The Senate Banking Committee will hold a markup vote on May 14 on the 309-page Digital Asset Market CLARITY Act. The bill draws jurisdictional lines between the SEC and CFTC for digital assets and ends the post-Howey regulation-by-enforcement era. Over 100 amendments are pending. The committee splits 13 Republicans to 11 Democrats, requiring all 13 Republican votes for the bill to clear. Senator John Kennedy (R-LA) is reportedly uncommitted, with his hesitation tied to unrelated agenda items, per Punchbowl News.
May 14 is committee clearance. Enactment sits several procedural steps further out: the full Senate needs floor time, the House needs to reconcile or re-pass its version, and the President needs to sign. The 100-amendment count is the news inside the news. Many of those amendments are minor technical fixes that won't survive committee. A smaller subset are substantive and could shift the security/commodity boundary in ways that affect specific token categories or exchange business models. The Kennedy uncommitted status is the practical risk. A no or absent vote stalls the bill and tightens the floor calendar against summer recess. Polymarket has CLARITY at 75% to become law in 2026. That probability has been within five points of 75% for three weeks. The committee vote tomorrow will move it 10-15 points either direction depending on margin and amendments.
Token issuers and exchange operators planning around CLARITY passage should treat tomorrow as the first real probability update since the bill was introduced. A 13-11 clearance makes the prepared-for-passage operational work urgent. A stall pushes the timeline to fall.