The Senate passed a bipartisan resolution Thursday banning all 100 of its members, and their staff, from placing bets on prediction markets, a move that took effect the moment the voice vote concluded. Not a single senator objected. The unanimous result came just one week after a U.S. special forces soldier was charged with using classified information to wager on the capture of Venezuelan then-president Nicolas Maduro.
The speed and unanimity are notable in a chamber that rarely agrees on anything. But when the question is whether lawmakers with access to sensitive national-security and economic information should be allowed to profit from that access on betting platforms, even Washington managed to find the obvious answer.
Sen. Bernie Moreno, the Ohio Republican who sponsored the resolution, framed the issue in blunt terms. The Associated Press reported his remarks on the Senate floor:
"United States senators have no business engaging in speculative activities like prediction markets while collecting a taxpayer-funded paycheck, period."
The resolution amends Senate rules to prohibit members from entering agreements or transactions involving payment or delivery based on an event's outcome, Just The News reported. Because it was written as an internal rules change rather than legislation, it required no House vote and no presidential signature. It simply went into force.
The original measure applied only to senators. Sen. Alex Padilla, a California Democrat, offered an amendment that broadened the ban to cover Senate staff as well. The chamber adopted it without opposition.
That expansion matters. Capitol Hill staffers routinely handle classified briefings, draft legislation with market-moving implications, and sit in on closed-door negotiations. If the concern is insider-informed betting, limiting the prohibition to the 100 people whose names appear on ballots would have left a far larger pool of potential bad actors untouched.
The bipartisan nature of the vote stands in contrast to the kind of contentious overnight Senate clashes that have defined recent sessions. On prediction markets, at least, both parties found common ground.
Two recent episodes accelerated the push. First, a U.S. special forces soldier was charged with using classified information to bet on the January capture of Maduro. The details of that case put a sharp point on the insider-trading risk: a government employee with access to operational intelligence allegedly turned it into cash on a betting platform.
Second, the Associated Press reported earlier this month that a group of new accounts on Polymarket, a prediction-market platform that has drawn scrutiny for facilitating offshore trades beyond the reach of U.S. regulators, made highly specific, well-timed bets on whether the United States and Iran would reach a ceasefire on April 7. Those bets resulted in hundreds of thousands of dollars in profits for the new customers.
The AP report landed with enough force that the White House issued a warning to its own staff on the same day, cautioning against using private information to trade on prediction markets. The Senate resolution followed within weeks.
Lawmakers voiced particular concern about public wagers tied to war and national security. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, called the ban a "no-brainer" and urged the House and the Trump administration to follow suit:
"We must never allow Congress to turn into a casino where members representing the public can gamble on wars or economic crises or elections. That would destroy the very principle of representative government."
The Senate resolution covers only senators and their staff. It does not reach House members, executive-branch officials, or the military. Sens. Todd Young, an Indiana Republican, and Elissa Slotkin, a Michigan Democrat, have introduced a separate bill that would ban all federally elected officials and government employees from using insider information to make prediction market bets.
Young called the resolution "a good first step" and encouraged the Senate to take up the broader legislation. That bill would require passage through both chambers and a presidential signature, a far higher bar than an internal rules change.
Whether the House acts remains an open question. The lower chamber has shown less urgency on ethics restrictions in recent sessions, and the ongoing friction between Senate Republicans and House leadership on other priorities could slow momentum.
The ban arrives at a complicated moment for prediction markets. The Trump administration has been a key ally of the industry in a legal fight with states seeking to ban the platforms. Donald Trump Jr. serves as an adviser for both Polymarket and its chief rival, Kalshi. And Trump's own Truth Social platform is launching a cryptocurrency-based prediction market called Truth Predict.
President Trump himself acknowledged the tension this month. NBC Chicago reported his remarks:
"The whole world, unfortunately, has become somewhat of a casino, and you look at what's going on all over the world and Europe and every place, they're doing these betting things."
None of that changes the basic principle the Senate endorsed Thursday. Prediction markets may be legal. They may even be useful as information tools. But the people who write the laws, set foreign policy, and receive classified briefings have no business placing bets whose outcomes they can influence, or whose results they learn before the public does.
Moreno celebrated the unanimous result. "Proud to say my bill to ban members of Congress from insider trading on prediction markets just passed the Senate UNANIMOUSLY!" he said, adding: "Serving in Congress is an honor, not a side hustle. Americans deserve to know that their leaders are here for the right reason!"
What the resolution does not spell out is how the ban will be enforced. The Senate Ethics Committee presumably has jurisdiction, but the resolution's text, at least as publicly described, does not detail specific penalties for violations. Senate rules changes carry the weight of chamber discipline, not criminal law.
That gap matters. The Senate already prohibits insider stock trading under the STOCK Act, yet compliance has been uneven and enforcement rare. A prediction-market ban without teeth risks becoming another rule honored mainly in the breach. The broader Young-Slotkin bill, if it ever reaches a vote, could address that shortcoming by attaching statutory penalties.
The chamber's track record on self-policing is not exactly inspiring. But the unanimous vote at least removes the argument that the rules permit the behavior. From here, the question is whether anyone is watching, and whether the Senate's appetite for restricting its own members extends beyond a single voice vote.
The House has not signaled plans to adopt a parallel ban. Schumer's call for action there and at the White House sets up a political test: will the other half of Congress and the executive branch match the Senate's standard, or will they leave the door open for officials with nonpublic information to keep placing bets?
For taxpayers, the stakes are straightforward. Government employees, elected or otherwise, who profit from information the public cannot access are not entrepreneurs. They are insiders enriching themselves at the expense of the people they serve. The Senate, for once, said so plainly and without dissent.
The real test of that principle, as always in Washington, is whether it survives contact with the next news cycle, and the next legislative standoff that makes ethics reform feel like a luxury.
A hundred senators agreed that betting on wars, captures, and ceasefires with inside knowledge is wrong. Now the question is whether the rest of the government has the same common sense, or the same shame.
