Florida Daily: The Senate Should Finish The Job On Debanking

James Madison Institute · Oct 21, 2026

Florida’s firearm dealers have seen it. So have faith-based nonprofits, energy companies, and some of the state’s growing crypto businesses. In each case, businesses have faced questions about access to banking services that had less to do with their financial risk than with how regulators viewed their industries.

Much of the debate has centered on a deceptively broad term: “reputational risk.” For years, under the Obama and Biden administrations, federal banking examiners used the concept as part of their supervisory framework, giving regulators considerable discretion to influence how banks…