CLARITY Act Senate Vote: The Police Union Switched Sides and the Seven Votes Did Not Move

Lobbying campaigns spend their energy on the objections that argument can reach. The campaign behind the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act spent 22 to 26 July doing precisely that, and the arithmetic on the Senate floor did not change.

The largest organisation of sworn police officers in the United States withdrew its opposition, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs came out in favour, and both Charles Schwab and Fidelity called for passage, while a CLARITY Act Senate vote still rests on seven Democratic senators who say the text falls short. Their objection concerns the conduct of public officials rather than the regulation of digital assets.

What the merged text changed

Senator Cynthia Lummis released updated text on 22 July, combining the work products of the Senate Banking and Agriculture Committees into a single bill. It carries the ethics section negotiated with the White House, barring covered federal officials and their families from issuing or sponsoring digital assets for consideration while they serve, with enforcement assigned to the Department of Justice and an expiry written into the statute at the start of the next presidential term. That expiry is the detail we examined when the sunset language first circulated. The bill remains H.R. 3633, sitting on the Senate Legislative Calendar as Calendar No. 423 since 1 June, which means leadership can call it up without a further committee step.

Section 604 of the text incorporates the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act, introduced separately by Lummis and Ron Wyden in January. It excludes non-custodial blockchain software developers from the money transmitting definitions in federal law and from the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) obligations written for financial intermediaries. The test is control over user assets rather than authorship of the software, a distinction we set out when criminal liability for code first became the sticking point in committee. Decentralised finance firms have treated that section as their priority throughout the negotiation, and CoinDesk reported on 9 July that Wyden had written to Senate leadership supporting the way the earlier text handled it.

The seven senators who decide it

Catherine Cortez Masto, Angela Alsobrooks, Cory Booker, Ruben Gallego, John Hickenlooper, Mark Warner and Raphael Warnock issued a joint statement hours after the text appeared. They said the Republican-proposed version falls short and that ethics for elected officials, consumer protection, illicit finance, conflicts of interest and market integrity all require strengthening, while committing to keep working with Republican colleagues towards passage. Alsobrooks and Gallego were the only Democrats to advance the bill through the committee vote in May, and both said at the time that a committee vote carried no floor commitment.

Elizabeth Warren, ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee, went further in a separate statement, and her minority staff published an analysis of the new ethics language. The substance of the Democratic position concerns who enforces the provision rather than what it prohibits, since the Department of Justice is named as the sole enforcer and state attorneys general have no role. That is the structural gap present when the bill first stalled, and it has survived every redraft since. Reporting on the president's most recent financial disclosure put his crypto-related income for 2025 at roughly $1.4 billion, which is the figure the enforcement argument is built around.

What arrived in support

David Solomon of Goldman Sachs said in comments to Politico on 22 July that he supports moving the bill forward, a position that separates him from the opposition voiced by JPMorgan. Charles Schwab, which reported total client assets of $13.08 trillion at the end of June and launched retail bitcoin and ether trading during the same quarter, described the bill as a fundamental catalyst that needs to pass, in comments reported on 24 July. Fidelity issued a statement the same day calling for Senate passage on the grounds that clear rules support investor confidence. The banking trade groups have not moved, and their warning still centres on the treatment of yield and what crypto rewards programmes would do to local lending.

The National Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) wrote to Chairman Tim Scott and Ranking Member Warren on 24 July. National President Patrick Yoes said the organisation's initial concerns had been satisfactorily addressed and that it now looked to work towards passage of the amended bill. Reporting on the letter attributes the reversal to revised language connected to the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act, the provision Democrats have separately described as an illicit finance gap. The timing matters because Warner had tied his own floor vote to law enforcement sign-off.

The Crypto Council for Innovation, the Blockchain Association and The Digital Chamber sent a joint letter to Thune and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on the same day. The three chief executives asked leadership to prioritise floor consideration so the process could move forward, and stated in the same paragraph that bipartisan negotiations remain underway. Their ask is floor consideration rather than passage. The letter cites the National Cryptocurrency Association's 2026 holder research at nearly 67 million American owners of digital assets, and a footnote records that 88% of global crypto trading volume in 2025 occurred on non-US exchanges, with 19% of crypto developers based in the country.

What the bill would do for the people holding the assets

The associations' own summary of the legislation is narrower than the political argument around it. Digital commodity intermediaries would be required to segregate and safeguard customer assets, hold them with a qualified digital asset custodian, maintain minimum financial resources, and disclose risks specific to each asset and its underlying network. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), whose statutory authority over digital commodity spot markets is limited today, would receive explicit oversight of that market. For financial technology companies building retail products on digital assets, the operational content of the bill sits in custody and disclosure rather than in jurisdiction.

None of it arrives on the day of enactment. Agencies write the rules first, and the GENIUS Act offers a measurable precedent for how long that takes once a statute is signed. The custody protections Lummis has spent the month describing, examined in our piece on what happens to customer assets when a platform fails, would apply to failures occurring after implementation rather than to any that came before.

The calendar is the only lever left

Thune told reporters on 23 July that he does not expect the Senate to pass the bill before the August recess, adding that he would like to at least get it started. White House digital assets adviser Patrick Witt said publicly that he remains more optimistic and sees a path in the Senate's final days. The chamber's last session day before the break is 7 August, and floor time this week competes with a Russia sanctions package, nominations, and memorial services for Senator Lindsey Graham, who died on 11 July and whose funeral senators were expected to attend.

CoinDesk reported on 26 July that a motion to proceed is expected on 27 or 28 July, that the motion ripens for a cloture vote an hour into the second day after it is filed, and that negotiators would need an ethics agreement by 30 July for the sequence to finish before recess. Two cloture votes are involved, one on proceeding and one on the substitute text, each requiring 60 votes. Individuals following the process told CoinDesk that a motion filed by 29 July would still leave the chamber enough time. Fortune reported Polymarket pricing 2026 enactment near 37% on 24 July, within the range we tracked when the odds moved twice in June.

Law enforcement withdrew its objection to the CLARITY Act in writing, and the seven votes did not move. What stands between the bill and the floor is a question about the president's crypto income, and no endorsement reaches it.

Editor's note

Every piece goes through careful verification, but mistakes can happen. Readers who spot an error or have additional information can write to rosalia@thebrightminded.com.