Then the wheels came off.<\/p>\n
On April 30, the U.S. Senate voted unanimously \u2014 unanimously<\/a> \u2014 to ban senators and their staff from trading on prediction markets, effective immediately. Bipartisan, no debate, no daylight. \u201cUnited States Senators have no business engaging in speculative activities like prediction markets while collecting a taxpayer-funded paycheck, period,\u201d Sen. Bernie Moreno said. The Ohio Republican wasn\u2019t an outlier. He was the consensus.<\/p>\n Sen. Todd Young, an Indiana Republican, immediately moved to push the prohibition further, with legislation barring all federal officials from using insider information to bet. The House is sharpening its knives next. Majority Leader Steve Scalise told the outlet Semafor<\/a> that lawmakers will \u201csurely take a look at it.\u201d House Administration Chairman Bryan Steil added: \u201cWe\u2019ve been working on that.\u201d Translation: Congress called Kalshi\u2019s bluff that voluntary self-policing was good enough.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the insider-trading stories keep getting worse. The Department of Justice (DOJ) and CFTC criminally charged<\/a> a U.S. Army master sergeant for using classified intelligence about a raid to capture Venezuelan President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro to pocket nearly $400,000 on Polymarket \u2014 the first criminal insider trading case ever tied to a prediction market. Blockchain firm Bubblemaps traced six freshly funded wallets that pulled in $1.2 million on Iran-strike contracts<\/a> the night U.S. and Israeli forces hit Iran. One placed its first trade 71 minutes before the strikes went public. At least 50 brand-new Polymarket accounts<\/a> then placed well-timed wagers on a U.S.-Iran ceasefire in the hours and minutes before Trump announced it on social media. The CFTC is now investigating hundreds of similar cases.<\/p>\n President Donald Trump, who stood to benefit from a prediction-markets boom through his son\u2019s stake in Polymarket and Trump Media\u2019s planned \u201cTruth Predict<\/a>\u201d launch, has gone cold. \u201cYou know, the whole world, unfortunately, has become somewhat of a casino,\u201d he told reporters last month<\/a>. \u201cI was never much in favor of it. I don\u2019t like it conceptually.\u201d<\/p>\n When the principal beneficiary in your own family backs away, the politics have moved.<\/p>\n The states are piling on. Arizona filed the first criminal charges against Kalshi<\/a> itself, accusing the platform of running an illegal gambling operation. Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican, wrote CFTC Chair<\/a> Michael Selig directly, asking \u2014 sensibly \u2014 when the agency picked up jurisdiction over \u201cthe \u2018derivative market\u2019 of LeBron James rebounds.\u201d Nobody at Kalshi seems eager to answer.<\/p>\n The pro sports leagues went on record<\/a> by the CFTC\u2019s April 30 comment deadline. The NBA, MLB, PGA Tour, and the players associations of the NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, and MLS all filed letters demanding hard rules. \u201cA bet is a bet regardless of where it is placed,\u201d the players associations wrote.<\/p>\n The leagues that built modern sports betting know what this is.<\/p>\n Kalshi\u2019s response: a Washington-wide ad blitz and a lobbying microsite, MarketsOverMonopolies.com, claiming 89% of Americans support prediction-market access. A company under criminal indictment in Arizona, facing 200-plus federal insider trading investigations, whose markets were exploited by a U.S. soldier using classified military intelligence, doesn\u2019t get to lecture anyone about market fairness. Kalshi is also fighting a class-action lawsuit<\/a> alleging it misled its own customers about who they were actually betting against.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/FL-Legislators-Digital-Banners-728x90_1.png\")
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