{"id":20529,"date":"2026-03-25T12:16:57","date_gmt":"2026-03-25T12:16:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/lawmakers-introduce-bill-to-prohibit-members-of-congress-president-from-prediction-market-trading\/"},"modified":"2026-03-25T12:16:57","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T12:16:57","slug":"lawmakers-introduce-bill-to-prohibit-members-of-congress-president-from-prediction-market-trading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/lawmakers-introduce-bill-to-prohibit-members-of-congress-president-from-prediction-market-trading\/","title":{"rendered":"Lawmakers introduce bill to prohibit members of congress, president from prediction market trading"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Lawmakers are introducing bipartisan legislation to prohibit members of Congress, the president and others in the executive branch from trading in certain prediction markets, according to bill text shared exclusively with POLITICO<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Reps. Nikki Budzinski<\/a> (D-Ill.) and Adrian Smith<\/a> (R-Neb.) will introduce the Preventing Real-time Exploitation and Deceptive Insider Congressional Trading Act, or PREDICT Act, Tuesday to ban members of Congress from participating in prediction markets related to political events or policy decisions. The ban would also extend to dependents and spouses of lawmakers, senior congressional staff, political appointees, the president, vice president and all senior executive branch employees, including special government employees.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe American people are tired of politicians using their influence for personal gain, and the rise of prediction markets has made those concerns even more relevant,\u201d Budzinski said in a statement. \u201cIn recent months, we\u2019ve seen instances of little-known traders making massive profits on events ranging from war with Iran to how long a government shutdown will last, raising necessary questions about the use of inside information.\u201d<\/p>\n

The bill comes amid an uptick of bipartisan legislation focused on prediction markets like Polymarket and Kalshi. Sens. John Curtis<\/a> (R-Utah) and Adam Schiff<\/a> (D-Calif.) introduced a bill<\/a> in the Senate earlier this week to ban sports betting contracts<\/a> on prediction markets.<\/p>\n

Polymarket and Kalshi, the largest prediction market platforms, on Monday unveiled new measures intended to thwart insider trading on its platforms. Polymarket said it was updating its rulebook to clearly state that users cannot trade on events that they could influence or have confidential information on. Kalshi, meanwhile, launched a tool to prevent political candidates from trading on their own campaigns.<\/p>\n

Last month, Kalshi banned a California politician<\/a> who wagered $200 on his own gubernatorial bid.<\/p>\n

\u201cServing the American people is a privilege, not a pathway to profit,\u201d Smith said in a statement. \u201cOur commonsense, bipartisan bill will give Americans confidence that the decisions of their elected officials are guided by merit, not personal profit.\u201d<\/p>\n

The legislative rush comes alongside a rapid expansion in the prediction markets<\/a> that has attracted some of Wall Street\u2019s and Silicon Valley\u2019s biggest investors.<\/p>\n

President Donald Trump\u2019s family has jumped in, too. Donald Trump Jr.<\/a> is an adviser to Kalshi and Polymarket and a partner in venture capital firm 1789 Capital, which is also an investor in Polymarket. The president\u2019s social media startup, Trump Media & Technology Group, last fall announced plans to launch a prediction-market service called Truth Predict<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The legislation would implement a fine to violators of 10 percent of the value of violating transactions, plus force any profits from those transactions to go to the U.S. Treasury.<\/p>\n

Declan Harty contributed to this report.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lawmakers are introducing bipartisan legislation to prohibit members of Congress, the president and others in the executive branch from trading in certain prediction markets, according to bill text shared exclusively with Blue Light News. Reps. Nikki Budzinski (D-Ill.) and Adrian Smith (R-Neb.) will introduce the Preventing Real-time Exploitation and Deceptive Insider Congressional Trading Act, or PREDICT Act, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20529"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20529\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}