Donald Trump Jr is raising money for Polymarket and lobbying to shield prediction markets from regulation. There should be a thick wall between Trump family business and the presidency. An event contract on whether one exists might be a good investment.
Page F2From§Eachthe coffee break edition — 6 September 2026
Trump Jr. raises money for the platform he's lobbying to shield from Kalshi's gambling lawsuit.
As it ran on the front
The bet at the center of this is not complicated: yes or no, will something happen, and money changes hands on the answer. Kalshi runs that bet. Polymarket runs the same bet. On September 2, New Jersey's attorney general filed a petition asking the Supreme Court to decide whether Kalshi can keep taking sports contracts despite state gambling laws. That petition did not arrive out of nowhere. Five days earlier, the 9th Circuit had already ruled that states can regulate prediction market platforms like gambling and sportsbooks, upholding Nevada's authority to oversee Kalshi directly. Two courts and one state's top lawyer now put the same question the same way: this looks like gambling.
Here is the part that changes the story. On the same wire that carried New Jersey's petition, Donald Trump Jr. is raising money for Polymarket and lobbying to keep prediction markets out of the exact regulatory reach New Jersey is asking the Supreme Court to confirm. Same yes-or-no ticket. Same cash on the table. One platform gets an attorney general's petition and an appeals court ruling. Its rival gets a President's son as fundraiser and lobbyist.…
…(cont) That is the wall the editors keep drawing and keep finding isn't there — the one between the family in the Oval Office and the family's business interests. It doesn't fall in some dramatic vote. It just never got built, so the traffic runs straight through: a name that opens a lobbying meeting on one side of town, a name that opens a Supreme Court docket on the other, and they are talking about the same industry.
You'll hear this is too small to matter, a niche betting product, a rounding error next to the real regulatory fights. Except the industry itself is described as a cash cow, and cash cows do not get milked by accident. The same week a court decides whether one version of this bet counts as gambling, the President's son is building the fundraising list for the version built to escape that exact ruling.
There is always room at the top of this industry. It is just reserved for the platform with a Trump on the donor call. The other one gets Nevada's gaming board and a docket number at the Supreme Court.
“Kalshi gets sued like it's running a casino; Polymarket gets the President's kid as its fundraiser and lobbyist — same yes-or-no bet, same cash on the table, and the family's covered no matter which platform wins. You lose your rent money on a bad prediction, that's your problem; they don't lose either way.”
“Don Jr.'s a private citizen, he can raise money for any platform he likes — that's the free market, not the Oval Office. And if New Jersey wants a ruling on Kalshi, great, that's federalism, the courts working exactly as designed, nothing to do with who's lobbying who. Did I say lobbying? That's — that's just information-sharing. Forget I said that.”
The receipts
· New Jersey attorney general wants to bring prediction market Kalshi to Supreme Court from the morgue, 2 Sep 2026
· Prediction market profits are corrupting America, one public figure at a time from the morgue, 2 Sep 2026
· Appeals court rules states can regulate prediction market platforms like gambling from the morgue, 28 Aug 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.