Steil Introduces Trump-Backed Bill to Bar Lawmakers From Prediction Market Bets

Rep. Bryan Steil (R-WI), chair of the House Administration Committee, introduced legislation on Thursday that would bar members of Congress, their staff, spouses, and dependent children from trading political event contracts on prediction markets. The measure, named the Stop Lawmakers from Predicting Act, arrives as Kalshi and Polymarket scale to roughly $21 billion in combined monthly volume and as the same contracts face enforcement fights in more than a dozen states. The bill carries the backing of President Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA).

"Lawmakers should be writing policy, not wagering on its outcome," Steil posted on X. "I just introduced legislation to prohibit lawmakers from utilizing prediction markets to wager on government policy or political outcomes." Steil also sits on the House Financial Services Committee and chairs its Crypto Subcommittee, which puts him at the center of the broader jurisdictional fight over how these venues are regulated. The bill's reach is specific: it covers wagers on the occurrence, nonoccurrence, or extent of a government policy or political outcome, or any other event that came to a covered person's attention as a direct or indirect result of congressional service.

What the bill does

A member found in violation would pay a fine equal to $2,000 or 10% of the value of the transaction, whichever is greater, plus the net gain realized from the trade. The bill blocks members from using representational allowances, office expense accounts, political contributions, or donations to pay those fines, closing the route of expensing a penalty to a campaign or office account.

The provision tracks a step the Senate already took. In late April, the Senate adopted a rules change by unanimous consent barring senators and their staff from trading on yes/no event exchanges. Steil's bill would write a comparable prohibition for the House into law, which requires Senate passage of the statute, not just a chamber rule, to take effect.

The stock-trading complication

Observers warn the prediction markets provision could falter if it is folded into the broader push to restrict members' individual stock trading. The leading vehicle there is the Preventing Elected Leaders from Owning Securities and Investments Act, the PELOSI Act, sponsored by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), which advanced out of a Senate committee in July 2025. That bill would bar members of Congress from holding or trading individual stocks.

Democrats balk because the current PELOSI Act text exempts the president and vice president and all their assets, and applies its ban on executive trading only to future administrations. The objection has gained force from Trump's own disclosures. The president's investment accounts executed 3,642 securities transactions between January 6 and March 30, about 63 per trading day, according to his financial disclosure filed in May. The Trump Organization says outside advisers manage the accounts and that the president and his family play no role in the trades. Democrats and ethics specialists have pointed to purchases and sales of firms with extensive federal business as grounds for a conflict-of-interest review. Attaching the prediction markets language to a stock bill that leaves the executive branch untouched gives opponents a reason to vote no.

The timing matters because the contracts themselves are no longer fringe instruments. Kalshi was valued at $22 billion in its most recent funding round, and event contracts on its platform totaled roughly $52 billion as of March, with about 87% of a trailing-year $39.7 billion concentrated in sports. Polymarket took a strategic investment of up to $2 billion from Intercontinental Exchange in October 2025 at an $8 billion valuation, and set a single-day record of $425 million on February 28, surpassing its Election Day 2024 peak. Polymarket's 2024 US presidential election market drew $3.68 billion in volume, the largest prediction market event recorded.

Federal courts have been moving in the platforms' favor on the related sports question. On April 6, the Third Circuit affirmed a preliminary injunction barring New Jersey from enforcing its gambling laws against Kalshi, the first federal appellate ruling to hold that the Commodity Exchange Act preempts state gambling law as applied to sports event contracts on CFTC-registered markets, a precedent that has emboldened the venues even as Nevada, Massachusetts, and Tennessee press separate enforcement actions. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has declared it holds exclusive jurisdiction over event contracts, and in April the CFTC and the Department of Justice jointly sued Arizona, Connecticut, and Illinois over their enforcement efforts. The same dynamic that pulled DraftKings and FanDuel toward prediction-style products, covered in our report on the operators' AGA exit, is now drawing congressional attention to who inside government can trade them.

Steil's bill addresses a narrower question than the court fights: not whether the public can trade political contracts, but whether the people writing the policies those contracts price should be allowed to take positions on them. With Trump and Johnson behind it, the measure has House leadership support. Its fate now turns on whether sponsors keep it standalone or tie it to a stock-trading bill that Democrats have already signaled they will resist.