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The prediction markets industry has intensified its presence in Washington, and the timing is notable. On May 22, Kalshi backed the launch of Americans for Fair Markets (AFM), a new advocacy organization, and announced that Taylor Budowich, former White House Deputy Chief of Staff under President Donald Trump, would serve as its strategic adviser.
The announcement landed on the same day the House Oversight Committee opened a formal investigation into insider trading practices at both Kalshi and Polymarket.
Budowich most recently served as deputy chief of staff for communications and personnel in the Trump White House, where he oversaw strategic messaging, media operations, speechwriting, cabinet affairs, and the Office of Public Liaison. His responsibilities spanned some of the administration’s most consequential early moments, including the rollout of Liberation Day tariffs, the launch of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), and responses to trade disputes with China.
Before joining the White House, Budowich founded and directed MAGA Inc., a pro-Trump super political action committee that raised and spent hundreds of millions on advertising and voter mobilization during the 2024 presidential campaign. He served in the White House from January to September 2025, departing before the administration’s first year was complete. He has since established The Sovereign Advisors, a Washington public affairs and crisis communications firm, and now arrives at the AFM with a contact book and political positioning that very few lobbyists in any sector can match.
Americans for Fair Markets launched with a clearly stated mission: push back against the gambling industry’s efforts to block federally regulated prediction markets at the state level. AFM plans to wage both paid and earned media campaigns and is positioning itself against sportsbooks and casinos, which Kalshi accused of spreading false narratives about prediction markets to protect their existing market positions.
JUST IN: Prediction market platform Kalshi launched a new advocacy group aimed at pushing back against growing anti-prediction market lobbying efforts in Washington. pic.twitter.com/1bkAjCDqfB
— EyeWhales (@EyeWhales) May 25, 2026
The group’s policy agenda rests on three pillars: federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) oversight of prediction markets, a ban on insider trading, and the preservation of individual decision-making rights for adults. It has also drawn an explicit line between onshore regulated exchanges like Kalshi, which conduct Know Your Customer (KYC) processes, and offshore platforms that operate without oversight. The implicit argument is regulatory arbitrage: If Congress or state legislatures squeeze regulated domestic platforms, demand does not disappear; it migrates to unregulated foreign alternatives.
AFM is also partnering with the Coalition for Prediction Markets, an existing industry group formed in December 2025 with participation from Coinbase, Crypto.com, and Robinhood, while maintaining its own distinct operational framework. The two groups working in parallel create a two-track lobbying structure, with AFM handling the more aggressive, media-forward advocacy and the coalition covering the broader industry coalition.
The adversary Kalshi has identified is organized and credible. The American Gaming Association (AGA), led by former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, has been working to convince state legislators that prediction markets are essentially unregulated gambling wearing a suit. The AGA and the Indian Gaming Association have both lobbied Congress to assert more oversight over sports event contracts specifically, arguing that derivative markets on sporting outcomes threaten state and tribal gaming laws that have taken decades to build.
That framing is one Kalshi is determined to defeat. John Bivona, head of government relations at Kalshi and an AFM board member, said the group would not be outspent or out-organized by entrenched interests protecting their monopolies and argued that millions of Americans have shown they want regulated, open, and fair prediction markets.
House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer announced investigations into insider trading concerns involving both Polymarket and Kalshi on the same day AFM launched. Comer cited suspicious wagers connected to military actions involving Venezuela and Iran, incidents linked to arrests in the United States and Israel in recent months.
The congressional scrutiny gives the lobbying launch an urgency that a quieter political environment would not. Kalshi is not simply trying to expand its regulatory footprint. It is fighting on two fronts simultaneously: against an entrenched gambling lobby at the state level and against a congressional inquiry that, if it produces unfavorable findings, could reshape the CFTC’s posture toward the entire sector.
Kalshi’s political positioning has been deliberately built to avoid appearing captured by one party. Earlier this year, the company hired Stephanie Cutter, a former Obama administration staffer and co-founder of Precision Strategies, as a policy adviser.
The Budowich hire pulls in the opposite direction, giving AFM direct access to the Republican circles that currently control both the White House and Congress.
Donald Trump Jr. serves as an adviser to both Kalshi and Polymarket, a dual role that has drawn attention, given his father’s mixed public statements on the industry.
The industry is betting that bipartisan political infrastructure, a $500-billion market size, and millions of retail users will be sufficient to hold off a well-funded incumbent opposition. Americans for Fair Markets is the vehicle for that wager.
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