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LeMonde
16 minutes ago
- LeMonde
US House passes landmark crypto measures in win for Trump
The US House of Representatives on Thursday, July 17, passed three landmark cryptocurrency bills, fulfilling the Trump administration's commitment to the once-controversial industry. Lawmakers easily approved the CLARITY Act, which aims to establish a clearer regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies and other digital assets. The bill is designed to clarify industry rules and divide regulatory authority between the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). It will now advance to the Senate, where Republicans hold a slim majority. House legislators also readily passed the GENIUS Act, which codifies the use of stablecoins – cryptocurrencies pegged to stable assets like the US dollar or US bonds. This bill is expected to go directly to President Trump for his signature to become law. The Senate passed the GENIUS Act last month, and it sets requirements such as mandating that issuers hold reserves of assets equal in value to their outstanding cryptocurrency. "This historic legislation will bring our payment system into the 21st century. It will ensure the dominance of the US dollar. It will increase demand for US Treasuries," said Senator Bill Hagerty, the measure's sponsor in the Senate. This wave of legislation follows years of skepticism towards crypto, driven by the belief that the sector, born from bitcoin's success, should be tightly controlled and kept separate from mainstream investors. However, after crypto investors contributed millions of dollars to his presidential campaign last year, Trump reversed his previous doubts about the industry. He even launched a Trump meme coin and other ventures as he prepared for his return to the White House and hosted a gala dinner for the coin's top buyers once he was in office. And according to the Financial Times, Trump is now preparing to open the $9 trillion US retirement market to cryptocurrency investments as well as gold, and private equity. 'Clear rules of the road' Notably, both the CLARITY Act and the GENIUS Act garnered significant bipartisan support, with Democrats also having seen an increase in lobbying and contributions from the crypto industry. "It's critically important we bring more certainty to the marketplace with clear rules of the road," said congressman Josh Gottheimer, a Democrat who supported the bills. Since taking office, Trump has made several moves to support the crypto sector, including appointing crypto advocate Paul Atkins to lead the SEC. He also established a federal "Strategic Bitcoin Reserve" to audit the government's bitcoin holdings, primarily accumulated through law enforcement's judicial seizures. Forbes magazine estimates that the president's foray into the crypto business has doubled his wealth to $5.3 billion in just one year. In a largely partisan vote, the Republican-led House also passed the Anti-CBDC Surveillance State Act. It aims to block the issuance of a central bank digital currency (CBDC) – a digital dollar issued by the US Federal Reserve – even if there currently are no plans for such an endeavor. Republicans argue that a CBDC could enable the federal government to monitor, track, and potentially control private citizens' financial transactions, thereby undermining privacy and civil liberties. Passage of this measure in the Senate is far from guaranteed before it can go to the president's desk. An earlier attempt to set aside the anti-CBDC bill caused a significant stir among a small group of Republicans and delayed passage of the other two bills until eleventh-hour lobbying by Trump helped resolve the issue.
France 24
an hour ago
- France 24
US House passes landmark crypto measures in win for Trump
Lawmakers easily approved the CLARITY Act, which aims to establish a clearer regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies and other digital assets. The bill is designed to clarify industry rules and divide regulatory authority between the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). It will now advance to the Senate, where Republicans hold a slim majority. House legislators also readily passed the GENIUS Act, which codifies the use of stablecoins -- cryptocurrencies pegged to stable assets like the US dollar or US bonds. This bill is expected to go directly to President Trump for his signature to become law. The Senate passed the GENIUS Act last month, and it sets requirements such as mandating that issuers hold reserves of assets equal in value to their outstanding cryptocurrency. "This historic legislation will bring our payment system into the 21st century. It will ensure the dominance of the US dollar. It will increase demand for US Treasuries," said Senator Bill Hagerty, the measure's sponsor in the Senate. This wave of legislation follows years of skepticism towards crypto, driven by the belief that the sector, born from bitcoin's success, should be tightly controlled and kept separate from mainstream investors. However, after crypto investors contributed millions of dollars to his presidential campaign last year, Trump reversed his previous doubts about the industry. He even launched a Trump meme coin and other ventures as he prepared for his return to the White House and hosted a gala dinner for the coin's top buyers once he was in office. And according to the Financial Times, Trump is now preparing to open the $9 trillion US retirement market to cryptocurrency investments as well as gold, and private equity. Notably, both the CLARITY Act and the GENIUS Act garnered significant bipartisan support, with Democrats also having seen an increase in lobbying and contributions from the crypto industry. "It's critically important we bring more certainty to the marketplace with clear rules of the road," said congressman Josh Gottheimer, a Democrat who supported the bills. Since taking office, Trump has made several moves to support the crypto sector, including appointing crypto advocate Paul Atkins to lead the SEC. He also established a federal "Strategic Bitcoin Reserve" to audit the government's bitcoin holdings, primarily accumulated through law enforcement's judicial seizures. Forbes magazine estimates that the president's foray into the crypto business has doubled his wealth to $5.3 billion in just one year. In a largely partisan vote, the Republican-led House also passed the Anti-CBDC Surveillance State Act. It aims to block the issuance of a central bank digital currency (CBDC) -- a digital dollar issued by the US Federal Reserve -- even if there currently are no plans for such an endeavor. Republicans argue that a CBDC could enable the federal government to monitor, track, and potentially control private citizens' financial transactions, thereby undermining privacy and civil liberties. Passage of this measure in the Senate is far from guaranteed before it can go to the president's desk. An earlier attempt to set aside the anti-CBDC bill caused a significant stir among a small group of Republicans and delayed passage of the other two bills until eleventh-hour lobbying by Trump helped resolve the issue.
AFP
3 hours ago
- AFP
Outdated footage of kneeling officers misrepresented as immigration protests
"Here is Omaha PD kneeling for illegal immigrants. Unbelievable," says a July 16, 2025 post on Gettr, a platform catering to American conservatives. Image Screenshot from Gettr taken July 17, 2025 Another post on X adds: "Thank God for ICE and our federal agents." The video shows a line of uniformed police officers kneeling and raising their fists in the air in front of a crowd of protesters, before standing to offer handshakes and hugs. Similar posts spread the same clip in June 2025, as demonstrations against deportation raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) flared in cities across the country, with Los Angeles taking center stage following Trump's deployment of National Guard and US military troops to the Democratic stronghold. ICE has scaled up deportation efforts under the Republican president, who made expelling undocumented immigrants a key priority for his second White House term. Dramatic images have shown federal agents, often masked and sometimes armed with assault rifles, chasing down migrants at courthouses, farms and on the streets. The video claimed to show Omaha law enforcement taking a knee is old and unrelated to illegal immigration, however. Reverse image searches revealed that the Omaha Police Department shared the footage June 2, 2020 (archived here). At the time, racial justice protesters were rallying across the country following the murder of Floyd, who died at the hands of a white police officer during an arrest in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Officer Michael Pecha, a spokesperson with the Omaha Police Department's public information office, confirmed to AFP that the clip is "from protests in 2020." "We have not had any large-scale protests in Omaha recently," Pecha said in a July 17, 2025 email. Pecha referred AFP to a 2020 civil unrest report, which explained that the department uploaded the footage to debunk online claims that an officer had performed a Nazi salute (archived here). "In an effort to diffuse tensions near 13th and Howard, a group of officers and National Guard members kneeled with the protesters," it reads. The report said the incident took place June 1, 2020. Another video posted to TikTok at the time shows the moment from a different angle (archived here). The act of kneeling has become associated with advocacy against racism and police brutality in the United States, largely inspired by former National Football League quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who began taking a knee during pre-game performances of the US national anthem in 2016. The mischaracterization of the Omaha video comes just over a month after Police Chief Todd Schmaderer warned Nebraskans to look out for misinformation in response to a fake post that purported to show the department advising residents of future ICE raids (archived here, and here). AFP previously debunked social media posts falsely claiming a video of a Los Angeles Police Department officer kneeling had taken place during June 2025 protests against Trump's policies. In reality, the clip was also from 2020. AFP has fact-checked other misinformation about US politics here.
