Sponsors (5)
The bill reduces insider-trading risks and increases transparency around event-contract trading by public officials, but does so at the cost of added compliance and enforcement expenses (borne by agencies and taxpayers), privacy exposure for families, regulatory uncertainty, and financial penalties for covered individuals.
Federal officials (Members of Congress, the President, the Vice President, and senior executive-branch officials) are barred from trading event contracts tied to matters they handle personally, reducing conflicts of interest and strengthening public trust in government decision-making.
Federal employees and covered officials (and in some cases close relatives) must make timely, standardized public disclosures of event-contract transactions within set deadlines (30–45 days), enabling watchdogs, media, and ethics offices to detect conflicts sooner and speed enforcement or recusals.
The CFTC is required to adopt rulemaking and reporting requirements for event contracts and for foreign boards of trade, increasing market oversight and transparency of these products and foreign trading venues.
Taxpayers and the federal budget may face increased administrative and oversight costs to process, monitor, and enforce the new reporting requirements (Office of Government Ethics and related agencies will need resources).
Covered federal officials must track and report event-contract trades within a 30–45 day window, creating recurring compliance burdens and administrative time costs for those employees.
Foreign boards of trade face new quarterly compliance-reporting obligations and risk of registration revocation for noncompliance, increasing costs for foreign trading venues and potentially reducing market access or liquidity for U.S. participants.
Based on analysis of 6 sections of legislative text.
Bans covered officials from trading event contracts, requires disclosure of such trades, mandates market reporting, and authorizes civil penalties.
Official title: Amend the Commodity Exchange Act to ban certain Government officials from trading event contracts, and for other purposes.
Introduced March 5, 2026 by Jeff Merkley · Last progress March 5, 2026
Prohibits the President, Vice President, Members of Congress, and certain senior executive branch officials from buying, selling, or otherwise exchanging event contracts (prediction-market style contracts) and requires public financial disclosure of any such transactions by covered officials and their spouses/dependent children. It authorizes civil penalties and enforcement by the Attorney General, requires foreign boards of trade to report violations to the CFTC, and directs the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to issue rules limiting use of material nonpublic information and to require designated markets to block transactions by specified individuals.