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Arizona’s criminal case against Kalshi was halted by a federal judge after the Trump administration stepped in

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A judge on Friday ordered Arizona’s attorney general to temporarily pause its criminal case against Kalshi, handing a win to the Trump administration in its effort to stop states from regulating prediction markets.

Federal Judge Michael Liburdi’s decision to back the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission in the case came at the end of a hectic week of arguments in which a lawyer for the federal regulator said a state criminal case would be a “flawed” way to settle hotly contested questions about whether prediction markets can list sports, politics, and other controversial markets.

State prosecutors filed 20 charges of illegal betting and election betting against Kalshi last month. The charges, all misdemeanors, characterize Kalshi’s contracts as the kind of bets that are either prohibited under Arizona law or require a state gambling license. The criminal case also had the effect of halting a federal challenge that Kalshi had filed to Arizona’s regulatory power.

Then the CFTC stepped in, suing Arizona and two other states earlier this month. The state on Friday argued that Congress never meant to let swaps that bear many similarities to sports bets take place on federally regulated exchanges. Liburdi issued an order that will prevent Arizona from moving forward with a criminal arraignment of Kalshi that had been scheduled for Monday.

“I will enter a temporary restraining order,” the judge said, granting the CFTC’s request to halt the state’s prosecution. He didn’t immediately state what the specific provisions of the order would be, but lawyers for the attorney general agreed to show up to criminal court first thing Monday and ask for their case against Kalshi to be paused.

Robert J. DeNault, a senior lawyer at Kalshi, hailed the decision on X, calling it “a step in the right direction.”

The CFTC’s leader, Michael Selig, has posted videos and made the rounds of podcasts in recent weeks to defend his agency’s authority to regulate prediction markets. The Trump administration has generally applied a light regulatory touch on the industry.

“Arizona’s decision to weaponize state criminal law against companies that comply with federal law sets a dangerous precedent, and the court’s order today sends a clear message that intimidation is not an acceptable tactic to circumvent federal law,” Selig said in a statement after the ruling.

Prediction markets like PredictIt, Kalshi, and Polymarket have existed for years, but they experienced a surge in usage around the 2024 election.

Since Donald Trump returned to office, Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., has become a paid advisor to Kalshi, and an investment firm he works for invested in Polymarket. Kalshi also began hosting sports-related markets, which it had not done during the Biden administration.

Federal law prohibits commodities markets related to things like war, assassination, and “gaming,” but the specific meanings of those terms have been debated in court.

Many states, but especially those where the traditional gambling industry holds sway, like Nevada and New Jersey, have argued that the contracts on prediction markets relating to sports, and sometimes politics, are illegal. Some members of Congress have also proposed new laws to regulate prediction markets.




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These companies want their tariff money back from the Trump administration, and they’re suing

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BYD’s lawsuit marks the first from a Chinese carmaker against Trump’s tariffs.

The EV giant filed the suit on February 9 and detailed nine executive orders related to trade that affected the company, including tariffs on cars, auto parts, aluminum, steel, and exports from China.

In the complaint, BYD wrote that it is seeking a refund of “all IEEPA tariffs paid to date” and “all IEEPA tariffs that may be paid in the future.”

The company also said that aside from China, its imports into the US from Canada, Germany, Mexico, and Poland were also affected.

The Chinese carmaker does not sell passenger cars in the US, but its business here includes buses, commercial vehicles, batteries, energy storage systems, and solar panels. According to its website, the company’s truck plant in Lancaster, California, employs 750 workers.




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The Trump administration pauses the green card lottery program

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  • Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the Trump administration would pause the diversity visa lottery.
  • In an X post, she said the suspect in the Brown and MIT shootings had entered through the program.
  • The green card lottery program issues about 55,000 visas a year.

Kristi Noem, the Secretary of Homeland Security, says the Trump administration would pause the diversity visa lottery program in the wake of the Brown University and MIT shootings.

In an X post on Thursday, Noem said that the man wanted in connection to the Brown University shooting had entered the US in 2017 through the program, commonly known as the green card lottery.

She added that President Donald Trump had long opposed the lottery.

“At President Trump’s direction, I am immediately directing USCIS to pause the DV1 program to ensure no more Americans are harmed by this disastrous program,” she wrote.

The diversity visa entry program offers 55,000 visas a year to people from countries with low rates of immigration to the US. It’s a multi-step process that includes an interview and medical examination.

Valente, a Portuguese national and former Brown University student, was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in a New Hampshire storage facility, officials said in a press conference on Thursday.

In addition to killing two and wounding several others in the Brown University shooting, officials said they also believed he is connected to the killing of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor earlier this week.




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