The Latest from the Prospect ??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

??

View this email in your browser [link removed]

**MAY 16, 2025**

On the Prospect website

Broken China [link removed]
Trump's
China policy is a chaotic mess that harms the U.S. far more than it harms the Chinese. BY ROBERT KUTTNER

Corporate Landlords Show Racist Eviction Patterns [link removed]
A new study reveals that large national landlords in Los Angeles are disproportionately evicting Black tenants. BY MICHAEL FRIEDRICH

Is Trump Bad for Nurses? [link removed]
In their third walkout, New Orleans nurses face a drawn-out contract fight. Observers say the president's policies aren't helping. BY JESSE BAUM

Cooper on TAP

****

****

****

****

****

****

****

****

**Senate Democrats Poised to Enable Trump's Crypto Corruption**

They would also massively destabilize the financial system.

As my colleague David Dayen has been covering here
[link removed] at the

**Prospect**, the cryptocurrency "industry" is in the midst of a major lobbying push to get pro-crypto legislation through Congress. The sticking point is the Senate, where to get around the filibuster's 60-vote requirement, at least seven Democratic votes would be needed, assuming every Republican supports it.

That support seemed to be forthcoming, until Donald Trump started using crypto for some of his habitual mind-boggling corruption. Just before taking office, he launched a meme coin and then immediately rug-pulled buyers to the tune of $350 million [link removed]; he then promised that the biggest $TRUMP bag-holders would get a dinner
[link removed] at the White House. Then Trump launched his own stablecoin, USD1 (that is, a crypto token whose value is supposedly pegged to the dollar), and in May, an Abu Dhabi investment fund announced that it would use that coin [link removed] to facilitate a $2 billion purchase of the crypto exchange Binance. That was too much for these Democratic senators to stomach.

But not for long. Semafor reports [link removed] that pro-crypto Democrats-that is, the ones who collected millions [link removed] in crypto campaign contributions-have gotten a
few token concessions, but nothing whatsoever that would stop Trump's corruption spree, and this is likely enough to get it through. Sources familiar with negotiations have confirmed to the

**Prospect** that a vote is planned for next week and, as things stand, it will probably pass.

It's important to remember that crypto has not ever demonstrated any legitimate business use case at scale. Overwhelmingly, it is used for pure financial speculation and crime-both scams internal to the system like rug pulls [link removed], pump-and-dumps [link removed], and wash trading [link removed]; also good old-fashioned robbery and/or money laundering by drug cartels
[link removed], human traffickers [link removed], or North Korea [link removed]. For any real business, crypto is worse than normal money in every way: less stable, less secure, and orders of magnitude more risky and expensive to use [link removed]. Even several crypto-affiliated businesses that theoretically should have worked, like trading platforms making fees off crypto gamblers selling magic beans to each other, have turned out to be
[link removed] riddled with fraud [link removed] and collapsed [link removed].

[link removed]

It follows that this crypto bill is just about the worst of all worlds. As Democratic staffers at the Senate Banking Committee point out [link removed], the regulatory protections are all but meaningless. The bill says that Consumer Financial Protection Bureau protections exist, but doesn't explicitly grant it authority over the industry, or note
that Trump has torn the guts out of the agency [link removed] and is attempting to shut it down entirely. It says that stablecoins can't have misleading names that suggest they are backed by the government, but carves out "USD," which is what Trump's and most of the big ones are called.

Worse, it effectively blows a giant hole in U.S. criminal law. Not only would stablecoins issued by foreign companies outside of American regulations be allowed to circulate on U.S. exchanges under this bill, but they could do so "even if issued by offshore companies that refuse to comply with U.S. court orders to stop terrorist financing and money laundering."

In addition to allowing Trump to collect as many payments from foreign governments as they care to provide-a flagrant violation
[link removed] of the Constitution, by the way-and opening up a big juicy opportunity for drug dealers and terrorists the world over, this bill would further enable crypto to intertwine itself with the financial system. Wall Street firms are already getting into [link removed] crypto "products," and as the Senate staffers point out [link removed], an independent analysis suggests [link removed] that this bill would cause the stablecoin market to inflate by up to ten times, to $2 trillion. When crypto suffers another galloping financial crisis, as it
did in 2022, I'd bet that this time enough Wall Street banks and Silicon Valley firms will be at risk that they'll get a 2008-style bailout with taxpayer money-the last and biggest scam of them all.

~ RYAN COOPER

[link removed]**Follow Ryan Cooper on Twitter** [link removed] [link removed] or Bluesky Social [link removed]

[link removed]

To receive this newsletter directly in your inbox, click here to subscribe.??
[link removed]

Click to Share this Newsletter

[link removed]

??

[link removed]

??

[link removed]

??

[link removed]

??

[link removed]

The American Prospect, Inc., 1225 I Street NW, Suite 600, Washington, DC xxxxxx, United States
Copyright (c) 2025 The American Prospect. All rights reserved.

To opt out of American Prospect membership messaging,
click here [link removed].

To manage your newsletter preferences, click here [link removed].

To unsubscribe from all American Prospect emails, including newsletters, click here [link removed].