The Senate voted to bar its members and staff from placing bets on prediction markets, passing a bipartisan resolution by unanimous voice vote Thursday that takes effect immediately, according to the Senate’s adopted rules change reported by the Associated Press.
Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, sponsored the measure, which is designed to prevent lawmakers who may have access to sensitive information from using it to profit from wagers. Moreno said: “United States senators have no business engaging in speculative activities like prediction markets while collecting a taxpayer-funded paycheck, period,” and framed the prohibition as a matter of representative-government integrity.
Moreno’s resolution passed unanimously after Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., introduced an amendment that broadened the ban to include Senate staff. The AP report said the expanded scope targets not only senators themselves but also staffers who might also be positioned to act on information.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., argued the proposal addresses a basic conflict and called it “a no-brainer.” Schumer urged further action by the House and the Trump administration, and he warned that lawmakers “must never allow Congress to turn into a casino where members representing the public can gamble on wars or economic crises or elections,” saying such wagering “would destroy the very principle of representative government.”
The AP report tied the Senate action to widening concern about public wagers on major geopolitical and domestic events, including the war with Iran. It cited lawmakers’ warnings about who could be making prediction-market bets and raised the question of whether official access to information could enable timely trades or profits.
The immediate Senate ban also arrived shortly after the U.S. special forces soldier case mentioned in the AP report, in which the soldier was charged with using classified information to bet on the January capture of Venezuela’s then-president, Nicolas Maduro. The AP report also noted that the White House warned staff against using private information to trade on prediction markets around the same time.
The Senate action comes amid broader scrutiny of prediction market platforms such as Polymarket and Kalshi, which have faced criticism and legal challenges as the businesses expanded. The AP report said Polymarket has drawn particular attention, including criticism related to offshore trades beyond U.S. regulators’ reach, and it referenced an earlier AP report that described well-timed Polymarket bets by new accounts—bets the report said resulted in hundreds of thousands of dollars in profits.
The AP report also described how Trump administration allies and figures tied to the industry have faced scrutiny, including the White House’s legal fight with states seeking to ban the platforms. It said Donald Trump Jr. serves as an adviser for both Polymarket and Kalshi, and it noted that Truth Social is launching a cryptocurrency-based prediction market called Truth Predict.
In separate legislation, Sens. Todd Young, R-Ind., and Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., introduced a bill that would ban all federally elected officials and government employees from using insider information to make prediction market bets. Young said the Senate resolution was “a good first step” as lawmakers consider expanding restrictions beyond the Senate itself.