What Next - The Feds Won’t Touch Polymarket. She Will.
Slate News
Slate Podcasts
4.5 • 6K Ratings
🗓️ 28 May 2026
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Minnesota’s state restrictions on predictions markets like Kalshi and Polymarket has gotten pushback from an unexpected source: the federal government.
Guest: Rep. Emma Greenman, a member of the Minnesota House of Representatives who authored legislation to restrict prediction markets in the state.
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Podcast production by Evan Campbell, Madeline Ducharme, Patrick Fort, Rob Gunther and Paige Osburn.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | For someone who pays a whole lot of attention to prediction markets, Emma Greenman is not really into gambling, like, at all. |
| 0:15.8 | When is the last time you placed a bet? |
| 0:18.3 | Never. I'm not a gambler. |
| 0:20.4 | Never. You're not a March Madness person. |
| 0:23.1 | Have I done an office pool? Not this year. I missed it. |
| 0:27.6 | To be honest, this makes it kind of sense when you learn what Emma's been up to. |
| 0:32.7 | She's a state representative in Minnesota, which has been called the first state to ban prediction markets, |
| 0:39.6 | sets like Kalshi and Polly Market. |
| 0:42.3 | These platforms are growing fast. |
| 0:45.1 | They processed $25 billion in trading volume in April, which is 10 times more than they did just a year ago. |
| 0:54.5 | You can bet on everything. |
| 0:57.5 | Will Donald Trump attempt the NBA finals? |
| 1:00.9 | Will U.S. confirm that aliens exist? |
| 1:03.4 | Will Jesus Christ return in 27? |
| 1:06.9 | All of these are things you can bet on in these shadowy gambling markets. Yeah, I wonder if as you |
| 1:12.6 | wrote your legislation, you asked your colleagues to show you around these prediction markets at all |
| 1:16.5 | because, like, I noticed one legislator who I think was a co-sponsor with you. He was very familiar |
| 1:24.4 | with Calci in particular. He'd actually been fined by Calci for placing a bet on his own election. |
| 1:30.8 | That came out while we were working on this. |
| 1:33.0 | There were three candidates running for Congress who had placed bets on their own elections. |
| 1:38.7 | We then, the week or two later, we saw campaign staff who had turned out to have been betting on races they were working on. |
| 1:46.6 | I mean, this insider information insider trading is another problem with these gambling markets. |
... |
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