Senators ban themselves from prediction markets after candidates bet on own races

“Politicians betting on their own races, massive wagers placed moments before the president announced of a ceasefire in Iran, and suspected insider trading before the capture of Nicolás Maduro—these are just a few examples of the blatant, brazen corruption that we’ve seen playing out on prediction markets,” Padilla said. Padilla added, “This resolution alone will not address the growing public outrage over the unprecedented scale of corruption under the Trump administration.” Major prediction markets Polymarket and Kalshi both have Donald Trump Jr. as an advisor, and a Trump Jr.-backed venture capital firm invested in Polymarket. Kalshi and Polymarket both said they support the Senate resolution and that they already banned such trading in their platform rules. Kalshi last week announced enforcement actions against two House candidates and one Senate candidate who bet on their campaigns. Kalshi also issued a five-year suspension and a penalty of $6,229.30 to independent Mark Moran, a Senate candidate in Virginia, who did not agree to a settlement. “YES, I did bet ~$100 on myself on Kalshi because I wanted to get caught,” Moran wrote in an X post. Moran said he refused a settlement offer that would have compelled him to make a public statement, and that he made the bet to draw attention to Kalshi and his own campaign. “For $100, I just got more attention from CNN, Fox, WSJ, etc than any media consultant ever,” he wrote. “In politics, money has always bought attention, but I can get attention for almost free.” Moran wrote that “Kalshi is currently being sued by many states for being an illegal betting market,” and that he made the bet to “bring to light that our ‘democracy’ is up for sale and Kalshi is a platform that can be manipulated by the highest bidder/donor to move a market which will sway voters bc the media will report on it.” The Trump administration has fought state efforts to impose stricter regulations on prediction markets. The US won a court ruling that prevents New Jersey from enforcing laws that prohibit betting on college sports and require licenses to offer other types of sports wagers. The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has jurisdiction over prediction markets and recently announced lawsuits against Arizona, Connecticut, and Illinois to challenge the states’ regulations. “The CFTC will continue to safeguard its exclusive regulatory authority over these markets and defend market participants against overzealous state regulators,” CFTC Chairman Michael Selig said at the time. Kalshi said in March that it was “launching new technological guardrails that preemptively block politicians, athletes, and other relevant people from trading in certain politics and sports markets.” Polymarket said yesterday that it is deploying a blockchain system to monitor trading and enforce its rules.