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Many state abortion bans include exceptions for rape. How often are they granted?
Dr. Emily Boevers, an OBGYN based in Waverly, Iowa, poses for a portrait at her family’s farm in nearby Tripoli. She says the state’s rape exception requirements threaten the privacy, trust and intimacy of the patient-doctor relationship.
Geoff Stellfox for NPR
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Geoff Stellfox for NPR
After the Supreme Court overturned the federal right to abortion in 2022, many states that banned the procedure did so with the promise that it would still be legal in some circumstances, including in the event of rape. One study estimates that over 64,000 pregnancies have occurred due to rape in the years since the ruling in states where abortion is banned.
But many people on the frontlines of this issue say getting an abortion in these states after an assault is difficult or – in some cases – impossible.
There is no central database that measures abortions performed because of rape. For this story, NPR looked at state records and talked with researchers, advocates and doctors in seven of the 11 states where abortion is banned but legal in the case of rape. Taken together, these accounts show a patchwork of laws governing rape exceptions, confusion over who qualifies for an exemption and law enforcement’s role in that process, and widespread fear from doctors about performing abortions for assault victims.
Many victims aren’t capable of immediately reporting their rapes
It’s all but impossible to know exactly how many abortions are performed because of rape exemptions. When they report the procedure, doctors aren’t required to include a reason. And an abortion could fall under a different exemption – such as a fetal anomaly or life of the mother.
Existing annual data suggests that in many states, the numbers of known abortions performed due to rape are in the single digits or, in some cases, zero.
One reason for that is because in many states, rape victims who want an abortion are required to report their assault to law enforcement. Advocates and medical professionals who work with rape victims say in the aftermath of an attack, there are more immediate issues to consider than abortion laws.
“It’s just too much for them to manage at that point,” says Katy Rasmussen, a nurse who works with assault victims with the Johnson County Sexual Assault Response team in Iowa. The patients she sees are frequently in shock or dealing with the stigma around sexual assault. If alcohol or illegal substances are involved, Rasmussen says, patients may feel shame or even blame themselves.
“Often, sexual assault survivors just want it to be over,” says Kelly Miller, former executive director of the Idaho Coalition Against Sexual and Domestic Violence. “And so having to go through the trauma of reporting, the trauma of a forensic interview, most survivors opt out of all of that.”
Other advocates point out that many patients are experiencing domestic violence when they are raped. That’s what happened to Laurie Betram Roberts. She says she became pregnant years ago after she was raped by someone she lived with. Reporting him and risking his arrest, she says, could have meant losing her housing.
“We shared a residence,” she says. “There was no domestic violence shelter that would take me because my family was too big.”
Bertram Roberts, who has seven children, did eventually disentangle herself from this man. She now works with people in similar situations as part of her job with the Mississippi Reproductive Freedom Fund, a nonprofit that helps people get abortion care in that state.
“There’s a perception of good and bad abortions” among people who defend state abortion bans, Bertram Roberts says. “But the truth is the exemptions are all rhetoric and no practical use.”
Last year in Mississippi, there were zero abortions for any reason, according to a recent report from The Society of Family Planning’s WeCount project.
Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves promised exemptions for rape when the state’s 2022 law went into effect. NPR reached out to Reeves’ office as well as to lawmakers in multiple states who sponsored these bans and to national anti-abortion groups. None of them wanted to speak on the subject of rape exemptions across the country.
One group, Susan B Anthony Pro-Life America, sent NPR a written statement laying blame with doctors and health systems for their confusion and inability to utilize the law. “If there are doctors who are confused about rape exceptions, hospital administrations and health associations should provide clarity,” the statement read.
Some doctors say they feel weaponized and intimidated
Involving law enforcement makes patients and doctors feel like “potential criminals,” says Jessica Tarleton, an obstetrician in South Carolina, where by law, doctors must report abortions performed because of a rape to their local sheriff’s office.
“Somebody comes into the emergency room who’s been shot, we don’t ask them what they did to be in a position to be shot. We take care of the patient,” says Tarleton. She points out that no other kind of medicine demands doctors legally justify care.
“In the past two years,” she says, “I am aware of one one patient that I was associated with that sought a legal abortion under the rape exception.”
Tarleton tries to offer abortion care whenever she legally can. But she says many doctors in this state are scared and feel they don’t have enough support to provide abortions in a place where it feels legally risky. As a result, she says, many distance themselves from the practice altogether.
‘Now I’m the investigator’
Iowa makes it particularly difficult for rape victims to get an abortion, according to doctors and reproductive rights advocates.
This summer, after a long court fight, the state started enforcing a six-week abortion ban, which makes an exception for certain things like rape. But directions from the Iowa Board of Medicine say doctors – before performing an abortion – must determine whether a rape is legitimate or risk legal consequences for noncompliance.
Dr. Emily Boevers says that so far, she hasn’t had to investigate the circumstances around a patient’s rape, but she’s been practicing what she’ll say when that day comes.
Geoff Stellfox for NPR
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Geoff Stellfox for NPR
It’s an unusual level of detail for doctors to collect and document, even among the other 10 states that include exemptions for rape.
“Now I’m the investigator trying to decide if the details of the incident constitute rape as per Iowa Code,” says Dr. Emily Boevers, who works in Waverly, a town of 10,000 in northeastern Iowa. She says these requirements threaten the privacy, trust and intimacy of the patient-doctor relationship. “I’m supposed to maintain a therapeutic, caring relationship with this patient while I query all these details,” Boevers says.
So far, she hasn’t had to investigate the circumstances of assault with a patient, but she’s practicing what she’ll say when that day comes. “Unfortunately, our government mandates that I must ask you some questions,” she plans to say. “If you are able to answer these, I might be able to help you.”
Those who enforce the laws might not always know the laws
In some states, there is little clarity on rape exemptions even among those officials charged with enforcing the laws.
Idaho outlaws abortion with exceptions for rape, incest and when the life of the mother is threatened. To get an abortion, sexual assault victims have to produce a police report for medical providers.
When the state’s ban went into effect in 2022, victim advocates quickly pointed out that law enforcement agencies don’t release police reports until a case is closed – preventing victims from accessing timely care. The following year, the Idaho Legislature amended the bill’s text so that rape victims are entitled to receive, upon request, a copy within 72 hours of the report being made.
But agencies appear to follow these requirements unevenly.
Boise State Public Radio reached out to 56 law enforcement agencies across Idaho about their protocols to assist rape victims since the ban. A handful said they complied with the 72-hour amendment and said their in-house victim advocates were available to help victims throughout their process.
Many others seemed unfamiliar with the amendment. Several public records departments said they would automatically deny requests for copies of a report on an open case, regardless of who made it. One agency realized it hadn’t been complying with the 72-hour law after it went into effect and had unknowingly denied records to rape victims.
Local agencies said they had received no guidance from the state.
Advocates say this murky process compounds a system of reporting that’s already unwelcoming to victims.
“Survivors generally don’t report to these systems that were never created to be centered around survivors in the first place,” says Miller, the former head of the Idaho Coalition Against Sexual and Domestic Violence. “It’s just unrealistic to expect that survivors will access these systems just for the purposes of being able to gain access to an abortion as a result of a pregnancy from a sexual assault.”
State records suggest there were fewer than 10 abortions for any reason last year in Idaho.
Providers of rape-exception abortions often are shielded by big institutions
Only a handful of doctors interviewed for this story reported performing rape exception-abortions with any consistency. Those who did all worked at major academic medical institutions.
Dr. Nisha Verma in Georgia estimates she sees someone who has been raped or experienced incest who meets the exception standard “every couple weeks.”
Verma isn’t an official spokesperson and didn’t want to be identified using her institution’s name. But she says her employer has protocols and task forces to assist doctors in managing their legal risk. That helps mitigate doctors’ fears of losing their medical license, being fined or going to jail.
“At my institution, we have really again worked to create a system that helps us as doctors feel more supported and protected,” Verma says.
But for most people who work with victims, it’s not simply a question of how to get abortion exemptions. Some states, for example, are also constrained by a shortage of providers willing even to deliver babies, let alone perform legally risky procedures.
“The question is,” says Bertram Roberts of the Mississippi Reproductive Freedom Fund, “If you got an exemption in Mississippi, who’s going to perform your abortion?” The state has a significant shortage of obstetricians.
Bertram Roberts says she’s never seen anyone in that state get an exemption – for any reason, let alone rape.
Almost from the moment Hunter was laid to rest, his widow and his son began to feud, over everything from the future of Owl Farm to Juan’s belief that his father had been mistreated by Anita in his last days.
The estrangement deepened with time, and now, Anita’s suspicions have taken the feud to a more pointed place, revealing a long, bitter fight over the legacy of the man who pioneered the personal, participatory style of reporting known as gonzo journalism.
But they were all together the weekend Hunter died.
Juan wrote in his memoir that he was in another room and heard a thump that sounded like a book hitting the floor. Anita was at a health club in Aspen waiting for a yoga class to start. She later told the news media she was on speakerphone with her husband before he shot himself, and heard the “clicking” of the gun.
Looking back, there were signs from that last weekend that Hunter had planned to take his own life, Juan and Jennifer said in interviews.
He insisted on watching one of his favorite movies, “The Maltese Falcon,” with his 6-year-old grandson, Will. He gave away gifts — an old clock that had belonged to his mother and a signed copy of “Fire in the Nuts,” a short book with his frequent collaborator, the artist Ralph Steadman.
“So there is nothing new to know about Hunter’s actual death,” said Juan, 61. “So I do not know why she raised this. And I can’t imagine that the C.B.I. would find anything to act on.”
He and Jennifer said they did not have any role in Hunter’s death. “This is really shocking,” Jennifer said. “It’s been disruptive to our family. It’s obviously been very traumatic to be revisiting this.” She said she believed Anita knew that her husband took his own life, and added, “we hope this brings her closure.”
Jennifer Winkel
Anita had been an assistant to Hunter, and was 35 years younger than him. At the time of his death, they had been married for less than two years — it was Hunter’s second marriage — and that last weekend they fought constantly. In his memoir, Juan wrote that Hunter shot a pellet gun at a gong in the living room the night before he killed himself, just missing Anita, prompting her to threaten to call the police and have him put in a nursing home.
Hunter was also in poor health. He had difficulty moving and suffered occasional seizures, the result of decades of heavy drinking.
“Hunter’s body was giving out,” said Debra Fuller, who worked as an assistant to Hunter and helped manage Owl Farm for almost 20 years before Hunter married Anita. “He was having more difficulty writing as well.”
Hunter had often talked of suicide. Like many of Hunter’s friends, Joe DiSalvo, who was undersheriff of Pitkin County at the time of his death, had conversations with him about how his life would end. He recalled that Hunter would demonstrate his intentions by pointing a loaded gun at his head.
“Hunter talked about suicide,” Mr. DiSalvo said. “He talked about the way he was going to kill himself.”
Federal law enforcement agents confront protesters during a demonstration outside the Bishop Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on Thursday.
Octavio Jones/AFP via Getty Images
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Octavio Jones/AFP via Getty Images
Up to 1,500 U.S. active-duty troops in Alaska are on standby for possible deployment to Minnesota, a U.S. official who was not authorized to speak publicly has confirmed to NPR.
The move comes days after President Trump again threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act to control ongoing protests over the immigration enforcement surge in Minneapolis as well as clashes between federal agents and residents. Trump later walked back that threat.
The troops on standby are from the Army’s 11th Airborne Division, which specializes in cold weather operations, according to the division’s website.
Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said Sunday in an emailed statement to NPR that the “Department of War is always prepared to execute the orders of the Commander-in-Chief if called upon.”
Over the weekend, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz directed the Minnesota National Guard to prepare for possible deployment to assist local law enforcement and emergency management agencies, though they have not been deployed yet.
The Guard said in a Facebook post that these “Minnesota National Guardsmen live, work, and serve in our state, and are focused on protecting life, preserving property, and ensuring Minnesotans can safely exercise their First Amendment rights.” If activated, members would wear yellow reflective vests to “help distinguish them from other agencies in similar uniforms.”
The developments follow days of rising tensions, confrontations and violence stemming from what the Department of Homeland Security has described as its largest operation in history, involving thousands of federal agents, including those from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey told NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday that it would be a “shocking step” if Trump sent the military into the city, too.
“To those that are paying attention, you’ve got to understand how wild this is right now,” Frey said. “In Minneapolis, crime is dramatically down. We don’t need more federal agents to keep people safe. We are safe.”
Joseph Nunn, an attorney at the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program, said the Insurrection Act is a “break-glass-in-case-of-emergency type of tool.” It is meant to be used when civilian authorities are overwhelmed by a crisis, he said, and not simply to quell protests — even violent protests.
“It would be a flagrant abuse of the Insurrection Act” if Trump invoked it now, Nunn said, “unlike anything that’s ever happened before in the history of the country.”
Logan Sudeith, 25, estimates he clocks about 100 hours a week on prediction markets.
Evan Frost for NPR
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Evan Frost for NPR
Ask Logan Sudeith how many bets he places in a week and he’ll laugh. It’s a comical line of questioning for the 25-year-old former financial risk analyst, who estimates he clocks about 100 hours a week on prediction markets Kalshi and Polymarket. After a while, understandably, some of the bets blur together. What are his net profits, though? That’s a number he’s got at the ready.
“Last month, I made $100,000,” said Sudeith, who does most of his trading from his laptop while bed-lounging in his Atlanta apartment. He’s executing so many orders on the sites, he says, that he has no time to cook. So he DoorDashes every meal.
“My last salary was $75,000 a year, so I left my job to trade full time,” he said
Some of his biggest hauls in recent months include lucrative stakes on Time Magazine’s person of the year ($40,236), the most-searched person on Google last year ($11,083) and a wager on the New York City mayoral race ($7,448). And of course, a couple thousand here, a couple thousand there on questions like, how many times will a sports announcer say “air ball”? And will President Trump use the phrase “drill baby drill” at an upcoming press conference? (Traders had $500,000 on the line on this market.)
“I’m not a fan of Trump, though I do spend most of my day listening to him and tracking what he is doing,” said Sudeith, noting that whatever candidate in the next presidential race is the most friendly to prediction markets has his vote. “I could be a single-issue voter. If they’re super-super heavy anti-prediction markets, it would be hard for me to vote for them.”
Sudeith says he made $100,000 last month on prediction market apps.
Evan Frost for NPR
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Evan Frost for NPR
The boom of online prediction markets is being driven by the Sudeiths of the world. He’s one of millions of traders logging on every day to services like Kalshi and Polymarket to place high-dollar and incredibly risky bets on the outcome of the world in real time, whether it’s an award host’s turn of phrase to the number of migrants the U.S. will deport this year.
Much like previous financial crazes around meme stocks and NFTs, true believers view prediction markets through a stick-it-to-the-man prism. It’s a movement against the elite establishment, they say, whether it’s the mainstream media, pollsters or government agencies. This growing group of renegade traders maintain that core truths emerge only after thousands of people express their opinions with their pocketbooks.
“Markets are the most efficient way to get to real information,” Sudeith said. “If you’re watching on election night, I think you’ll know who the winners are before the news can report it.”
While the industry may position itself an alternative to the mainstream, the mainstream is embracing it.
CNN and CNBC have struck deals to incorporate Kalshi prediction markets into coverage. The Wall Street Journal‘s owner, Dow Jones, is partnering with Polymarket, as did the Golden Globe awards this year, with announcers updating viewers on Polymarket odds before every commercial break.
Founders of the prediction markets apps say they enable people to turn their opinion into a financial hedge against things like inflation or a government shutdown, yet skeptics say that is twisty and self-serving logic.
“They are gambling sites no different than FanDuel or DraftKings, a corner bookie, or a casino in Las Vegas,” said Dennis Kelleher, chief executive of Better Markets, a nonprofit that pushes for Wall Street reform.
Kalshi says ‘there’s no house,’ not all agree
Traditional gambling often means wagering against “the house,” where the casino acts like the banker, extracting fees and maintaining a competitive edge.
Prediction markets like Kalshi say they’re different.
Advertisements by the company Kalshi predict a victory for Zohran Mamdani in the New York City mayoral election before the polls closed on Nov. 4, 2025.
Olga Fedorova/AP
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Olga Fedorova/AP
Here’s how they work: A staff member creates “a market,” often after one has been suggested by a user, like what will President Trump say at his next Oval Office briefing?
Then anyone can propose a “strike,” the lingo for a term that’s being bet on, whether, for instance, Trump will say “Greenland,” or “Minnesota,” or some other word or phrase.
Kalshi staff pick what terms will be bet on for both sides of that “yes” and “no” wager.
In order to work, however, there needs to be money on both the “yes” and the “no” side of the market, so Kalshi relies on institutional partners, like the hedge fund Susquehanna International, or everyday users with large enough portfolios to front the cash. This is called being a “market maker.” Kalshi provides financial perks and data access to traders who do this.
But because traders are competing with other traders, Kalshi argues there is no house involved in these transactions.
Several federal lawsuits against Kalshi have challenged this notion, claiming that the Wall Street firms that Kalshi taps are indistinguishable from a traditional “house.”
One suit filed this month in the Northern District of Illinois highlights that the company itself has a separate entity, Kalshi Trading, that supplies cash on the opposite side of trades.
“Thus, Kalshi users are betting against the house exactly the same way it would in a brick-and-mortar casino,” wrote lawyer Russell Busch in the complaint.
Kalshi denies this. Company spokeswoman Elisabeth Diana told NPR that market makers merely price bids and asks and do not have a competitive advantage.
“Market making is completely different from being a house, because a house has monopoly pricing power, whereas market makers compete with thousands of other market makers to take bids,” she said.
The Trump family invests in prediction markets. The administration is taking a friendly policy stance
While the Biden administration sought to rein in this industry, Trump’s regulators are breaking down barriers to allow it to flourish.
More than $2 billion is now traded every week on Kalshi, an amount the company says is 1,000% higher compared to the Biden years.
Polymaket, which was forced in 2022 to shut down in the U.S. for operating as an unlicensed betting site, recently won the Trump administration’s blessing to re-launch in the U.S.
The Trump family is also getting in on the action. The president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., is on the board of Polymarket, and his venture capital firm invests in the company. He is also a “strategic adviser” to Kalshi. Truth Social, the president’s social media site, is planning to launch its own prediction market called Truth Predict.
Donald Trump Jr. speaks during The Bitcoin Conference in Las Vegas on May 27, 2025.
Ian Maule/AFP via Getty Images
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Ian Maule/AFP via Getty Images
The explosive growth and permissive regulatory environment has ignited a debate about the underbelly of an industry that essentially turns many features of modern life into potential monetary wins and losses. Fears persist that when elections, politics and foreign invasions become a gamble that insiders could abuse their access for profit and market odds could influence what actually happens.
Then there’s the most prosaic, but perhaps more immediate worry: That the prediction markets gamify trading with slickly designed apps, one-click checking account deposits and constant push alerts, catering to compulsive online bettors. They’re not unlike other app-based trading platforms, but now almost anything is a potential betting opportunity, which economists and other financial experts say can enable a new generation of gambling addicts.
While individual bets on Kalshi are not public, the app has a leaderboard showcasing top profit winners.
That offers hope to some traders who turn to Discord and Reddit to discuss how losses have set them back.
“I’m down 2000 this week when I was up 1200 last week,” wrote a Kalshi trader who goes by Educational_Pain_407 on Reddit. “Lost it all and keep trying to claw it back. So I don’t know what to tell you but right now I don’t have enough to pay my bills in my bank account so I can’t bet even if I wanted to.”
There are three federal lawsuits against Kalshi seeking class action status alleging the apps have sucked young traders into gambling addiction.
Officials at Kalshi have said if traders “lose their shirt that’s on them,” and even the Reddit user behind on his bills concedes it’s a matter of personal responsibility: “Live and learn and pay for your mistakes. The consequences of being an adult,” he wrote recently.
While online sportsbooks and gambling are nothing new, the rapid speed, volume of cash and ease at which transactions flow across prediction market apps set them apart from other forms of betting, according to legal and financial experts.
“Like sports betting, these platforms can be addictive. It is the adrenaline rush that the target demographic is chasing,” said Melinda Roth, a visiting professor at Washington and Lee University’s School of Law who studies prediction markets. “I do believe this is a looming public health crisis.”
Decoding the lingo: ‘Mogged,’ ‘Fudded,’ ‘PMT’
Evan Semet, 26, is another diehard prediction markets trader who left his salaried position in finance as a quantitative researcher after he started raking in six figures a month on Kalshi.”I don’t feel the need for another job at the moment,” he said.
His first golden ticket came via bets on the number of Transportation Security Agency screenings that happen across a certain period on Polymarket.
Evan Semet quit his job in finance to do prediction market trading full time.
Meredith Nierman/NPR
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Meredith Nierman/NPR
Semet said he set up a dedicated server through Amazon Web Services to host statistical models that he runs to help him decide where to place bets.
“It was pretty modelable,” he said, noting that he leans on the finance savvy he gleaned at a trading firm to make money on predictions. “Most day traders draw some shapes on a chart and think it has some statistical significance but it’s really just astrology,” he said. “They’re old-school gamblers going off of intuition. I try to be driven by statistics.”
To stay tapped in, he’s often toggling between multiple live trades on one screen and following a discussion among other traders on the social network Discord.
Keeping up on what’s happening there requires understanding a hyper-specific type of lingo that’s a blend of Generation Alpha and Gen Z slang, repurposed finance terminology and a grab-bag of other cultural influences from gaming to crypto to the gutter humor of fringe sites like 4chan.
If you’ve been out-maneuvered by another trader, you’ve been “mogged.”
If a market has “fudded,” people are selling their positions out of fear, uncertainty and doubt. A “rulescuck” is someone who is a stickler for the rules of a betting market and will try to win on a technicality.
A “bondsharp” is a well-known community member who frequently puts up money on the other side of a bet.
These are just a handful of the terms required to stay apace of the chats on Discord, where PMTs are often discussing their full port (prediction market trader, and full portfolio, of course).
“It is a good amount of terminology. It’s borrowing lingo and terms from stuff I’ve heard at real trading firms mixed with online pop culture,” Semet said.
“Sometimes I prefer to not look at all and see how I did later,” Semet said.
Meredith Nierman/NPR
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Meredith Nierman/NPR
Prediction market trading can be a compulsive sport for many of them, who admit they can be dopamine junkies. Others prefer to avoid the pressure-cooker feeling of watching a bet win or lose live.
“It’s an antsy, gambling-like feeling watching it all happen live,” Semet said. “It’s intense, almost feels like the fog of war, trying to decide what to do,” he said. “Sometimes I prefer to not look at all and see how I did later.”
How predictions markets got into politics
Kalshi’s big day came, as it were, on Election Day in November 2020.
That’s when they got word that Trump’s Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates futures contracts, greenlit it as a “designated contract market,” a blessing that essentially gave the platform a license to operate as a financial exchange.
It was a long time coming.
For years before that, Kalshi’s co-founders Tarek Mansour and Luana Lopes Lara, former Wall Street traders who met at MIT, had been battling a skeptical CFTC, which had long rejected similar applications over concerns that an events contract platform would operate a type of gambling outside the purview of state gambling commissions. Regulators also feared the bets invited insiders to rig the outcomes of events from sports to elections.
Tarek Mansour, (left) and Luana Lopes Lara are co-founders of Kalshi.
Alexey Yurenev/Bloomberg via Getty Images
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Alexey Yurenev/Bloomberg via Getty Images
As Kalshi hired lawyers and lobbyists leading up to their CFTC approval, another prediction market, where most are betting with cryptocurrencies, Polymarket, was exploding in growth. It, however, had not bothered to even try to receive federal buy-in. The Biden administration shut down the exchange for operating without a license. Now, Polymarket has the CFTC on its side, and is staging a U.S. comeback.
Two developments helped Polymarket’s return: the company acquired a little-known derivatives exchange QCX, which had already obtained CFTC approval. And the Trump administration’s CTFC and Justice Department abandoned investigations into Polymarket.
States, however, are on the attack. Massachusetts has sued to push Kalshi out of the state. Eight other states, including New York, New Jersey and Maryland, have sent the company cease and desist letters alleging that it is operating as an illegal and unlicensed sports gambling site. The motivation is clear: Gambling brings in serious tax revenue for states, while prediction markets bring in none.
For both Kalshi and Polymarket, one of the most controversial areas of prediction market trading is elections, an issue Biden-era regulators took Kalshi to court over.
Under the 1936 Commodity Exchange Act, which was updated in 2008 after the financial crisis, future event contracts cannot involve terrorism, assassinations or “games,” but political betting is not explicitly banned.
The Polymarket prediction market website is seen on a computer screen.
Wyatte Grantham-Philips/AP
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Wyatte Grantham-Philips/AP
Biden administration lawyers argued that placing wagers on races amounted to a game, a word that is not defined at all in the law. Election bets, the regulators contended, could turbocharge the spread of political misinformation and create financial incentives for voters to cast a ballot even when it’s contrary to a voter’s political views.
It also puts the CFTC in the awkward position of having to investigate news, whether real or fabricated, that moves a prediction market. Former CFTC officials told NPR that the agency has never been equipped to be “an election cop.”
The federal appeals court in Washington, D.C. rejected that framing and handed Kalshi a major victory. The court also pointed out that the harm these markets would cause the government was not “concrete” enough.
The Trump administration dropped the appeal, unleashing what is expected to be an unprecedented torrent of prediction market cash into this year’s midterm elections, which is raising alarms among those pushing for stricter regulations on this industry.
“AI, deepfakes, and other nefarious activities to attack candidates could easily impact the betting activity and odds, as well as the actual outcome of elections,” said Kelleher of Better Markets. “They don’t really care who wins or loses. They only care about the volume of bets and driving that volume as high as possible.”
Regulators appear unprepared. The CFTC usually has five commissioners but currently only has one. Meanwhile, Kalshi’s board includes former CFTC Commissioner Brian Quintenz, who was among the officials who gave the platform its federal approval in 2020.
Former CFTC Commissioner Kristin Johnson, who left the agency in 2025, said that lack of commissioners comes on top of high levels of turnover among the most senior staff lawyers.
“We’re essentially asking the CFTC to get involved in engaging and policing an element of our democratic process that we really haven’t thought carefully enough about,” Johnson said.
Insider trading scrutiny grows
Before a U.S. operation ousted Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, one trader on Polymarket banked a nearly half-million-dollar profit on a bet Maduro would not remain president for long.
While the trader’s identity remains a mystery, speculation continues to rattle around the internet about whether the person had insider information. The episode has renewed scrutiny on how the companies ensure bets aren’t rigged.
On Discord, when traders see a large bet placed that immediately stands out as an outlier, cries of “the market is insidered” are common. Proving it is another matter.
As is often the case on the platforms, open-shut evidence of insider trading is elusive. Kalshi requires a government-issued ID to sign up in order to trace any possible market manipulation back to a real person. Polymarket does not, but it has yet to publicly re-launch its U.S. app. Internal and third-party surveillance tools, the companies say, are on the lookout for unusual activity.
Congress has begun to take notice. Following the Maduro trade, Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-NY, and 30 other Democrats, sponsored legislation banning federal officials from using prediction markets to trade on policies or political outcomes using non-public information.
Being up against an insider is always a risk, said full-time prediction markets trader Semet.
“There’s always going to be someone who has more information than you, unless you’re the insider,” he said. “There are certain accounts that miraculously have every single Google and OpenAI release date nailed perfectly, and it’s like, all right, just don’t fade those people,” he said using the slang word for voting against another trader.
Being up against an insider is always a risk, said full-time prediction markets trader Semet.
Meredith Nierman/NPR
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Meredith Nierman/NPR
When asked if he thinks Kalshi and Polymarket are doing enough to combat insider trading, he gave a blunt assessment: “F*** no,” Semet said. “I really don’t think they care.”
“Tailing,” or making a bet joining in on a suspiciously large bet is common on the platforms. Bloomberg on Monday reported on a new tool that allows traders to get alerts when anomalous transactions occur so they can potentially cash in on what could be a winning wager.
From the vantage point of these traders, nearly everything has a trading implication.
And that kind of thinking can fuel conspiratorial theories about why something did or did not happen.
Take, for instance, a recent White House press briefing in which press secretary Karoline Leavitt left the room seconds before hitting 65 minutes. To most, that was unremarkable.
Yet on Kalshi, that looked like a secret message, because many thousands of dollars in bets were at stake that she would cross the 65-minute mark.
The chatter about Leavitt was mentioned on CNBC, which got the attention of traders on Discord, who wondered if this or another incident will ever lead to a PMT, prediction market trader, testifying in Washington about rigging the markets.
“PMT getting called before Congress,” wrote a Discord user, whose handle is “permanent resident of hell,” they added: “Let’s get a market on it.”
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