Today's Poll Question: Should Congress ban betting on government actions, terrorism, and war?

You're ready to vote on today's daily poll question at smirkconnish.com.

But first, Michael explains it for you right here.

Welcome to the smirkconnish podcast from SiriusXM for independent minds.

Hi gang. Today is Friday. It's the 27th of March, 2026.

Here's your poll question. Should Congress ban betting on government actions,

terrorism and war? I'm right now on kowshi kowshi.com and kowshi has tabs at the top of its website.

Elections, politics, sports, culture, crypto, climate, economics, mentions, companies,

financials. In the politics section, right now, I can see when will DHS be funded again?

How long will the government shut down last? How many bills will President Trump

sign this month? Who will leave the Trump cabinet next? How about this? How many times will Trump

visit Mar-a-Lago this month? An individual can pretty much, and I don't just mean Trump,

you know, maybe somebody in the cabinet decides on their own volition, I'm going to leave.

Theoretically, somebody in the cabinet could decide, I'm going to wager on my own departure,

and then I'm going to leave. But the point is that someone can impact this, unlike say a sporting

event. And that's part of the impetus for a move that's now a foot, particularly in the Senate,

to ban betting on government actions, terrorism and war. And you probably know already,

somebody's recently made a lot of money pertaining to what's going on in Iran. I'll tell you

more about that in a moment. This is kind of funny because this portion of the podcast is

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The Daily Poll Question at SpurConnish.com. The non-scientific social political question,

designed to spark broader discussions about current issues. Get ready to cast your ballot

and leave a rating and review of this podcast on your favorite podcast app.

There was an Axios piece that I had in the newsletter within the last two days.

And it was really interesting. It was titled, Mysterious Trading Patterns,

Follow Trump Into War. It was written by Zachary Basu, documenting this epidemic of suspicious

trading, which has emerged around President Trump's most consequential decisions. And each time

just minutes or hours before he rattled global markets, there was someone or some group of

people rattling the predictive markets. For example, as the Iran War is sending prices soaring

for ordinary Americans, a select few seem to be profiting in plain sight. Monday, Monday, 580

million in oil futures flooded the market in a sudden spike with no public news to explain it.

And this was 16 minutes before President Trump announced a pause in the strikes on Iranian power

plants. I remember this so well because Monday, I was anticipating doing the radio program on

what's going to happen tonight at 744 PM, which was the deadline that then existed. David Sanger was

was my guest. And we were going to talk about that. And as I was on air, just before the program began,

the president switched courses and said, hey, now it was going to be five days longer put on the clock.

Well, 16 minutes before he posted that on truth social, 580 million dollars in oil futures flooded

the market. Somebody made a lot of money on the Friday before the war began. I guess that was

February 28 was when the war began. So on the Friday before, there was a surge of more than

150 polymarket accounts that placed hundreds of bets predicting a US strike on Iran by the next day.

Another example, January the 2nd, a trader turned roughly 32,000 into more than 400,000 by betting

on the capture of Maduro, Nicholas Maduro, Venezuela's Nicholas Maduro before it was announced

the next morning. Last April, a surge of bullish stock trades appeared minutes before Trump

announced a dramatic 90 day pause on the liberation day tariffs. So Axios in assembling this

TikTok goes to the White House council, David Warrington for a statement and he said the president

had no involvement in business deals that would implicate his constitutional responsibilities. He

performs his constitutional duties in an ethically sound matter manner and to suggest otherwise

is ill-informed or malicious. And Axios makes clear that there's no evidence that President

Trump knew about the suspicious trades or that he had any involvement in them, but they're

drawing a lot of attention in particular because his presidency is coincided with business

and investment activities involving a lot of his allies and family members. The Trump family

crypto venture has generated billions with investors including a Chinese crypto mogul who

later settled in SEC fraud case. The sons, Eric and Don Jr., they've invested in drone companies

competing for Pentagon contracts, Jared Kushner, the son-in-law at the focal point of these

conversations with Iran seeking to raise billions for his private equity fund and has done a lot of

business with the Saudis. You know, I could go on and on and on. So it's a bad look as the point.

It's a bad look and it comes at a time when the DOJ public integrity section,

which was created after Watergate to prosecute corrupt officials, has been reduced from 36

lawyers to two. And so there's a decline in the investigations that surround these type of

questions. So now come the Democrats ready to lay groundwork for investigations on whether

insiders are trading based on Trump's decisions. This is a great illustration of change that will

result if Democrats take the House and get subpoena power because then you will see congressional

hearings on issues like this. When a trip to the hospital or pharmacy leads to a bill no one saw

coming. We're here to help. Your health insurance provider is working every day with hospitals

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and we'll continue fighting for you. The Daily Poll Question at SpurConnish.com

A non-scientific social political question designed to spark broader discussions about

current issues. Get ready to cast your ballot and leave a rating and review of this podcast on

your favorite podcast app. This is a great illustration of of change that will result if Democrats

take the House and get subpoena power because then you will see congressional hearings on issues

like this. Maxine Waters sent a letter to the chair of the House Financial Services Committee

urging him to open a committee investigation into potential insider trading. And now in the Senate

you've got Senator Chris Murphy and Representative Greg Caesar introducing legislation that they

call banning event trading on sensitive operations and federal functions or the Betts off act.

What would that do? It would ban wagering and this is the poll question focus. It would ban

wagering on government actions on terrorism on war on assassination on events where an individual

knows or controls the outcome because they say many of these event contracts are traded on

offshore prediction markets. The bill also would amend existing laws against illegal gambling to

enforce these rules by shutting down payment systems to illegal online platforms and imposing

criminal penalties. My hunch is that the way I'm asking the question should Congress ban betting

on government actions terrorism and war? My suspicion is that overwhelmingly people will say yes.

And the arguments in favor include a risk of manipulation, right? Allowing bets on government or

security events could incentivize efforts to influence or create conditions for profit.

The moral, the ethical ramifications, the national security concerns that if somebody is willing

to give this information up to profit in a betting market, then maybe they would,

they'd become the next Aldridge Ames and sell us out to our enemies.

And also the idea that when you treat war or terrorism as a sporting event,

you're cheapening the gravity of these kind of topics and creating cynicism.

The argument against a congressional ban, this is hard. It's hard for me to say,

okay, what's the pitch against it? I guess it is that we have a free market and free speech

and that we ought to allow predictive markets to trade on the views in the same way that we trade

our views in bar rooms. I like the fact that we learn from the predictive markets. And I've had

many guests, many experts on this subject talking about how the predictive markets

have been more accurate than the political markets. So I don't want the predictive markets to

go away. And I worry that there'll be a slippery slope. If we're all of a sudden going to

ban betting on government actions and terrorism and war, then we'll look at political polls and

the outcome of elections and who's going to be the Democratic nominee in 2028 or the Republican

nominee. And I like it. And I think there's value in it. So slippery slope, I guess, is another

argument against a congressional ban. And also the bands could push this activity underground.

You're not going to totally get rid of it. We'll go back to, you know, bookies instead of raising

it above board in the light of day. That's the poll question on this Friday. Should Congress

ban betting on government actions on terrorism and war? I'm keenly interested to see the outcome.

My hunch is that it'll get a yes vote by a majority, but you never know. Go vote at smirconnish.com,

check out our content on the YouTube page. And remember, in each day's newsletter Monday through

Friday, I'm now weighing in on the events of the day. And people seem to really be enjoying that.

So I hope you'll check it out as well. All right. Have a good day.

Smirconnish for independent minds. Listen weekdays on Sirius XM's

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