House eyes ban on election betting by lawmakers and candidates
Rep. Bryan Steil is drafting legislation that would prohibit members of Congress and political candidates from placing bets on elections or politics through prediction markets. The proposed ban targets the growing availability of political event contracts on regulated platforms. Steil has not yet introduced the bill, and no timeline for markup has been announced.
A federal ban on lawmaker participation would shrink the addressable user base for political prediction markets and could signal broader legislative appetite for restricting retail election betting.
Joins Kalshi's self-reporting of Santos, Steil's prior trading-bar proposal, and the insider-trading surveillance strain as the fourth federal-level move this week targeting lawmaker participation in political prediction markets, threading platform accountability and congressional self-policing into the same enforcement narrative.