No one serving the public should have the opportunity to profit from privileged information about government actions

Yesterday, the Senate unanimously adopted a change to the Senate rules to ban Senators and staff from participating in prediction markets.

It's a good first step, but now we need to expand this effort. A few months ago, I introduced the End Prediction Market Corruption Act, a bill that bans the president, vice president, members of Congress, and senior executive branch officials from placing bets on prediction markets tied to government actions. Here's why:

Prediction markets allow people to place bets on future events — elections, political decisions, even military actions. But members of Congress and senior government officials receive all sorts of sensitive briefings and confidential information as part of our jobs. Allowing those same officials to place bets on events tied to government decisions creates a clear conflict of interest.

Recent activity on prediction markets has put this danger in the spotlight. Federal prosecutors recently charged a U.S. Special Forces soldier with using classified intelligence about a planned operation targeting Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro to place bets that netted more than $400,000.

And it doesn't stop there. Reports have flagged massive, well-timed bets on events like a potential ceasefire tied to the war with Iran — placed just before public announcements — along with traders earning hundreds of thousands of dollars betting on high-level geopolitical outcomes like leadership changes abroad.

No one serving the public should have the opportunity to profit from privileged information about government actions.

Public service should never become a way to cash in on inside knowledge. It's corruption, plain and simple.

Let's get this bill passed and bring some basic integrity to these betting platforms.

Onward!

Jeff