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elizabeth warren
Warren Unveils Framework for Regulating Crypto Industry and Shutting Down Trump's Corruption
"Nobody wants weak crypto rules more than the president of the United States," said the senator.
Jul 09, 2025
As the U.S. House prepares to vote on the latest proposal claiming to regulate the cryptocurrency industry—one that critics say is actually a "cash grab" that will harm consumers—Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Wednesday took the opportunity of a hearing on digital assets to outline her five main priorities for any legislation aimed at regulating crypto.
Along with protecting consumers within the crypto market, she said, Congress must pass legislation that safeguards the country from public officials—including President Donald Trump—who want to personally profit from the burgeoning industry.
Those priorities haven't been addressed, she suggested, in proposals like the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act and the Digital Asset Market Clarity (CLARITY) Act, which lawmakers are expected to vote on in the coming days.
"I'm concerned that what my Republican colleagues are aiming for is another industry handout that gives the crypto lobby exactly its wish list: the blessing of the government's approval, combined with crypto rules that are weaker than the rules every other financial actor must follow," said Warren (D-Mass.).
Any regulatory framework for the crypto industry, in which investors can use real money to purchase virtual or digital assets and trade them on decentralized, unregulated blockchain technology, must include the framework set up by "the securities laws that have served as the bedrock of our capital markets for nearly 100 years," said Warren—but the CLARITY Act includes language that would allow "non-crypto companies to tokenize their assets to evade the SEC's [Security and Exchange Commission] regulations."
"If we're going to provide rules of the road for crypto, we need to shut down this superhighway for presidential corruption at the same time."
"Under the House bill, a publicly traded company like Meta or Tesla could simply decide to put its stock on the blockchain and POOF! it would escape all SEC regulation," said Warren.
Americans for Financial Reform (AFR) also spoke out against the CLARITY Act's provision on Tuesday, saying the bill would "create a race to the bottom and fuel fraud and financial instability."
With the crypto market growing 15-fold over the last five years, with a $3 trillion market capitalization in 2024, risks to "investors, our financial system, and our national security have also sharply increased," Warren warned in the hearing.
She pointed to FBI findings that Americans lost more than $9 billion to fraud in the unregulated crypto market last year—a 66% increase from 2023‚ and a Chainalysis report that hackers from North Korea were able to steal $1.3 billion from crypto platforms in 2024 as well as $1.5 billion earlier this year.
"Crypto investors should have the same protections from getting scammed or cheated as investors in any other asset," said Warren. "For example, there is no reason that the rules prohibiting stock exchanges from simultaneously serving as brokers and giving preferential treatment to their own trades over their customers' can't be applied to the crypto market too."
Warren also called for legislation that ensures instability in the crypto market won't "infect" the larger financial system by guaranteeing that taxpayers are not on the hook for "risky crypto bets," and that includes commonsense rules to protect national security and fight crime within the industry.
The GENIUS Act, which 18 Democrats joined the vast majority of Senate Republicans in passing last month, did not include anti-money laundering rules or sufficiently close sanctions loopholes, said Warren, with Republicans saying the issues could be addressed in a future bill regarding crypto market structure.
"So this is it. No more kicking the can down the road. Now is the time to solve that problem," said Warren.
Finally, Warren said any bill addressing regulations in the crypto market must "shut down the president's crypto corruption" by prohibiting all public officials from issuing, sponsoring, or profiting from crypto tokens.
Warren's comments came weeks after Trump held a dinner with the top 220 investors in his own $TRUMP meme coin and offered a VIP White House tour to the top 25 mostly anonymous investors—an event that progressive organizers said was "corruption embodied."
"Nobody wants weak crypto rules more than the president of the United States," said Warren, noting that $7 billion of Trump's wealth now comes from his own stablecoin and meme coin, a bitcoin mining company, a "huge portfolio of crypto investments," and includes more than $320 million in fees from the $TRUMP coin—even as the majority of investors in the token lost money.
"If we're going to provide rules of the road for crypto, we need to shut down this superhighway for presidential corruption at the same time," said Warren.
Urging Congress to vote against the CLARITY Act this week, AFR also warned that the "massive deregulatory bill" is backed by "a gusher of campaign cash and lobbying muscle from ultrawealthy venture capital firms and crypto billionaires," with Trump set to "gain the most from this giveaway" after making $1.2 billion in crypto just in the past few months."
"CLARITY (along with related crypto bills being considered) is a custom-built framework that gives him and his billionaire allies a green light to manipulate financial markets," said the group, "while working families are left holding the bag."
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When More Hospitals Start Closing, Says Warren, 'Every Single American Needs to Know' Trump's GOP Is to Blame
"When thousands more people die from not getting care, we know who to blame," said Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
Jul 07, 2025
Sen. Elizabeth Warren said Monday that the American public "needs to know" that the blame will lie squarely at the feet of President Donald Trump and Republican lawmakers if and when hospitals across the country are forced to shut their doors due to the unprecedented Medicaid cuts included in the new budget law.
"Every single American needs to know what Donald Trump and Republicans did in the 'Big Beautiful Bill,'" Warren (D-Mass.) wrote on social media, referring to the budget reconciliation package that the president signed late last week.
"When hospitals close their doors, we know who to blame," Warren continued. "When thousands more people die from not getting care, we know who to blame. When kids go hungry, we know who to blame."
The nation's rural hospitals, which rely heavily on Medicaid reimbursements, are expected to bear the brunt of the pain from the Republican law, which includes more than $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts as well as destructive changes to federal nutrition assistance and other programs. Nursing homes, community health centers, Planned Parenthood clinics, and other facilities are also at risk, and states are now scrambling to prevent catastrophe.
An analysis published by the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform prior to passage of the GOP legislation estimated that more than 700 rural hospitals across the U.S. are at risk of closing due to "serious financial problems."
"Republicans will try to ignore the devastation their disastrous reconciliation bill will cause. We won't."
The health policy organization KFF notes that federal Medicaid spending in rural areas is projected to fall by $155 billion under the GOP law over the next decade—an amount that far exceeds the $50 billion that Republicans allocated to a "Rural Health Transformation Program" over the next five years.
Alan Morgan, CEO of the National Rural Health Association, warned in a statement following the Senate's passage of the legislation earlier this month that the bill would "limit access to care for all rural patients by ending healthcare coverage for rural residents nationwide and putting financial strain on rural facilities who care for them."
Already, as Common Dreams reported last week, a healthcare clinic in rural Nebraska has announced it is shutting its doors in part due to the expected impacts of the GOP Medicaid cuts. The closure is predicted to be the first of many.
A recent analysis by the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill warned that more than 330 rural hospitals are at risk of closing or reducing services due to the Trump-GOP assault on Medicaid.
Over the weekend, Trump administration officials defended the budget law in talk show appearances by attempting to downplay its impact on Medicaid and other healthcare programs.
Kevin Hassett, director of the White House National Economic Council, said Sunday that he believes "nobody is gonna lose their insurance"—a claim that dramatically conflicts with the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office's estimate that around 17 million people will lose health coverage under the Trump-GOP law.
"He is only off by 17,000,000," quipped Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.) in response to Hassett's comments.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) wrote over the weekend that "Republicans will try to ignore the devastation their disastrous reconciliation bill will cause."
"We won't," Sanders added. "We're going to make them explain what happens when 16 million lose their healthcare and nursing homes and hospitals are forced to shut down or limit services."
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Sanders Says Paramount Deal With Trump Represents 'Dark Day for Independent Journalism'
"Trump is undermining our democracy and rapidly moving us towards authoritarianism, and the billionaires who care more about their stock portfolios than our democracy are helping him do it," said Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Jul 02, 2025
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders warned Wednesday that Paramount Global's decision to settle President Donald Trump's meritless lawsuit sets "an extremely dangerous precedent" that could further enable authoritarian attacks on press freedom.
"Paramount's decision will only embolden Trump to continue attacking, suing, and intimidating the media, which he has labeled 'the enemy of the people,'" Sanders (I-Vt.) said following news that Paramount agreed to pay $16 million to settle Trump's suit over the media organization's handling of a "60 Minutes" interview with Kamala Harris ahead of the 2024 election.
"It is a dark day for independent journalism and freedom of the press—an essential part of our democracy. It is a victory for a president who is attempting to stifle dissent and undermine American democracy," Sanders continued. "Make no mistake about it. Trump is undermining our democracy and rapidly moving us towards authoritarianism, and the billionaires who care more about their stock portfolios than our democracy are helping him do it."
The senator accused Paramount of caving to Trump to help grease the federal approval process for the company's pending merger with Skydance. As part of the deal, Paramount chair Shari Redstone agreed to sell her family's company, National Amusements—which controls nearly 80% of Paramount voting stock—for $2.4 billion.
"In other words," Sanders said Wednesday, "the Redstone family diminished the freedom of the press today in exchange for a $2.4 billion payday."
It is a dark day for freedom of the press. Paramount’s decision to settle with Trump will only embolden him to continue his attack on the media.
Trump is undermining our democracy and moving us towards authoritarianism, and the billionaires are helping him do it. pic.twitter.com/FwzW74xN0z
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) July 2, 2025
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) joined Sanders in condemning the settlement and called for a "full investigation into whether or not any anti-bribery laws were broken."
"The Trump administration's level of sheer corruption is appalling," said Warren, "and Paramount should be ashamed of putting its profits over independent journalism."
The Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF), a Paramount shareholder that has threatened to sue the company if it settled the Trump suit, said Wednesday that the deal "will be remembered as one of the most shameful capitulations by the press to a president in history."
"Paramount's spineless decision to settle Trump's baseless and patently unconstitutional lawsuit is an insult to the journalists of '60 Minutes' and an invitation to Trump to continue targeting other news outlets," said Seth Stern, FPF's director of advocacy. "Each time a company cowers and surrenders to Trump's demands only emboldens him to do it again."
"But we are not done fighting," Stern said. "We've already filed a shareholder information demand and are sending a second demand today to uncover information about this decision. With that information, we will continue to pursue our legal options to stop this affront to Paramount shareholders, CBS journalists, and the First Amendment. Paramount directors should be held accountable, and we will do all we can to make that happen."
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