A federal court has dealt a serious blow to prediction markets, ruling that Kalshi can’t block the state of Nevada from regulating its platform.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled 3-0 against Kalshi Friday, saying that federal commodity training law doesn’t block Nevada from also regulating the platform when it comes to betting on sports events. All three judges were appointed to the federal bench by President Trump.
Circuit Judge Ryan Nelson said Kalshi’s business clearly seems to be in sports betting, “a quintessential form of gambling” that would put it out of the purview of the federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission. He noted that Kalshi has run ads describing itself as “the first app for legal sports betting.”
“It is difficult, then, to conclude that Congress intended to upend its decades of careful regulation of gambling based on broad definitions of the words used in a Wall Street Reform Bill,” Nelson wrote in his ruling. “The CFTC is not a national gambling regulator. No one suggested it was until over a decade after the law was passed.”
The Trump administration has fought to keep states from regulating prediction markets, arguing that the CFTC is in charge. Donald Trump Jr., the president’s son, told Republican state attorneys general at a meeting earlier this year to back off any action against businesses like Kalshi and Polymarket. The lack of clarity over what laws govern prediction markets, which include betting on political and international events in addition to sports, has already proven to be a major problem.
Nevada’s win on Friday is one of several legal actions launched by both Republican and Democratic state governments against prediction markets, with 20 states in litigation over whether prediction markets fall under sports gambling laws. In July, 44 states signed a letter calling prediction markets a “new form of casino” endangering young people. In March, Arizona became the first state to criminally charge Kalshi for allowing people to bet on elections and “operating an illegal gambling business.”
In April, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia ruled against the state of New Jersey’s attempt to regulate prediction markets, setting up conflicting rulings and increasing the likelihood that the Supreme Court will address oversight of prediction markets in the near future.
President Donald Trump flew to Texas Friday to award the Artemis II team with the Congressional Space Medal of Honor—but still managed to make the event all about him.
After making the team wait on stage for him for half an hour, the president began his meandering speech by recounting his experience watching the launch earlier this year during a “very important meeting with the biggest people in the country, maybe some of the biggest people in the world.”
Trump briefly addressed the day’s honorees—Reed Weisman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hanson, who would soon receive the highest U.S. space award— before rambling about how he’d inherited his love of space “genetically” from his uncle.
“He loved space, he used to tell me about space, space, all space,” Trump said. “He would throw in the word nuclear every once in a while. He loved space. So I guess we have, genetically, we sort of, I believe in that stuff. I love it. I find it so interesting.”
While musing that he “shouldn’t get political,” Trump shouted-out several Republican politicians in attendance, including Senator Ted Cruz, Representative Brian Babin, Representative Jake Ellzey, and Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, who was Trump’s state campaign chairman during the last three elections.
As the president turned back to his prepared remarks the room remained awkwardly silent, not bothering to applaud.
Trump is speaking to complete silence at the NASA center. Not a single person is applauding or reacting to anything he says during his brazenly partisan speech. pic.twitter.com/imGiKtzwt6
complete silence at the NASA center as Trump brags about the stock market and touts fake foreign investment numbers. just a brutally awkward speech that is going over like farts in church pic.twitter.com/INpdhi6gv7
