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Good afternoon, and welcome back to Press Pass. Now that the first big round of primary races in Texas and North Carolina is done, the midterm election season is in full swing. It’s going to be a wild one, so stick with The Bulwark: We’ll do our best to help you stay sane as we approach one of the most consequential midterm elections in recent history. And if you’ve been considering doing so, now might be a good time to upgrade your membership to a Bulwark+ subscription.
Today’s edition explores one of the most dystopian things happening in American society: The rise of betting markets that allow users to stake money on major disruptions to the global economy, the outbreak of war, and even the use of nuclear weapons. Suspiciously timed bets on American military action in Iran, which virtually no one outside the inner circles of the administration would know about, have made lots of anonymous gamblers very rich. I spoke to a bunch of lawmakers about it and the prospects of a ban or new regulations being legislated in the coming months.
In addition, MAGA “alpha-male” Nick Adams has lost his nomination to be U.S. ambassador to Malaysia. (I’m devastated.) But Adams might have another gig lined up. Lastly, I have a special request for our Bulwark+ subscribers who might be able to assist with some important reporting. All that and more, below.
Gambling on War Is MAGA’s Latest Gold Rush
Some lawmakers want to ban the prediction-market manipulations.
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The [White] House always wins
Prediction markets have taken the country by storm over the past year, allowing Americans to “financialize everything and create a tradable asset out of any difference in opinion,” as Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour candidly put it. Among those monetizable differences of opinion are American foreign policy decisions. The chaos the Trump administration has generated in that domain in recent weeks has given rise to concerns that people with secret knowledge of unannounced policy are using their access to enrich themselves through novel forms of market manipulation and insider trading.
Like dogfighting, gambling on war is the sort of hobby that is best described in simple, direct moral terms. (“Satanic” was the one that came to my mind.) But I wanted to pose the question about regulating or banning this industry to some of the lawmakers who are familiar with prediction markets. In all honesty, it’s a small crowd. The answers I got revealed that members of Congress are mulling legislation to ban the practice outright.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) emphasized the corrupting nature of these markets, which enable individuals with a direct role in policy to place wagers on outcomes that they can ensure will come to pass—textbook insider trading, but with an extra dimension of ghoulishness when violence and destruction are the result.
“To me, it’s pretty clear there were people inside the White House who were making bets on Friday that war would start on Saturday,” Murphy told me. “That particular bet—that war will occur within twenty-four hours—was not a normal bet that was being made on Polymarket. It was made on one day, Friday, by an unusually high number of people.”
“Unquestionably, that is people at the White House or friends of the White House,” he added. “So the Iran war is a disaster on its merits, but it is facilitating a new kind of corruption in the White House in which people are making money through Polymarket and Kalshi on war.”
Murphy said he is in the process of drafting a ban on gambling on government activity through prediction markets, with “some exceptions for bond markets and financial markets.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) told me the concept is ...
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