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cryptocurrency
'Harmful to American Workers': Warren, Sanders Lead Charge Against Trump Crypto Scheme for 401Ks
“This would strip long-held investor protections from retirement savers and encourage the use of more risky, complex, and expensive investments."
Jun 02, 2026
Two progressive US senators are leading the charge against a new Trump administration scheme that would allow Americans' retirement funds to invest in cryptocurrencies.
As reported by The Guardian on Tuesday, Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), along with Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.), sent a letter to the US Department of Labor (DOL) warning against enacting a proposed rule change that would allow 401(k) investments to include crypto.
Cryptocurrencies have long proven to be volatile assets that have been involved in multiple fraud schemes, which the FBI estimates cost Americans more than $20 billion in 2025 alone.
“This would strip long-held investor protections from retirement savers and encourage the use of more risky, complex, and expensive investments,” states the letter. “The proposed rule is harmful to American workers.”
Offering an example of the dangers of investing in crypto, the letter cites President Donald Trump's personal meme coin, whose value has cratered since its peak in January 2025.
The push to let 401(k)s invest in crypto has also drawn criticism from Americans for Financial Reform (AFR), which on Monday released a white paper outlining how the plan would put Americans' retirement savings at risk while also serving as a boon to the private equity industry.
Oscar Valdés Viera, senior policy analyst for private equity and capital markets at AFR, accused the DOL of handing over US retirement savings to "the worst Wall Street predators and crypto scammers."
"This proposal would use 401(k)s to bail out a struggling industry and advance the administration’s push to embed crypto deeper into the financial system," Valdés Viera explained. "Driving workers into the arms of private equity firms and crypto insiders would let the president’s Wall Street and crypto cronies pocket billions at the expense of families’ retirement security."
Democracy Defenders Fund (DDF) last week noted that Trump and his family, who have major ties to the cryptocurrency industry, would stand to personally profit from the DOL's proposed rule change.
"President Trump stands to benefit if ordinary people can use their employer-sponsored retirement plans to invest in crypto," said Virginia Canter, chief counsel and director of ethics and anti-corruption at DDF. "The administration claims the proposed rule would 'relieve regulatory burdens,' but it looks more like self-dealing."
In addition to allowing 401(k)s to invest in cryptocurrencies, the proposed DOL rule change would also allow them to invest in private credit assets, which are typically loans negotiated with non-bank lenders.
Benjamin Schiffrin, director of securities policy for Better Markets, said on Tuesday that letting 401(k)s invest in these assets would be a similarly risky bet to letting them invest in crypto.
"This is exactly the wrong approach at the wrong time," said Schiffrin. "There could hardly be a proposal more dangerous to Americans’ retirement security. Investors already in private credit are currently running for the exits. DOL’s proposal means that one day millions of Americans with 401(k)s may have to do the same."
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Crypto, AI Industries Setting Up ‘Pop-Up Super PACs’ to Defeat Big Tech Critics in Dem Primaries
The goal of these political action committees, explained one journalist, is to make sure voters “never find out who is funding ads before a campaign happens.”
May 22, 2026
Corporate interests are meddling in Democratic primaries by setting up what are being described as "pop-up super PACs" aimed at taking down candidates who are critical of Big Tech.
During a Friday episode of The Intercept Briefing podcast, political reporter Matt Sledge outlined how US campaign finance law allows for moneyed interests to swoop into political campaigns at the last minute and flood the airwaves with misleading ads about progressive candidates.
Specifically, Sledge said that Big Tech-affiliated groups have figured out how to "game campaign finance deadlines and create super PACs, or political action committees, to funnel money to other super PACs so that reporting deadlines are missed."
As a result, said Sledge, these “pop-up super PACs" can bombard voters with last-minute propaganda in the closing days of campaigns—and voters will "never find out who is funding ads before a campaign happens."
"Some of these newer industries that are getting in on the campaign spending game, like crypto and artificial intelligence, are also setting up entire networks of super PACs," Sledge added, "sometimes a mama or a papa super PAC, and then a Democratic-affiliated super PAC and a Republican-affiliated super PAC so that both donors can channel their money to one party affiliate and to make it a little harder for voters to track where all the money is coming from."
A Thursday report from Politico documented how a mysterious super PAC called Lead Left has been been spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to benefit Maureen Galindo, a Democratic candidate for US Congress in Texas who has been broadly condemned for comments about transforming a local immigration detention facility into a "prison for American Zionists."
Democrats have accused GOP-backed interests of funding Lead Left, which they say is misleadingly posing as a progressive organization, to boost the prospects of fringe candidates such as Galindo.
In a video posted to social media on Friday, House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) noted that members of his caucus from across the ideological spectrum had condemned Galindo, and said that "Republicans must immediately stop boosting her candidacy."
"This candidate is being propped up by a Republican shadowy super PAC to elevate her in the primary," Jeffries said, "because they know she'll be an incredibly weak general election candidate."
People of goodwill have forcefully rejected the antisemitic and anti-American candidate in the TX-35 run-off.
Republicans must immediately stop boosting her candidacy. pic.twitter.com/CUFhqvEdLQ
— Hakeem Jeffries (@hakeemjeffries) May 22, 2026
According to Politico, such operations have been occurring throughout the country.
"Shady PACs have become a staple of the cycle, and modern campaigns generally," Politico reported. "In two House special elections last year in Virginia and Arizona, pop-up PACs spent on ads and avoided having to disclose who was behind them until after primary contests were complete. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee has used shell PACs to shield its involvement in some races this year. Another group, Real Change PAC, started spending in New Jersey’s 7th District on Wednesday."
Last week, the Campaign Legal Center filed a complaint with the Federal Elections Commission, accusing Lead Left of both "strategically gaming federal reporting deadlines to avoid disclosing the sources of its election spending," while also violating "federal campaign finance laws requiring full transparency about the recipients of that spending" in a scheme to conceal "crucial information about how it is spending its money."
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Warren Warns Bipartisan Bill Would 'Turbocharge Donald Trump's Crypto Corruption'
"In just one year in office, the president and his family have raked in at least $1.4 billion in gains from crypto deals alone, and yet this bill stunningly includes zero provisions to prevent that."
May 12, 2026
US Sen. Elizabeth Warren warned Monday that bipartisan cryptocurrency legislation set to come before a key committee later this week would do nothing to rein in brazen profiteering by President Donald Trump and his family.
“This bill puts investors, our national security, and our entire financial system at risk—and it will turbocharge Donald Trump’s crypto corruption," Warren (D-Mass.), the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, said following the release of legislative text for the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act. "In just one year in office, the president and his family have raked in at least $1.4 billion in gains from crypto deals alone, and yet this bill stunningly includes zero provisions to prevent that."
"The American people are watching," Warren added. "No member of the committee should support a bill that fails to stop the massive conflict of interests posed by Donald Trump and his family’s crypto ventures."
The Trump family's foray into digital assets and creation of what one outlet called a "global crypto cash machine" is largely responsible for the explosion of the president's net worth since the start of his second White House term. "In one form or another, crypto accounted for $3.02 billion of the president’s profits from August 2025 to January 2026," MS NOW reported earlier this month.
Warren and other Senate Democrats are pushing for the inclusion of ethics language that would limit government officials' ability to profit off digital assets, but a closed-door meeting on Tuesday ended without an agreement. Senators on the Banking Committee are set to meet Thursday to mark up the crypto measure, which supporters have billed as "comprehensive market structure legislation that establishes a clear regulatory framework for digital assets."
"This bill is the product of more than ten months of bipartisan negotiations and extensive engagement with regulators, law enforcement, academics, and industry," the Senate Banking Committee's Republican majority said in a statement Tuesday.
Last week, the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen demanded in a letter to members of the banking panel that the bill "include prohibitions on federally elected officials, including the president, from engaging in any cryptocurrency venture." The group called on lawmakers to insert a ban on "any form of crypto issuance, ownership, sponsorship, promotion, endorsement, and/or profiteering by a federally elected official" and a divestiture requirement for officials with existing crypto holdings.
Public Citizen also urged lawmakers to "penalize crypto quid pro quo" by requiring fines or prison time for "any federally elected official, including the president, who, directly or indirectly, corruptly demands, seeks, receives, accepts, or agrees to receive or accept anything of value personally, including crypto-related transactions."
"President Trump’s expansive ventures into crypto already violate several existing laws," Public Citizen said. "Approving a bill that fails to confront these violations would explicitly declare that lawmakers countenance such infractions."
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