1. United States
2. Va.
3. Letter

Dear Governor, On April 2, 2026, the Trump administration filed lawsuits against Illinois, Connecticut, and Arizona — three states that attempted to regulate prediction market companies Kalshi and Polymarket under their existing gambling laws. The federal government is suing your fellow governors for trying to protect their citizens. I am writing to urge you to stand with those states, enact state-level regulation of prediction markets, and join any legal coalition defending the right of states to protect their own citizens from these largely unregulated betting platforms. Here is why this matters so urgently: Prediction markets allow people to bet billions of dollars per week on real-world events — including war, elections, the deaths of foreign leaders, the extent of famine, and nuclear detonations. After the U.S. launched military strikes on Iran, traders made hundreds of thousands of dollars on Polymarket’s Iran war markets. Lawmakers have been pushing legislation to prevent U.S. officials and military personnel from using classified government intelligence to profit on these platforms — because that risk is real and documented. And who is advising both Kalshi and Polymarket? Donald Trump Jr. — the same president’s son whose venture capital firm just received $670 million in taxpayer funds from his father’s administration. The same administration now suing states to prevent regulation of the industry he profits from. This is not a financial innovation. This is, as one expert put it, a “legal disruption” — companies willing to break laws, develop political power, and bend regulations to fit their business model. Arizona called it what it is: illegal gambling. The Trump administration responded by suing Arizona. Without state regulation, these platforms will continue to operate as insider trading machines that reward those with access to government secrets while ordinary Americans bear the consequences of the wars and crises being wagered on. We urge you to introduce or support state legislation regulating prediction markets, join the legal defense of states’ rights to regulate this industry, and speak out publicly against the federal government’s unprecedented effort to strip states of their consumer protection authority.