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A federal appeals court has handed states a significant win in the fight over prediction markets. The Ninth Circuit ruled against Kalshi, potentially reviving Arizona's prosecution of the platform and raising serious questions about whether federal commodity law can shield these markets from state gambling statutes.
That ruling lands the same week we learn just how deep Kalshi's reach has gone. According to CNN, young adults under twenty one traded five billion dollars on the platform this year alone. That figure is likely to fuel the legal and regulatory pressure building around prediction markets, which have grown fast with relatively little oversight.
Meanwhile, Anthropic scored a courtroom win of a different kind. A federal judge ruled that the Pentagon improperly invoked national security to punish the AI company over its usage policies. The court found the government's justification pretextual, a notable moment in the ongoing tension between AI developers and federal agencies over who gets to set the rules for these systems.
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