Crypto Bills Stall as Trump Pressures Thune on SAVE Act

President Trump is again testing John Thune's loyalty. On Truth Social, Trump has criticized the Senate Majority Leader for not pushing the SAVE America Act hard enough. The voter ID bill, introduced in the House on Jan. 30, requires proof of citizenship for registration and photo identification at polls.

It does not have the votes. Senate Democrats are unanimously opposed. The bill needs 60 to break a filibuster. Thune has reportedly referenced it in the past tense, a sign the votes are not there.

Thune was the architect of the GENIUS Act, the first US stablecoin law, signed by Trump in July 2025. New York DFS later proposed stablecoin rules aligned with that law. The crypto industry called it a win – clear reserve and redemption rules let banks and payment companies enter the space.

The next piece, market structure legislation covering token classification and exchange rules, is stuck. A separate DeFi oversight bill is also pending. By March, Thune suggested the Clarity Act would not clear the Banking Committee before April.

Now the SAVE Act threatens to consume the summer. Thune faces a simple math problem: advancing the president's voting bill takes floor time and leadership attention. If that means market structure bills wait, 2026 grows shorter. Midterms narrow the calendar further.

For a trader watching the regulatory timeline, the concrete signal is the Senate floor schedule. If SAVE Act debate runs through July, the odds of a crypto market structure vote before the midterms drop sharply. The next catalyst is not a committee markup but Thune's own reading of his majority.