End Prediction Market Corruption Act Bans Congress and Executive Leaders from Betting on Political Outcomes with $10,000 Penalties

The End Prediction Market Corruption Act targets the growing world of 'event contracts'—essentially financial bets on whether specific things will happen, like election results or policy changes. The bill creates a hard line by banning the President, Vice President, and all Members of Congress from buying, selling, or exchanging these contracts entirely (Sec. 2). For senior executive branch officials, the rules are more surgical: they can’t trade contracts that overlap with their official duties. This is designed to stop the people making the news from profiting off their inside knowledge of how that news will break.

Closing the Information Loophole

Beyond the flat-out ban for top leaders, the bill tackles the 'insider' problem for the rest of the government. It directs the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to write new rules specifically to stop people from using material nonpublic information—the kind of secrets you only hear in closed-door meetings—to make a buck on event markets (Sec. 2). If a Member of Congress or the President breaks these rules, the Attorney General can hit them with a civil lawsuit. The penalty is no joke: they’ll have to pay back every cent of profit they made or $10,000 per violation, whichever is higher.

Receipts and Paper Trails

To make sure these rules actually stick, the bill adds some heavy-duty paperwork requirements. High-level officials, including candidates for office and judges, must now disclose any event contract trades made by themselves, their spouses, or their dependent children (Sec. 3). They have to file a report within 30 days of being notified of a trade, and no later than 45 days after the trade happens. This means if a lawmaker’s spouse bets on a specific regulatory outcome, it won’t stay a secret for long. It’s the same kind of transparency we expect for stock trades, applied to the world of political gambling.

Global Oversight and Enforcement

The bill also looks beyond U.S. borders to 'foreign boards of trade.' These are international platforms where Americans might try to place bets to dodge local laws. Under this act, these foreign platforms must submit quarterly reports to the CFTC flagging any trades that violate the U.S. ban (Sec. 2). If a foreign platform decides to look the other way and fails to report these violations, the CFTC has the power to revoke their registration. This puts the burden on the platforms to help police the system, making it much harder for a government official to hide a shady bet on a server halfway around the world.