FOIAengine: Requests Pile Up, As State and Federal Lawmakers Square Off
Months before the regulatory chaos around prediction markets exploded into courtrooms, state houses, and the White House, sophisticated observers were already paying attention.
More than 170 federal FOIA requests in FOIAengine show journalists, hedge funds, law firms, competitors and advocacy groups probing companies such as Kalshi, Robinhood, Coinbase, Gemini and PredictIt as Washington quietly debated the future of prediction markets.
We’ve been watching the FOIA requests pile up. See, for example, our March 18 story, “Kalshi and Polymarket Targeted by Journalists.”
But now, with states suing to stop the industry, the CFTC asserting exclusive federal authority, and Kalshi preparing to enter the global market for perpetual futures, those requests look less like isolated inquiries and more like early warning signs of the legal and regulatory wrangling that quickly overwhelmed lawmakers.
In a June 3 CNBC interview, Senate Banking Committee member Dave McCormick (R-Pa) called the current situation, driven largely in response to the aggressive moves by Kalshi, “the Wild West.”
As state attorneys general race to shut down prediction markets they view as illegal gambling, the federal government is increasingly doing the opposite.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission – which has sided with companies like Kalshi in court and sued states that attempted to block federally regulated event contracts – is advancing a proposed rule, currently under review at the White House, that could strengthen Washington’s control over one of the fastest-growing corners of modern finance.
Perhaps more important than the pending rule itself was CFTC Chairman Michael Selig’s repeated defense of the agency’s authority over prediction markets during a cable news interview earlier this week.
“I do believe that Congress was very clear that the CFTC is the exclusive regulator,” Selig said.
McCormick echoed that same party line the following day. “I think the CFTC’s purview here is clear. I think the CFTC should be the primary regulator.”
That concept – federal exclusivity – lies at the heart of the current legal conflict.
In an interview last month with Barron’s, Gary Gensler, who served in the Obama Administration as chairman of the CFTC before becoming chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission during the Biden years, took the opposite position.
“I never once ever heard a member of Congress or their staffs suggest that the law they were writing, acting upon, and voting on [to enable prediction markets] was for our little agency, the CFTC, to have oversight over sports betting,” Gensler said.
Selig and McCormick dismissed Gensler’s comments.
“Gary Gensler, also the man who said every crypto asset is a security,” said CFTC’s Selig. “I think he has a little bit of trouble reading statutes. But I will say that the statute’s very clear.”
“I don’t take Gary Gensler as the source of clarity and integrity on this particular question,” Sen. McCormick said the following day. (Extra credit: See our November 29, 2023 story, “Who Doesn’t Like Gary Gensler.”)
Meanwhile, also this week, Kalshi revealed that it is preparing to launch perpetual futures contracts, starting with crypto perpetuals on more than a dozen currencies – a product that could dramatically expand the market beyond sports and election predictions. Unlike traditional futures contracts, perpetual futures have no expiration date. Widely used in global crypto markets, they allow traders to hedge risks or speculate on price movements continuously without rolling from one contract to the next.
In its May 29 press release announcing what it called a “next-gen derivatives exchange,” Kalshi said offshore perpetual futures trading has grown from $28 trillion in annual volume in 2023 to more than $90 trillion in 2025 – all offshore – making it one of the fastest-growing segments of the global derivatives market.
“This marks Kalshi’s evolution from prediction market leader to next-gen derivatives exchange,” said Tarek Mansour, CEO of Kalshi. “Onshore, safe, and regulated perps will improve capital allocation and risk management for countless American businesses.”
The press release added that Kalshi’s platform would be “fully regulated by the CFTC.”
Kalshi’s brash move comes on the heels of what is already an extraordinary regulatory clash. States are trying to stop prediction markets, while Washington appears to be building a national framework for them.
During his CNBC interview, CFTC’s Selig repeatedly contrasted the Trump Administration’s approach with what he described as the “regulation by enforcement” tactics of the Biden administration.
Selig also defended the agency’s controversial decision to join Gemini Trust, the cryptocurrency company founded by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, in seeking to vacate portions of a 2025 consent order, entered days before Joe Biden left the presidency, requiring Gemini to pay a $5 million civil penalty. In a May 27 press release, the CFTC said it had conducted a comprehensive review and concluded that the underlying complaint “should not have been filed” and would not have been brought under current enforcement standards.
State attorneys general from around the country have launched legal challenges against Kalshi, whose sports-event contracts are the focal point of a national debate over the line between derivatives trading and gambling. At the same time, the CFTC is pursuing its own litigation against several states, arguing that Congress gave the agency exclusive authority over these products.
The political stakes extend beyond the CFTC itself. Last year, Donald Trump Jr. joined the advisory board of prediction-market platform Polymarket, while 1789 Capital — the investment firm backed by Trump Jr. and other allies of the president — invested in the company.
The White House’s current review of a CFTC proposal governing prediction markets has attracted scrutiny not only because of its potential impact on Kalshi, Robinhood and other exchanges, but also because members of the president’s orbit have direct financial and advisory ties to one of the industry’s fastest-growing players.
For years, prediction markets occupied a niche corner of finance, attracting election forecasters, academics and a small cadre of derivatives traders. Today they sit at the center of one of Washington’s most consequential regulatory battles – one that could determine whether a new class of financial products is governed by state gambling regulators or by the federal government.
The conflict is unfolding on multiple fronts at once. That possibility may help explain a signal emerging from federal Freedom of Information Act requests. As readers of this space know, we view FOIA requests to the federal government as early warnings of bad publicity, litigation to come, or uncertainties to be hedged and gamed out.
Long before the latest lawsuits, rulemakings, and product launches, sophisticated observers appeared to sense that something important was happening.
One of them was New York Times investigative reporter Sharon LaFraniere.
LaFraniere, whose investigative beat is the Trump Administration, filed a FOIA request with the CFTC on January 20, 2026 — months before the newspaper published a scathing investigative story about upheaval inside the agency. The story, which ran on the front page of the Sunday newspaper on May 17 with the headline “Watchdog Is Steamrolled By Industries It Regulates,” was co-bylined with David Yaffe-Bellany, who covers the crypto industry for the Times.
The two reporters described the CFTC as an agency that has undergone dramatic changes in leadership, philosophy and priorities. The article portrayed an increasingly aggressive battle over the future of prediction markets and the role the agency should play in regulating them.
LaFraniere’s FOIA request to the CFTC sought records involving then-Commissioner, and later acting chairman, Caroline Pham containing terms such as Kalshi, Polymarket, Gemini, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, former CFTC commissioner Brian Quintenz, and cryptocurrency exchanges OKX and KuCoin. “By records,” LaFraniere wrote, “I mean any written or recorded material including calendar invites and notations, memoranda, notes, letters, directives, orders, votes, email correspondence and text messages including those sent over Signal, WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack and Google Chat.”
LaFraniere told the agency the records were needed to “help inform the general public of matters of urgent public interest regarding the operation, policies, and role of the CFTC at a time of dramatic change when Congress is poised to reshape the agency’s authority.”
In retrospect, LaFraniere’s FOIA request reads almost like a roadmap to many of the issues now dominating the prediction-market debate: the growing influence of Kalshi and Polymarket, the role of crypto-market participants, the industry’s connections to former regulators, and the broader question of how the CFTC’s authority may evolve under new leadership.
LaFraniere’s request is one of many prediction-market-related FOIA requests in FOIAengine, which tracks FOIA requests in as close to real-time as their availability allows. Those requests for records about various prediction-market players are directed not just to the CFTC.
Other agencies and departments receiving prediction-market FOIA requests include the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Justice Department, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Comptroller of the Currency. The requests target not only Kalshi, but also Coinbase, Robinhood, Gemini, ForecastEx, Interactive Brokers, PredictIt, North American Derivatives Exchange and numerous other firms connected to the rapidly evolving prediction-market ecosystem.
The requesters include journalists, law firms, investment firms, advocacy groups and competitors — precisely the types of actors who often begin seeking government records when they believe a significant regulatory or market shift is underway.
Many of the requests do not focus exclusively on sports betting or election markets. Instead, they seek information about exchange approvals, regulatory communications, enforcement matters, market structure questions and the broader ecosystem of firms positioning themselves around prediction markets.
In retrospect, those requests may have been early indicators that sophisticated observers understood something that the broader public did not.
Taken together, the latest developments suggest that the debate is no longer simply about betting on elections or sporting events. It is increasingly about whether Washington is building the regulatory architecture for an entirely new federally supervised financial marketplace.
The fight over prediction markets is not simply a fight over gambling.
It is a fight over who will regulate a new category of financial products, who will profit from them, and whether the federal government is preparing to create a national market structure that reaches far beyond Kalshi itself.
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Upcoming: Signals that foretold this week’s guilty verdict in Los Angeles federal court against short seller Andrew Left, and what comes next. Also, the latest and most important FOIA requests to the Food and Drug Administration
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John A. Jenkins, co-creator of FOIAengine, is a Washington journalist and publisher whose work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, GQ, and elsewhere. He is a four-time recipient of the American Bar Association’s Gavel Award Certificate of Merit for his legal reporting and analysis. He is the author of The Partisan: The Life of William Rehnquist. His latest book, Summer of ’71: Five Months That Changed America, about the fateful year before Watergate, will be out on June 30. Click here to watch the official book trailer. Jenkins founded Law Street Media in 2013. Prior to that, he was President of CQ Press, the textbook and reference publishing enterprise of Congressional Quarterly. FOIAengine is a product of PoliScio Analytics (PoliScio.com), a new venture specializing in U.S. political and governmental research, co-founded by Jenkins and Washington lawyer Randy Miller. Learn more about FOIAengine here. To review FOIA requests mentioned in this article, subscribe to FOIAengine.
Write to John A. Jenkins at JAJ@PoliScio.com.