Trump made in his first year of crypto activities, and I never heard any words about the fact that Donald Trump now is the first person in American history to both regulate the bank and own his own bank. I didn't hear anything about that, and that is what this bill is all about.

It is about the corruption and the opportunity for Donald Trump to be able to run his own bank; to do it with partners who are, at best, shall we say, ethically compromised; and to be able to invite in whoever wants to come and leave whatever kinds of wealth behind for Donald Trump to be able to gobble up.

You know, I understand it is hard to stand up to a man like Donald Trump, but at some point, the folks in this Congress over on the Republican side are going to have to grow a backbone. The American people know corruption when they see it, and this is corruption. What Donald Trump is doing with cryptocoins and now with his own bank to be able to supercharge his crypto wealth and to do it at a time when the people who followed Donald Trump lost $4 billion in their Donald Trump investments--this is a President who is all about enriching himself and not about serving the American people.

The least we could do--the least we could do--in the U.S. Senate is say: The guy who is in charge of the regulations, who runs the whole country--he tells us how powerful he is--and the guy who can actually say to the bank regulators--and does--``back off or move forward'' should not have his own bank to enrich himself and to pump up his crypto ownings.

I get it--the Senator is here to object--but what she doesn't talk about is the Trump corruption that is on the front page of every paper that is talked about and in news stories. People see it; it is documented; and the American people, I think, are just damned sick of it.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I rise today in support of the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act. We are closer than ever to passing the biggest housing bill since 1990, when the average price of a home in America sold for $150,000. Today, 36 years later, the average home is selling for over $500,000.

The American dream of home ownership is now out of reach for millions of families. The median age of a first-time home buyer is now at an alltime high, and it is no secret why this has happened. Our Nation has a shortage of millions of homes.

And our housing crisis doesn't just affect the opportunity to buy a home. Americans can't afford to rent either. More than a million evictions were filed just last year, and, meanwhile, private equity has swooped in to outbid families for homes and then turn around and jack up the rent on tenants.

Congress has been sitting on its hands for decades as multiple generations of Americans have seen their dreams of home ownership slip out of reach, while Wall Street rakes in the profits.

It is no wonder that, when you ask Americans why they don't like politics or why they don't trust Congress, they will often say something like: It just all feels like it is rigged.

Yes, the system is broken, and I have been ringing the alarm bell about this for years. But, today, Congress is taking a big step toward fixing it.

The bill we are passing today sends a clear message to every American struggling to find a place they can afford. Elected leaders understand the problem and are actually doing something to try to solve it.

This bill acknowledges that outdated regulations and rules have gotten in the way of building more housing and building it fast. It represents an overwhelming bipartisan consensus that we

should use the power of the Federal Government to encourage communities to build more housing and to repair the housing we already have. For the first time ever, this bill will stop private equity from buying up single-family homes. Wow.

You know, I have been speaking up for years about how private equity has come in and just taken over industry after industry after industry, stripping it for parts and running those businesses into the ground. Congress has never before held private equity accountable for anything. Today, that changes. No longer will private equity firms come in with an all-cash offer to snap up a house while a family loses out on their dream.

Today's vote proves that it is possible to find bipartisan common ground on legislation that actually helps the American people. Importantly, it proves that bipartisan legislation doesn't have to be the weakest, most milquetoast agreement that doesn't offend anyone or do too much to help anyone either. It proves that we can legislate by taking really good ideas from every member of the Banking Committee-- Democrats and Republicans--from across the Senate, from across the House, from mayors and local governments, from housing experts and advocates, and instead of just beating each other down to strip out anything that anybody in that group doesn't like, we add in even more good ideas until we have the biggest housing bill in more than 30 years.

I don't say this a lot, but today, I am proud to be a Member of the U.S. Senate. Today, we are doing something that will make a real difference in people's lives.

I am grateful to the chairman of the Banking Committee, who led us in this effort and who kept us on task at all times. If it would help families, he said he was for it, and he helped make that happen. I am grateful for that.

You know, I just want us all to remember that this housing bill is big, but our housing prices are even bigger. We have more work to do, and I hope that today's vote is only the first of many votes to follow to continue our efforts to lower the cost of housing all across America. Let's get this done.

I yield the floor.