Trump Accepts Stricter Ethics Rules Ahead of Clarity Act's Make-or-Break Senate Vote

US President Donald Trump has agreed to stricter ethics provisions in the Clarity Act, the market-structure bill that would create a federal framework for regulating digital assets, clearing a key obstacle ahead of the Senate's cloture vote scheduled for 2:15 p.m. ET on September 15, according to the Associated Press.

The revised language would bar the president, his spouse and federal judges from issuing digital assets, closing off the kind of meme-coin launches Trump has pursued in the past. It would also require the president to place any crypto holdings into a blind trust or divest once they cross certain thresholds, and it would grant state attorneys general enforcement authority alongside the Department of Justice. Trump had resisted the state-enforcement provision, arguing it risked political weaponization, but a senior GOP aide told the AP he ultimately accepted roughly 80% of the stricter proposal put forward by Senators Ruben Gallego and Thom Tillis. Republican Senators Cynthia Lummis and John Moreno said Trump gave surprisingly little pushback on the changes during a mid-July White House meeting.

Lummis has framed opposition to the bill in personal terms, saying a vote against the Clarity Act isn't a principled stand against President Trump. Maryland Senator Angela Alsobrooks, one of the Democrats pushing for stronger enforcement powers, said state attorneys general need the ability to prosecute if the Justice Department declines to.

The concessions do not guarantee passage. Republicans hold 53 Senate seats and need at least seven Democratic votes to clear the 60-vote threshold. Prediction markets remain skeptical: contracts tracked by DeFi Rate's Clarity Act fact sheet put the odds of the specific bill passing at around 25%, even as a separate market gives 94-96% odds that a vote happens at all before October 1.

Bitcoin traded at $77,666 as of Tuesday, down 2.7% over the past week, per CoinGecko, suggesting the market has priced in most of the uncertainty around the vote rather than reacting sharply to the ethics concessions specifically. A successful cloture vote would move the bill to floor debate and amendments; a failure would leave the Clarity Act's prospects for 2026 passage in doubt, with Gallego having separately warned that a rushed floor vote could fracture the bipartisan coalition needed to pass it.