The United States government could be shut down in the next 7 days with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy facing political pressure from members of his own party on how to handle spending plans — a decision that could adversely affect how lawmakers move forward with crypto bills awaiting a vote.
In July, U.S. lawmakers with the House Financial Services Committee voted in favor of the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act (FIT), the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act, the Clarity for Payment Stablecoins Act and the Keep Your Coins Act. The passages were a first for the committee to move forward with so many crypto-focused bills, which could lea to a House floor vote in the current session of Congress.
A shutdown, unsurprisingly, would halt lawmakers from moving forward on any pieces of legislation until they resolve the issue of funding the U.S. government into the next fiscal year. Though shutdowns are not unheard of in the history of the U.S. government, the reasons behind them seem to have shifted over the years from public concerns over funding to political maneuvers.
“It is seeming more and more likely there will be a shutdown with the fractured House [Republican] divisions and Senate going in their own direction,” said the Blockchain Association’s director of government relations Ron Hammond on X. “For crypto the longer the shutdown goes on, the more various bills including FIT/market structure and stables get pushed.”
14) However for crypto this is big as the Senate was always the obstacle for legislation getting signed into law. Whenever the shutdown fiasco subsides, this will be an important dynamic to watch. Whether you’re watching the shutdown fight or Gensler this week, get yourready!
According to Hammond, some of the bills have bipartisan support and are likely to pass in floor votes. However, there were a lot of “landmines politically that can tank either bill”, such as the two major parties’ different approaches to stablecoin legislation.
Lawmakers have until Sept. 30 — before the next fiscal year — to come to an agreement on the spending bills. A shutdown would effectively stop all federal agencies from doing anything considered “non-essential”, which would include many actions from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission overseeing digital assets.
As of Sept. 25, Speaker McCarthy was reportedly planning to introduce spending bills that would include restrictions on abortion access, funding for the construction of a U.S.-Mexico border wall, and other initiatives with wide support among far-right members of the Republican Party, but unlikely to be approved by Democrats. The House of Representatives will convene on Sept. 26 to address the issue, while the Senate is scheduled to consider its own stopgap funding measure.
The license came eight months after the regulator granted the company in-principle approval, and a few weeks after Bybit secured a non-operational license for Dubai.
Sir Keir Starmer has denied any ministers were involved in the collapse of the trial of alleged Chinese spies.
Christopher Cash, 30, a former parliamentary researcher, and teacher Christopher Berry, 33, were accused of spying for China, but weeks before their trial was due to begin, it was dropped.
Berry, of Witney, Oxfordshire, and Cash, of Whitechapel, east London denied the allegations.
Sir Keir, his ministers and national security adviser Jonathan Powell have faced accusations they were involved in the trial being dropped.
The prime minister has maintained that because the last Conservative government had not designated China as a threat to national security, his government could not provide evidence to that effect, which the director of public prosecutions Stephen Parkinson said was required to meet the threshold for prosecution.
Mr Parkinson had blamed ministers for failing to provide the crucial evidence needed to proceed.
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During a trade visit to India, the prime minister was asked whether any minister, or Mr Powell, were involved in the decision not to provide the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) with evidence that, at the time of the alleged offences, China represented a threat to national security.
He replied: “I can be absolutely clear no ministers were involved in any of the decisions since this government’s been in in relation to the evidence that’s put before the court on this issue.”
Sir Keir reiterated his line that the case could only rely on evidence from the period the pair were accused of spying, from 2021 to 2023, when the Conservatives were in government.
He said: “The evidence in this case was drawn up at the time and reflected the position as it was at the time,” the PM said in India.
“And that has remained the situation from start to finish.
“That is inevitably the case because in the United Kingdom, you can only try people on the basis of the situation as it was at the time.
“You can’t try people on the basis of the situation, as it now is or might be in the future, and therefore, the only evidence that a court would ever admit on this would be evidence of what the situation was at the time.
“It’s not a party political point. It’s a matter of law.”
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Is China an enemy to the UK?
Sir Keir’s assertion has been called into question by former top civil servants and legal experts.
Mark Elliott, professor of public law at the University of Cambridge, told Sky News there is no legal requirement for a country to be declared an enemy for someone to be tried for breaching the Official Secrets Act.
He said the current government was “cherry picking” what the previous government had said about China to claim they did not regard them as a threat to national security.
However, there are several examples of the Tory government saying China was a national security threat during the time Berry and Cash were accused of spying.