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Four weeks. That’s what Cynthia Lummis has left. The Wyoming senator, who chairs the Senate’s Digital Assets Subcommittee, is racing to get the CLARITY Act to a floor vote before the August recess.
Week One: A Bill Ten Months in the Making
Lummis says her team has worked on this “virtually every day for the last 10 months.” The bill is finally ready. It’ll be introduced within days, she says, kicking off a four week sprint before senators leave Washington again.
“We’re ready for prime time,” she said. Whether the Senate agrees is a different question.
The Ethics Trap Nobody Wants to Walk Into
Here’s the real obstacle: Democrats want Republicans on record either supporting or rejecting ethics rules that would apply directly to President Trump’s crypto holdings. Lummis isn’t sure fifty GOP votes exist for that.
Her position: state attorneys general should never be able to sue a federal official over digital assets. Blind trusts are still on the table as a compromise. But she’s blunt about the tension underneath all of it.
“We can’t just legislate for one person,” she said, pointing out Trump made his crypto fortune before taking office, the same way members of Congress like Nancy Pelosi have long been allowed to trade stocks while serving.
Asked directly if Trump would veto a bill that targeted him specifically, Lummis didn’t dodge. “If it’s targeted towards him, I don’t blame him,” she said.
A Funeral Will Empty the Senate Next Weekend
Add another complication: senators are expected to travel to South Carolina for Lindsey Graham’s funeral next weekend, pulling bodies out of Washington during an already impossible calendar.
Lummis didn’t hide how personal this loss is. She described dinners where Graham would call the president mid-meal, put the phone on speaker, and let the whole table talk policy with the Oval Office. “There’s no one like him. There will never be anyone like him,” she said.
She thinks Graham’s death might actually push her own party to move faster, not slower. “This may be the jarring event that we needed to make us step up to the plate,” she said.
The Math Gets Harder, Not Easier
Beyond ethics and funerals, there’s a quieter fight brewing over Trump filling Democratic seats at the SEC and CFTC, the kind of appointments that give Democrats political cover to support crypto legislation. More delays there make 60 votes harder to find, not easier.
Graham’s successor, his sister, was sworn in the same afternoon as this interview aired. Lummis expects her to back the related SAVE America Act, calling her arrival “a driving force” rather than a disruption.
Where This Leaves Things
A bill that’s taken ten months to draft. A four week window to pass it. An ethics fight neither party wants to lose. A funeral that empties the chamber mid-sprint. And a Senate majority leader who hasn’t yet said which of those four weeks he’ll actually schedule the vote.
Lummis says she expects the week of July 20th. She also says that’s Senator Thune’s call, not hers.