After an anonymous Polymarket user cashed out with over $400,000 on a trade related to the operation to depose Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, concerns were raised that the bet was placed using insider information. Now in a release seen by ReadWrite, Representative Ritchie Torres has introduced the Public Integrity in Financial Prediction Markets Act of 2026 into the House of Representatives, gaining support from 30 Members of Congress.

Ritchie Torres speaks on camera about alleged insider trading on prediction markets. Credit: Rep. Ritchie Torres / Instagram

The bill would prohibit federal elected officials, political appointees, Executive Branch employees, and congressional staff from buying, selling, or exchanging prediction market contracts tied to government policy, government action, or political outcomes when they are privy to non-public information or could reasonably obtain such information through their work.

Kalshi CEO, Tarek Mansour, previously said he would support a bill that would ban government officials from using prediction markets.

Congress support comes from the left

Support for the bill comes from the Democrats, with co-sponsors including Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi among many others.

“The most corrupt corner of Washington DC may well be the intersection of prediction markets and the federal government, where insider trading and self-dealing are no longer imagined risks but demonstrated dangers,” said Representative Torres. “We ignore this plain-sight corruption at our own peril. Imagine, for a moment, a member of the Trump Administration were to place a bet predicting an event like the removal of Nicolás Maduro.

“As both a government insider and a participant in the prediction markets, that individual would face a perverse incentive to personally push policies that line his pockets. Prediction-market profiteering by government insiders must be prohibited – period.”

Torres went on to specifically mention President Donald Trump “using crypto to enrich himself and his family“.

“There is reason to fear that Trump or his associates could do the same when it comes to prediction markets,” he continued. “No elected official is elected to profit from elected office. Government is not a for-profit enterprise; it is a public trust. It does not belong to the elected officials. It belongs to the people who elect them.”

In light of recent betting activity surrounding the capture of President Nicolás Maduro, I have serious concerns about @Polymarket’s ability, and willingness, to comply with @CFTC regulations.

I am demanding answers from Polymarket CEO @shayne_coplan regarding the safeguards… pic.twitter.com/fHpjLpsykG

— Dina Titus (@repdinatitus) January 9, 2026

At the same time, Democratic Rep. Dina Titus, who’s been pushing to reform gambling laws through her FAIR BET Act, sent a letter to Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan asking some tough questions. She wants to know what safeguards the company has in place to stop insider trading and make sure its markets are being run fairly and transparently.

In the correspondence, she wrote: “In the days leading to Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s capture, traders on Polymarket placed sizable wagers on a contract predicting whether Maduro would leave office before the end of January 2026. One wager, reportedly of $32,000, resulted in profits exceeding $400,000. While it remains unclear whether these wagers constituted insider trading, their timing raises serious questions and highlights the need for robust surveillance, compliance, and enforcement mechanisms.”

Featured image: Polymarket / Wikimedia Commons licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

The post Congress members back bill banning insider prediction markets appeared first on Our Story Insight.

Kelly is a former librarian and a long-time blogger at STACKED. She’s the editor/author of (DON’T) CALL ME CRAZY: 33 VOICES START THE CONVERSATION ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH and the editor/author of HERE WE ARE: FEMINISM FOR THE REAL WORLD. Her next book, BODY TALK, will publish in Fall 2020. Follow her on Instagram @heykellyjensen.

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Utah passed one of the strictest bills related to books in public schools in 2024. House Bill 29 (HB 29) allows parents to challenge books they deem “sensitive material” and it also outright bans books from all public schools in the state if those books have been deemed “objective sensitive material” or “pornographic” per state code in at least three public school districts or two public school districts and five charter schools statewide. The bill went into effect July 1, 2024, and it started with 13 titles on it.

The bill is retroactive, meaning that titles which met the state’s guidelines prior to the bill’s start date were included on the list. Per HB 29, any time a public or charter school removes a book deemed “sensitive material,” they must notify the State Board of Education. If that book meets the threshold of removals, all schools will be notified and expected to dispose of it.

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There are now 22 books prohibited in any Utah public school. Of them, 16 are written by women, and their average publication date is 2011. This means that most of these books have been on shelves and available for many years and caused no issues until this manufactured crisis. The list is as follows:

What is important to understand about the law is that despite claims this is about “local control,” schools in the state are forced to follow the decisions made in other districts. There are 42 public school districts in Utah, but two districts account for nearly 80% of the books banned statewide: Davis School District and Washington School District.

The three latest book bans came exclusively because of bans at Davis, Toole, and Washington school districts. Again, two districts are doing nearly all of the dictating of what books are allowed at public schools throughout all of Utah.

We’re going to continue to see more books added to this list in Utah as the school year carries on. These are not, of course, the only books being banned in the state where book bans are happening, despite claims by the federal Department of Education. Individual school districts are allowed to ban any books they deem inappropriate–which, of course, helps add more titles to the state list as only three districts need to remove a book before the book must be removed everywhere.

Utah is not the only state with such a book list. South Carolina also retains a sanctioned list of books that must be removed in every public school district. Their list contains 21 titles, making them the most censorious state when it comes to state-sanctioned book bans. While Tennessee has the legal mechanisms for creating statewide school book bans, it has yet to add any titles to a list. Florida officials have also distributed a list of books the state deems inappropriate and necessary to be removed from school libraries, though theirs is not codified into law like in the other three states.

These laws do not apply to private or homeschool institutions. That’s intentional.

Book bans in Utah are coming in waves, so anticipate more titles to be added to the list in the coming weeks, especially as the state works its way backwards from the date of the law’s implementation.

The post Utah Begins 2026 by Banning Three Books at All Public Schools Statewide, Leads U.S. In Bans appeared first on Our Story Insight.

Kelly is a former librarian and a long-time blogger at STACKED. She’s the editor/author of (DON’T) CALL ME CRAZY: 33 VOICES START THE CONVERSATION ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH and the editor/author of HERE WE ARE: FEMINISM FOR THE REAL WORLD. Her next book, BODY TALK, will publish in Fall 2020. Follow her on Instagram @heykellyjensen.

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Despite the legal precedent of “local control” in Florida’s statutes related to book bans in public schools, the State Board of Education has been threatening legal action against districts that don’t remove 55 books they deem inappropriate. It began with Florida’s Education Commissioner and Attorney General writing letters to leadership at Hillsborough County Public Schools. The Education Commissioner’s letter stated that the district had two books deemed “pornographic” in the collection that needed to be removed immediately. The two books are Call Me By Your Name and Jack of Hearts and Other Parts. The Attorney General’s letter added four more titles: Choke, Beautiful, What Girls Are Made Of, and Breathless, which he called “patently pornographic.”

The removal of those six books–done without formal review per both school policy and state policy–then led to the agreement by the Hillsborough County Schools superintendent to pull 49 more books without review, following a heated meeting with the state Board of Education. Among those books was a title that the district had already had a challenge to and that went through the formal review process. It had been retained for certain grade levels.

Targeting Hillsborough was intentional. Florida’s State Board of Education has taken on the role of statewide book censors, despite not having the legal mechanisms in place that states like Utah and South Carolina do. While Florida’s Department of Education requires that each school submit to them books removed from their libraries and why annually, those lists aren’t used to then demand removal of those books from additional schools (as in Utah).

The threats made toward Hillsborough were meant to make other districts not-so-silently remove titles before they, too, became state targets. The Commissioner of the Board has gone so far as to use Twitter to demand book removals and issue threats against state school districts.

The Florida State Board of Education is appointed by the governor. The new Commissioner, Anastasios Kamoutsas, was appointed in June by the governor.

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Now, just weeks after the gross overreach by the state into policies at the local school district level, eight additional Florida public school districts have capitulated. Each has agreed to remove any of the 55 titles on their shelves deemed to have “sexual content.” Removals will be done without formal review of the titles.

These eight districts represent only those on the record having agreed to the removals. It’s likely others have agreed or will remove the titles quietly so as not to catch the attention of the State Board of Education. The districts who have agreed to removals publicly include Hillsborough, Broward, Columbia, Escambia, Orange, Osceola, Pasco, Palm Beach, Pinellas, and St. Johns. Each district joining in the effort to ban books without review is another district bowing to a state-level committee, rather than meeting the needs and interests of their own community. Each district joining in the effort to ban books is another district making clear they’re more interested in showing their loyalty to the state than their obligations to taxpayers.

Escambia County remains one of the most censorious districts in the nation, and it is currently defendant in two separate lawsuits over book bans.  

It comes as no surprise that the majority of books on the list of 55 are by or about queer people and/or people of color. The same books that have been in the crosshairs from the start of this wave of book censorship remain there. Here’s the full list of books being banned right now in Florida schools, despite the state not having the authority to demand their removal at the district level:

There may also soon be three more books on the list. State Commissioner Kamoutsas demanded via Twitter late last week that Hillsborough–and by extension, all Florida public schools–remove Trans Mission by Alex Bertie from shelves, as well as to prepare to remove Blankets by Craig Thompson and Identical by Ellen Hopkins.

How does this list compare to the state-sanctioned banned book lists in Utah and South Carolina? Florida’s list includes 13 of the 18 titles banned in all schools in Utah. Florida’s list includes 12 of the 21 titles banned in all public schools in South Carolina.

Florida’s list does not include the third installment in Sarah J. Maas’s five-book “A Court of Thorns and Roses” series, A Court of Wings and Ruin, a reminder of how arbitrary and haphazard this list is.

Florida’s lawmakers failed to pass new legislation this year that would change the state’s working definition of obscenity. That failure helped tee off this round of censorship.

The Florida Freedom to Read Project asks public education and intellectual freedom advocates to continue showing up to school board meetings, continue asking questions about why districts are making these decisions, and to alert districts who haven’t agreed to blanket removals without review that they’re being watched by taxpayers.

The post Under Threat from State, Florida Public Schools Are Banning These 55+ Books Without Review appeared first on Our Story Insight.

Kelly is a former librarian and a long-time blogger at STACKED. She’s the editor/author of (DON’T) CALL ME CRAZY: 33 VOICES START THE CONVERSATION ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH and the editor/author of HERE WE ARE: FEMINISM FOR THE REAL WORLD. Her next book, BODY TALK, will publish in Fall 2020. Follow her on Instagram @heykellyjensen.

View All posts by Kelly Jensen

Whether or not public school students will continue to have fewer diverse choices in their reading life across South Carolina was the topic of today’s State Department of Education meeting. Ten books were on the table for statewide removal following committee input, but a robust discussion about the unintended consequences of such decisions–and the abuse of the process that has imbued one parent in one county with outsized power to ban books across the state–led to a motion to table the decisions for another month.

The books under consideration at the April 1, 2025 meeting included:

Due to Regulation 43-170 (R-43-170), decisions over content in school libraries is in the hands of the South Carolina Department of Education. Materials deemed to have “descriptions of sexual content” are inappropriate for schools and must be removed. What that phrase means is intentionally vague, allowing for the opinions of a small number of individuals within the state to decide on behalf of all students and parents statewide.

The South Carolina Department of Education, headed by Ellen Weaver–who used taxpayer money to hire a lawyer to lobby in support of this school book banning bill–set up an Instructional Materials Review Committee (IMRC), where any parent in the state can submit complaints. This has allowed individuals to exert significant power in what’s available not only in their public schools but in schools statewide.

The IMRC reviews complaints and elects whether or not to advance the complaints to the Department of Education for a final decision. Decisions are made not on reading the entire book and assessing whether or not it rises to the definition of obscenity per the Miller Test. They’re made based on excerpts provided by the person bringing about the complaints.

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The IMRC recommended that 10 new books be added to the state-sponsored banned list. Those decisions were passed on to the Department of Education who voted to table the decision making for a future meeting. This was in no small part thanks to the voices of several board members.

Among them was Dr. O’Shield. He spoke at length about how all of the books banned so far–as well as the 10 on the docket for the day–were coming from one single county out of a state with more than 40 counties. As an educator, he had not seen problems with any of the books in his own school and put in the effort to see how many of the 10 titles were available where he taught, when they were purchased, and how frequently they’d been borrowed.

O’Shield also questioned why there could not be restrictions applied to books, rather than outright bans. He mentioned that there are plenty of 18 year olds in high school who shouldn’t be restricted from accessing so-called “adult” materials. The IMRC explained that this option is one among many the committee can recommend and has in the past. Ellen Hopkins’s book Crank, for example, is only available with parental permissions.

This restriction option, however, is not available to books that meet the state’s criminal code definition of depictions of “sexual content.” That’s why the 10 books at hand could not be given that recommendation and why Crank could. Crank‘s content did not meet that threshold.

Reverend Tony Vincent, a newcomer to the state education board, talked about how reading passages out of context–as is how the decisions have been made in the state–is a deep disservice. While he may not wish his own children to read the books, he acknowledged that not only are there young people who would benefit from the books but also that his duty in his role on the board (and elsewhere) was to make decisions out of love for other people. Banning books statewide over a small selection of passages would be the opposite of acting in love.

Board member Maya Slaughter spoke, pointing out that now that the Board has been through this review process, it seemed as though they may now be able to identify potential abuses of the process. She suggested more time to review the process before making any decisions on the slate of books.

That would ultimately be granted.

South Carolina banned its first round of books for all public schools on Election Day when people were otherwise occupied. Seven made the initial list. In the weeks following the ban of those books, listed below, further action was taken in deciding to not ban Crank by Ellen Hopkins but to restrict its access to parents who grant opt-in permission.

In early February 2025, the State Department of Education voted to ban four more books. Those titles were The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson, Flamer by Mike Curato, and Push by Sapphire. Two additional books brought before them at that meeting were retained, meaning they could remain in public schools: Bronx Masquerade by Nikki Grimes and The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros. Those two titles were part of a series of challenges by one parent in the Fort Mill School District; that parent unsuccessfully challenged a third title, too, an introduction to literature for 8th graders textbook.

All 10 of the books brought before the South Carolina Department of Education today were challenged by one individual, Elizabeth Szalai. Szalai was behind the demands to remove nearly 100 titles challenged in Beaufort County Schools, the bulk of which were returned to shelves. With South Carolina’s new law, she and others like her now have the opportunity to take their complaints beyond their own school district and potentially have books pulled from all public schools in the state. Szalai was behind the complaints that led to the state banning four books in February.

One single parent has had outsized power to have books banned across an entire state.

Complaints over each of the books, both banned and retained, are available the South Carolina Department of Education’s website (here is where final decisions and associated documents live and here is where pending decisions and associated documents live). Take the time to read them and understand these decisions are being made on conspiracy theories and cherry picked passages being distributed by Moms For Liberty and similar groups. One member of the board in today’s meeting suggested that some of the titles in question could be used by older students or librarians to “indoctrinate” younger people.

For all the arguments about “local control,” the power given to the State Board of Education to remove books statewide is the precise opposite. The South Carolina Department of Education is the arbiter of what is and is not accessible to students in public institutions across the state, not those who live or work in those communities.

Today’s decision suggests that many have come to realize the consequences associated with that power. This is a positive motion.

The full list of books banned in every public school in South Carolina is currently as follows:

Three states have legal mechanisms that allow for statewide book bans, though only South Carolina and Utah have used them so far. The other state is Tennessee.

The post South Carolina Postpones Vote on Banning 10 Books Statewide appeared first on Our Story Insight.