The First 100 Days of a Bernie Moreno Presidency: What the Record Suggests

Hero photo: Ohio State House 9/11 Memorial, Columbus — via Wikimedia Commons.

01 The scenario

Bernie Moreno of Ohio is a first-term Republican senator, in office since January 2025, a luxury auto-dealership magnate before the Senate, and the most prominent pro-crypto member of the 2025 freshman class. This article asks a hypothetical question: if he were ever sworn in as president, what would the first 100 days look like based on his documented record? This is a scenario analysis, not a prediction that the person will become president and not an endorsement or criticism of the person.

Moreno's record is a businessman's and provocateur's record: crypto market structure, immigration restriction, tariff defense, and consumer-safety bills. A reasonable inference from these positions is that a Moreno White House would open with executive action where the Constitution allows it — softened SEC enforcement, tariff imposition with legislative cover — while his own bill filings concede that the bigger items (birthright citizenship, market structure, conditional spending) would require congressional approval rather than unilateral presidential action.

02 The record: who Bernie Moreno is

Moreno, born 1967 in Bogota, Colombia (full name Bernardo Francisco Moreno Mejia), built a luxury auto-dealership business before entering the Senate in January 2025 as Ohio's senior senator in the 119th Congress. He sits on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs and Commerce, Science, and Transportation per the CIV.IQ member page. Evidence strength: moderate — the congress.gov committees page timed out during extraction, so the roster rests on CIV.IQ and his own site and is not verified from a primary source.

The committee map matters for the scenario: Banking gives him leverage over financial regulators, and Commerce over the FTC and FCC — the two lanes where his crypto and connected-vehicle work lives.

03 Crypto and digital assets

Moreno is the Senate champion of the CLARITY Act, the crypto market-structure bill. He met with President Trump, Sen. Lummis, and a White House crypto adviser in July 2026 on the ethics-restrictions package that unblocked the bill, per CryptoSlate and CryptoRank coverage. In a February 6, 2026 Yahoo Finance interview with Leigh Ann Caldwell he described his central role in the market-structure fight and pressed colleagues ahead of a crucial Senate vote, warning “It is not ‘final passage’” — per Yahoo. In May 2026 (Coinage, May 7) he said the CLARITY Act could pass by July after markup.

The market-structure rules themselves require legislation. What a president could do unilaterally on day one is soften SEC enforcement. Whether the CLARITY Act has passed the full Senate as of this writing is unclear from the sources — one report stressed that a Senate vote was not “final passage” — so that status is flagged rather than asserted.

04 Immigration and birthright citizenship

On July 15, 2026, Moreno introduced S. 4983, the “Harry Reid Immigration Stabilization Act”, referred to Judiciary, reviving 1993 legislation by former Sen. Harry Reid to end birthright citizenship for children of illegal migrants — explicitly framed to make Democrats “vote against their own hero.” On September 16, 2026, he introduced the Red Light Act with Sen. Husted to ban states from issuing “drive-only” licenses to illegal aliens by withholding federal funds. On September 1, 2026, he demanded answers from Connecticut's governor after an illegal alien who had killed an Ohioan had received a drive-only license.

The constitutional reality is the sharpest lever line in this scenario: a birthright-citizenship change requires Congress — a statute or constitutional amendment; no executive order can do it, which is precisely why he introduced a bill. The Red Light Act relies on conditional federal spending, which also needs Congress.

05 Trade and tariffs

After the Supreme Court invalidated the Trump tariffs, Moreno called for Congress to codify President Trump's tariff powers — per The Hill's reporting as captured in search-result descriptions; the article itself could not be extracted directly, so the exact quote wording is unverified and flagged. He said short-term tariff pain is “worth it” for the auto industry (Bloomberg Law). At a Commerce Committee hearing he argued with the Teamsters that Trump tariffs are “leveling the playing field for the American worker,” per his own release.

The direction of Moreno's tariff push runs through Congress, not around it: he wants Congress to reassert and confirm presidential tariff power, meaning a sympathetic president could impose tariffs while Moreno supplies legislative cover. Tariff imposition itself is an executive lever.

06 Tech, AI, and consumer safety

Moreno sponsored S. 4429, the Connected Vehicle Security Act of 2026, per his legislation page, and in an NBC4 Columbus interview discussed AI dangers and Trump's $5,000-per-person pledge. On August 8, 2026 he introduced S. 5383, the End Gas Station Heroin Act, referred to Judiciary, targeting tianeptine sales.

Both are statutes. He also praised the Senate confirmation of Matthew Byrne to the Southern District of Ohio (September 15, 2026) as a Constitution defender — judicial confirmations are a Senate Article II power, not an executive one.

07 Where his leverage actually runs

As a Banking and Commerce member, Moreno's documented leverage runs over financial regulators (SEC, Fed, housing finance) and the FTC/FCC jurisdictional lanes — the committees of a first-term senator, not the levers of a presidency. His tariff-codification push, his crypto ethics deal with the White House, and his birthright-citizenship bill are all, by their own structure, appeals to Congress.

A reasonable inference from these positions is that a Moreno White House would be the first presidency in this series whose signature issues — crypto market structure, birthright citizenship — are ones whose own champion has already drafted the statutes, meaning the first 100 days would be a legislative strategy, not an executive-order strategy.

08 What the record cannot tell us

The evidence runs out in specific places. His full 119th committee roster is not verified from a primary source (the congress.gov committees page timed out; CIV.IQ and his own site were used). No documented position was found on healthcare, energy, or the 2026 Iran war in this pass — there is not enough public evidence to determine those positions, and none is inferred. Whether the CLARITY Act has passed the full Senate as of this writing is unclear. The Hill tariff quote could not be verified against the article text because of a network block, so wording is taken from the search-result description and should be confirmed before any verbatim use.

Disclaimer: this article is a scenario analysis based on the documented public record as of September 21, 2026. It is not a prediction that Bernie Moreno will become president, nor an endorsement or criticism of him or his positions. Where evidence is incomplete, that is stated rather than filled in.