https://www.washingtonsun.com/influence Influence en-US Thu, 08 Oct 2026 19:03:42 GMT https://www.washingtonsun.com/legal/nfl-kalshi-prediction-markets-supreme-court Kyle Chouinard “This is about protecting game integrity and consumers,” an NFL spokesperson said. Thu, 08 Oct 2026 19:03:42 GMT https://www.washingtonsun.com/legal/nfl-kalshi-prediction-markets-supreme-court The National Football League wants state regulators, not the federal government, to oversee and regulate prediction markets such as Kalshi, the league wrote in a Supreme Court filing Thursday.

The league, noting that “billions of dollars will be bet on NFL games through prediction markets each season,” asked the court to swiftly take up a federal case between Kalshi and New Jersey officials. Last month, New Jersey asked the same of the court.

The case could determine the fate of sports-related prediction markets, which have enjoyed what the NFL called a “laissez-faire approach” to safeguards and rules from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in contrast to state gaming commissions’ often-rigid regulations.

The brief puts the NFL in opposition to the Trump administration, which this year has been suing states attempting to regulate prediction markets. The Trump family also has ties to Kalshi and its largest competitor, Polymarket, since Donald Trump Jr. is an adviser to both.

However, the NFL told The Washington Sun that it does not see the filing as an all-out attack on the burgeoning prediction market industry.

“This is not about the NFL opposing prediction markets,” NFL spokesperson Tim Schlittner said. “This is about protecting game integrity and consumers — just like legalized sports betting.”

Elisabeth Diana, chief of communications at Kalshi, told The Sun that the integrity of its markets is the company’s “top priority.” She said this is reflected in Kalshi’s partnerships with other sports behemoths, including Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League.
Kalshi (2733x3125, AR: 0.87)Diana did not respond when asked whether prediction markets could operate under the legal structure the NFL is pushing for.

In its Supreme Court brief, the NFL disagreed with an earlier decision from the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, where Kalshi successfully argued that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission was the “exclusive regulator” over financial contracts known as “swaps” — in this case, the event contracts traded between users.

The 6th and 9th circuit courts of appeal highlighted that the definition of “swap” has limits: specifically that it “must be inherently associated with a potential financial or economic consequence, not just that the event or contingency have some potential downstream financial consequence,” the brief states.

While Kalshi points to the Dodd-Frank Act giving the CFTC “exclusive jurisdiction” over swaps, the NFL wrote in the brief that it was "inconceivable" Congress’ response to the 2008 financial crisis enabled the “nationwide legalization of sports bets.”

“Any delay from the Court will result in increasing consumer harm and risk to game integrity,” the NFL wrote in the brief. The NFL made up half of prediction markets’ volume on the first Sunday of its season, the league wrote.

The NFL has repeatedly objected to certain sports-related contracts on prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket. In March, NFL chief compliance officer Sabrina Perel wrote a letter to prediction market operators asking that they scrap “objectionable bets,” CNBC reported.

Some were “inherently objectionable,” such as markets allowing contracts on whether an athlete would sustain an injury while others were too easy to manipulate, such as whether a football placekicker would miss a field goal, Perel wrote.

"It is deeply concerning that bets within the objectionable categories that we identified months ago have been and continue to be listed as contracts on exchanges,” Perel wrote in a follow-up last month.

Diana rebuffed the NFL’s framing, writing that the “CFTC is actively policing sports-related markets, which are now listed on every US commodities exchange.”

“The CFTC’s ongoing rulemaking addresses many of the NFL’s supposed concerns,” she wrote. “And those rules sit atop the same comprehensive system of federal enforcement that protects trillions of dollars of transactions in US markets.”]]> https://www.washingtonsun.com/influence/donald-trump-stock-investments-purchases-sales-mcdonalds-palantir Mark Alfred Federal records detail the president’s latest stock and bond spree. Thu, 08 Oct 2026 18:30:06 GMT https://www.washingtonsun.com/influence/donald-trump-stock-investments-purchases-sales-mcdonalds-palantir President Donald Trump made 517 personal trades of stocks, bonds or other financial funds in August, many disclosed past a federal deadline for publicly revealing them.

Trump disclosed a filing published Thursday by the independent Office of Government Ethics.

Trump made some multi-million-dollar adjustments to his portfolio in August, including purchases between $1 million and $5 million each in Microsoft, McDonald’s and Comcast stock.

Those trades are among the 125 that Trump reported late in violation of the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act, which he also violated last month when he separately disclosed 1,156 trades made in July.

Trump added heavily to his position in Meta Platforms; he bought between $5 million and $25 million on Aug. 21, his largest transaction in August. (Federal law only requires officeholders to disclose the value of each trade in broad ranges, not exact amounts.)

That same day, Trump ditched a slate of computer chip stocks — AMD, Nvidia, Broadcom and Microchip — and hardware and cybersecurity companies including Dell, CDW, Fortinet, Datadog, CrowdStrike, Vertiv and Ciena.

Those sales coincided with Trump’s purchases in the media, oil and telecommunications sectors, with buys in Chevron, ConocoPhillips, AT&T, Netflix, Disney and General Mills. The AT&T and Netflix purchases were each valued at between $1 million and $5 million.

A White House spokesperson previously told The Washington Sun that “President Trump’s stock and bond portfolio is independently managed by third-party financial institutions.”

Trump, however, personally signs off on his financial disclosures, indicating that he is personally aware of trades being made on his behalf and what stocks and bonds he owns.

The president has routinely bought and sold stocks of companies who do significant business with, or are heavily regulated by, the federal government. On Thursday, Trump accused Microsoft and Adobe — he owned stock in both companies, as of Aug. 31 — of fraud and barred them from receiving access to new green cards for foreign workers.

Trump’s Intel transaction, a sale valued at between $100,000 and $250,000, comes as the federal government has purchased a 10% stake in the company — an arrangement made by the Trump administration.

Trump bought between $1 million and $5 million in unsecured SpaceX corporate bonds. SpaceX has received billions of dollars in government contracts since Trump took office last year despite the president’s on-again, off-again relationship with its trillionaire owner, Elon Musk.

Trump is a big trader of health care stocks. In August, he bought shares in drug, vaccine and health device manufacturers — Pfizer, Moderna, Abbott, Medtronic, Stryker and Boston Scientific — while selling insurers such as UnitedHealth, Cigna and Alignment Healthcare.

The president also sold shares of Versant Media Group, the parent company of MS NOW, one of the networks Trump has tried to bar from the White House.]]>