House panel advances bill barring Congress from Kalshi and Polymarket
A House panel advanced legislation Wednesday that would prohibit members of Congress, their spouses, and dependent children from wagering on prediction markets including Kalshi and Polymarket. The bill, backed by Trump and Speaker Johnson, targets political and policy-related event contracts amid growing concerns over insider trading and conflicts of interest. Representative Goodlander co-sponsored the measure, which would extend existing ethics restrictions into the prediction-market space and apply to senior federal officials. The committee vote exposed a party-line split, with the top Democrat on the House Administration Committee planning to oppose the Republican-led ban and offer a broader alternative proposal. The legislation bundles the prediction-market prohibition with a congressional stock-trading ban and specifies penalties of 10% of transaction value plus full disgorgement of profits.
Kalshi and Polymarket would lose their highest-profile organic user segment if congressional accounts are forced to close. The ban also pressures both platforms to build real-time surveillance systems capable of flagging elected-official trades before regulators demand them.
The House panel vote marks the second legislative push in two weeks — after Representative Steil's standalone bill — to bar lawmakers from prediction markets, escalating a federal crackdown that now runs parallel to state bans in Minnesota and Rhode Island and a separate Senate campaign against sports event contracts.