A bipartisan group of senators has introduced legislation barring members of Congress, the president, and executive branch officials from trading on prediction markets that cover political events, according to reporting from Politico and Forbes.
The bill reflects growing concern that elected officials and senior government figures hold non-public information that could give them a material edge when wagering on outcomes they themselves help shape. Existing insider trading restrictions on prediction markets have been dismissed by the bill's sponsors as insufficient.
The move is part of a broader legislative push. A separate bipartisan bill introduced around the same time seeks to prohibit sports betting on prediction markets, a category that has expanded rapidly as platforms such as Kalshi have grown in prominence. Kalshi has already announced it will voluntarily block athletes and politicians from trading on its markets, according to Axios.
Former Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel has also weighed in publicly, arguing that federal workers should not be permitted to bet on political outcomes.
The simultaneous legislative pressure on both political and sports-event trading signals that Congress is moving toward a more comprehensive regulatory framework for prediction markets, which have operated in a largely permissive environment since the Commodity Futures Trading Commission began allowing them to expand their product offerings.
