As the House faces growing calls to ban trading on prediction markets by members and staff, some are taking things into their own hands. When Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., announced a new internal policy for his office in March, he described it as a way to make a stand as platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket become a “playground for corrupt insiders.” Now others are following suit, hoping to clean up Congress’ image and feeling the pressure as the House lags behind the Senate, which adopted a chamber-wide rule change at the end of April. “It’s absolutely insane that members and staff can place bets off of inside information,” Rep. Seth Magaziner, D-R.I., said. “This is public service, right? People shouldn’t be treating it like a piggy bank.” Magaziner is another member who has formalized a prediction market policy in his office. Others on the growing list include Reps. Ashley Hinson, R-Iowa, and Eugene Vindman, D-Va. All those lawmakers say they want to see a larger shift in the House to make sure no one is leveraging their job to rake in prediction market profits. Until then, they are starting in their own domains. In the decentralized workplace that is Capitol Hill, lawmakers have wide leeway to set norms and expectations for their staff — and announcing an internal policy is easy enough. Magaziner, for example, issued a press release this month saying he was implementing a new office-wide policy to prohibit him and his staff “from participating in prediction markets or wagering related to political, legislative, regulatory, geopolitical, or other outcomes connected to information learned in an official capacity.” That roughly mirrors the change Moulton announced this spring, which he called a step toward “clean, honest government” in the face of a “perverse incentive structure” that allows prediction market users to toy with the outcomes of elections, wars and more. ‘Shady behavior’ Even if many more House members were to jump on the trend and create their own policies, it might not make a dent. Several staffers, requesting anonymity to speak freely, said prediction market trading on the Hill wasn’t yet rampant and doubted their bosses, at least, had ever logged on to platforms like Kalshi. But as prediction markets surge in popularity, a drumbeat of dubious trades — like ones made right before key White House moves on tariffs or the Iran war — have raised fears about officials across the government abusing their knowledge. And writing an internal office policy, even if violating it could lead to getting fired, is not the same as adopting a broader House rule change or passing a law. Some in the House said they don’t want to fall behind the usually slow-moving Senate, which has already changed its standing rules. The resolution adopted in April, led by Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, amounts to a blanket ban for senators and their staff, prohibiting them from entering into any “agreement, contract, swap, or transaction that provides for any purchase, sale, payment, or delivery of an excluded commodity … that is dependent on the occurrence, nonoccurrence, or the extent of the occurrence of a specific event or contingency.” Hinson said she has adopted a similar internal ban in her own office but doesn’t want to stop there. She has introduced a resolution that aims to change the rules of the House. “What I don’t want to see is that because Congress is lacking action here, that this is a loophole that people were able to take advantage of,” she said at the time. On Wednesday, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., said he had talked with House Administration Chair Bryan Steil, R-Wis., about the Senate rule change and is eyeing something even more forceful. “They did theirs in the rules, so we’re looking at doing ours in law,” Scalise said, suggesting that one possibility would be to fold a prediction market provision into a broader bill aimed at curbing congressional stock trading. Republicans advanced a stock trading bill out of committee months ago but it has yet to hit the House floor. Unlike a simple resolution, that bill would have to pass both chambers and be signed by the president, making it a heavier lift. And any effort to stop lawmakers from buying stocks provokes strong feelings in Congress, where many members hold substantial portfolios. Some, like Vindman, have more ideas. He has an internal office policy in place limiting prediction market participation for his staff, but he wants to see a broader law that would ban it for both members of Congress and their immediate family members. He introduced a proposal along those lines last week. He and others are also looking outside the legislative branch, urging action to limit prediction market trades by officials in other parts of the government. Such trading “undermines public trust, endangers America’s national security, and enables the kind of shady behavior the American people have grown sick of,” he said in a statement. FiscalNote, the parent company of CQ and Roll Call, has announced a product expansion into political prediction markets.
