WASHINGTON — As Spencer Pratt fell behind in the Los Angeles mayoral primary, an unexpected group began claiming election fraud: people tracking the Republican’s success on prediction markets, the increasingly popular online exchanges on which people can make bets on almost anything.
“Crazy how much voter fraud can be done with mail in ballots,” one user following bets on the mayoral race wrote last week on Kalshi, one of the top trading platforms.
“Same old California fraud,” said another who had bet that Pratt would win.
Election fraud claims extended to social media, where a handful of influencers who post content for prediction market platforms questioned the ballot count. “It’s a dead heat on Kalshi,” one user wrote on social media. “Is CA cheating to get Spencer Pratt out?”
Kalshi told the influencers to delete the posts, which violated company guidelines. Polymarket, the other leading platform, directed them to remove the paid partnership label from those posts.
The amplification of election misinformation by users who had money staked on the mayoral race adds a new twist to evolving scrutiny of prediction markets, and scholars say the ability to bet on elections broadly raises questions about whether the exchanges could alter how Americans engage in democracy.
“Elections are not a game,” said Davina Hurt, director of government ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University. “[If market] probabilities begin influencing donor decisions, media attention, the energy around [campaign] volunteers — at that point, markets aren’t just observing the election. They’re a part of it.”
Fans of the exchanges say they are powerful tools that can help decision makers, and company leaders have touted them as highly accurate predictors that can act as an antidote to misinformation and provide election insights.
“By shifting focus from ‘what people say’ to ‘where they put their money,’ and filtering out social media noise and pundit bias, we are providing a level of clarity and predictive power that cannot be matched,” said Kalshi spokesperson Dani Lever .
But these markets’ rapid rise has also raised a host of questions among members of Congress, state lawmakers and others — about betting on elections, wars and other political events, about potential insider trading, and about whether the platforms should be left to self-regulate. Some states are also in legal battles with the federal government over whether the activity amounts to gambling, which they seek to regulate.
“It’s like we’re in the 1930s with financial markets — we have some things that we want to regulate and restrict [as a country], and we’re sort of in the early stages of trying to lay out what the rules are,” said Koleman Strumpf, an economist at Wake Forest University.
Concerns about insider trading
The discourse around the Los Angeles mayoral race was the latest to raise questions at the intersection of prediction markets and politics. Earlier this year, an Army soldier was indicted after allegedly using his knowledge of the planned U.S. operation to capture former Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro to make bets on it, winning more than $400,000. He has pleaded not guilty.
Around the same time, several anonymous users reportedly earned $2.4 million combined by making remarkably prescient bets on the Iran war, prompting concern in Congress about insider trading. And during the primary elections, Kalshi fined a few politicians for betting on themselves, while the Justice Department began investigating a former congressman on similar charges.
Kalshi co-founder Luana Lopes Lara speaks at a conference in Santa Monica, Calif., in April.
(Anna Webber / Inc.)
The episodes set off a debate in Washington. The Republican-led House Oversight Committee opened an investigation into potential insider trading, and a bipartisan group in Congress has introduced a flurry of bills seeking to put up guardrails. It remains unclear whether any will pass this session.
The chatter in Congress appeared to lead the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, which regulates prediction markets, to propose a new framework last week to govern issues raised by lawmakers, such as potential betting on wars. Commission Chair Mike Selig said the proposal would allow for scrutiny of suspicious activity “while letting legitimate markets move forward pursuant to the public interest.”
The markets commission under former President Biden was viewed as somewhat skeptical of prediction markets; the agency under President Trump — whose eldest son holds advisory positions at both Polymarket and Kalshi — has been seen as more favorable to the industry. The federal government has sued several states over their attempts to regulate the markets under state laws banning sports gambling and other measures.
Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who has introduced legislation on the topic, said the agency’s framework would benefit the industry at the expense of the public interest.
The agency lacks “the leadership, will and investigative staff needed to confront the dangers of election misinformation, insider trading, and more,” Schiff said, “and seems content to allow the industry to police itself.”
Making bets
As California’s primary neared, people staked their dollars on the state’s races in droves. On Kalshi, trading volume on one contract about who will win the L.A. mayoral race in November had reached more than $117 million as of Tuesday.
Prediction market users trade on the outcome of future events, making money if they’re correct and losing money if they’re wrong. Someone can purchase a contract on the prediction that L.A. Mayor Karen Bass will win in November, a yes contract, or on the prediction that she will lose, a no contract.
On Tuesday, Bass contracts on Kalshi were selling at 63 cents each for yes and 38 cents for no, meaning the market was forecasting a 63% chance of her winning. Users receive $1 per contract if their prediction is correct, creating a profit on their initial investment.
Prediction markets generally create more accurate forecasts than political polls, according to Strumpf, whose research has examined 30 years of prediction markets in various forms.
Many of the issues critics raise are theoretical and have not been seen in practice, Strumpf said. By his analysis, there is no evidence that the markets have ever influenced an election outcome. He said serious traders tend to do extensive research in order to make money, meaning their bets are educated.
Rep. Mike Levin (D-San Juan Capistrano), who has introduced legislation to prohibit event contracts involving terrorism, war, assassination and deaths, said the platforms may be useful in some cases but shouldn’t be left to police themselves. He said he’s concerned that the markets create “all the wrong incentives” for people, including political candidates and officials, to abuse inside knowledge.
“I don’t trust them to self-regulate at all,” Levin said of the companies. “The federal role should be guardrails that are reasonable and pragmatic.”
‘The sanctity of our elections’
Skeptics’ concerns regarding elections largely center around the markets’ introduction of a new way for money to potentially influence politics.
They say the desire to elevate a candidate’s market odds could create an incentive for market manipulation, and they worry that the votes of Americans using the market could be influenced by their desire to profit.
“This has real impacts for the sanctity of our elections,” said Assemblymember Maggy Krell (D-Sacramento), who raised concerns about how prediction markets could impact the democratic process in a March letter to the state’s Fair Political Practices Commission. (California lawmakers are looking at the issue, a spokesperson for Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas (D-Hollister) said, though none of the bills introduced this year have yet moved forward.)
The platforms create a potential new channel “for dark money to flow into our elections,” Krell said. “Specifically, someone who’s opposing or supporting a candidate could potentially use sites like Kalshi to elevate that candidate and impact the entire pool.”
The industry has endeavored to “get out in front” of concerns by creating their own policies aimed at preventing insider trading, market manipulation and other issues, said attorney Ronak D. Desai, partner and head of the congressional practice at the Washington law firm Paul Hastings.
Kalshi has a ban on those practices and has banned markets tied directly to death and war, Lever said. It also screens all new users and, in the first quarter of this year, blocked more than 100 potential insider trades and referred more than 20 cases to law enforcement.
In the case of the military member who bet on the United States’ operation in Venezuela, for instance, Polymarket caught the activity and referred the case to the Justice Department, a spokesperson said. The company has referred nearly 100 cases of suspicious activity to law enforcement, he said.
Election markets are not offered on Polymarket’s U.S. exchange — though users in the U.S. and other countries that ban the company’s international exchange are widely reported to access it using online tools.
“Polymarket prohibits trading based on stolen information, illegal tips, or information obtained in breach of a duty of trust, confidentiality, or other legal obligation,” the Polymarket spokesperson said in a statement.
Aaron Klein, senior fellow in the Center on Regulation and Markets at the Brookings Institution, predicted that pressure for further regulation would continue to mount.
“The top goal of a society is to have free and fair elections,” Klein said. “At a time in our nation’s history where people are doubting the integrity of elections and foreign governments are stoking those flames, we ought to be pretty careful.”
Fox is under fire for missing on-field action during the first match of the World Cup last week. .
Many sports fans were irate when the network aired a full-screen ad when play resumed after a water break during last Thursday’s Mexico–South Africa match.
In the second half, the referee called for the newly instated hydration break, but the call came during a replay, which led to a miscommunication over when the three-minute break actually started.
Fox ran its full-screen ad late, and because the break didn’t last the full three minutes, players were reportedly left stalling on the field — and many Fox viewers missed the restart entirely.
“The reason that I keep coming back to these games as a fan is for 45 solid minutes of entertainment. Anything that interrupts that, whether it’s [these hydration breaks] or anything else, is not great for the game,” Garrett Denney, an avid World Cup fan and frequent user of the World Cup Reddit page, said. “What we want to see is that kind of rhythm and tempo, the intensity for a full half of soccer.”
Fox declined to comment.
The hydration break is new to the World Cup. FIFA announced it in December as a way to protect players’ health in the summer heat. In every match, the referee is to call for a break around the 22-minute mark of both halves, regardless of weather.
A FIFA spoesperson declined to comment, but pointed to a previous press release describing the breaks as a “focused attempt to ensure the best possible conditions for players, drawing upon the experiences of previous tournaments.”
The extra minutes also created something else — a new advertising window, and broadcasters are taking advantage.
Networks are supposed to leave the on-field action 20 seconds after the referee signals the break and return 30 seconds before play resumes, allowing for ads of up to two minutes and 10 seconds in total. They can air any full-screen ad they’d like, or run a split-screen ad — though a split-screen has to feature a FIFA partner, like Coca-Cola or Adidas.
The stakes are especially high for Fox, which is also leaning on the tournament to promote Fox One, its streaming service that lets subscribers watch its programming without a traditional pay-TV subscription. The World Cup broadcast has been a major plus for the platform, which costs $19.99 a month.
For some soccer fans, though, the commercial breaks are an intrusions.
“The FIFA hydration break is pure capitalism,” comedian Kevin Fredericks wrote on X.
Musician Lloyd Cole made a similar point about the new ad windows: “US tv finally got their 4 quarters. Fifa, corrupt? Fifa?”
After Fox’s stumble, many fans started questioning the intention behind the rule itself.
That frustration has pushed some viewers toward an alternative: Telemundo. The Spanish-language network, available through the Peacock streaming platform, opted for minimal hydration-break ads instead of full-screen takeovers.
During the same Mexico–South Africa match, while Fox aired its full-screen ad, Telemundo kept players on camera, let its commentators share their thoughts, and ran a Lays ad in the corner of the screen. The network has described it as a conscious decision to prioritize authenticity and keep viewers immersed.
“No ads on Telemundo and I’m learning Spanish at the same time!” one user quipped on the World Cup subreddit.
Denney, who’s rooting for Team USA, said his family prefers the Telemundo stream too — even with only part of the household fluent in Spanish.
“Part of our household is fully fluent in Spanish, part is not. And even despite the language barrier, we’ve really gravitated toward the quality of the Telemundo stream,” Denney said. “It’s really more of a rhythmic commentary. You can get deep into the game, you’re not pulled so far out of that experience and it feels almost like you’re at the stadium.”
WASHINGTON — While millions of soccer fans cheer or groan over World Cup matches spanning North America, health officials are on high alert for germs.
A heat wave may be the most obvious health threat. But infectious diseases can spread in a crowd, and experts are scrutinizing wastewater, hospital visits, even social media for any signs that an outbreak might be brewing.
Measles, one of the most contagious diseases, is among the top concerns, sparking a warning this week from the Pan American Health Organization, PAHO. With a nearly six-week stretch of packed stadiums, bars and tourist sites in 16 cities, officials are on the lookout for a long list of infections, from the stomach bug norovirus to mosquito-borne dengue fever.
“This is truly a marathon,” said Palak Raval-Nelson, Philadelphia’s health commissioner.
The mass gatherings come at a tense moment for budget-strapped health agencies in the U.S. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, hit hard by Trump administration staffing cuts, already was grappling with a growing Ebola outbreak in central Africa and a cruise ship hantavirus outbreak. While CDC officials have advised state and local health departments behind the scenes, it’s expected World Cup disease surveillance dashboard still was “in final development” days before games began, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.
“Our public health professionals are pretty stretched,” said global health specialist Rebecca Katz of Georgetown University, who is leading an unusual new hub to help.
At the Health Security Operations Center, a joint effort between Georgetown and MedStar Health, workers are analyzing data from around the country so they can alert health authorities, even emergency rooms, to any early signs of trouble. The center is issuing daily “situation reports” about disease trends around World Cup host cities and team base camps to several hundred local and federal public health groups, emergency management and hospital officials and others who’ve signed up.
“It’s important that we don’t become alarmist,” said MedStar emergency medicine specialist Dr. Shane Kappler. “We’re trying to be the insurance policy.”
Measles is a top concern for potential World Cup spread
Already more than 2,000 people in the U.S. have come down with measles this year, nearly as many as during all of last year, according to the CDC. Patients can spread measles before the rash appears and they realize they’re sick. Not too long ago, the U.S. seldom saw measles except from international travel by unvaccinated people.
Now with frequent U.S. outbreaks, “actually a lot of our international partners are worried about measles being exported to them after the games,” said Georgetown’s Katz.
Measles is spreading in Canada, too, and has exceeded 11,000 cases in Mexico, according to PAHO. It’s urging soccer fans to be sure they’re vaccinated, with a health campaign saying a single measles patient can spread the virus to up to 18 unprotected people.
Is Ebola a concern at the World Cup?
Brown University’s Dr. Craig Spencer, who survived Ebola while working in the West Africa outbreak over a decade ago, said he’s repeatedly asked about the risk of Ebola during the World Cup — but “for me, Ebola is not the No. 1 or No. 2 or even No. 3 threat.”
“I am concerned about importation of measles, I am much more concerned about the importation of other infectious threats that may not seem as scary to us as Ebola,” Spencer said.
Many health experts agree that the risk of Ebola spreading in the U.S. is very low. That’s partly because of government travel screenings and restrictions on people recently in outbreak-affected areas. Moreover, Ebola spreads by contact with bodily fluids from someone showing symptoms, not through the air like measles or respiratory viruses.
“One fortunate thing about this virus is you’re most contagious when you’re really quite ill. It’s not like COVID, where you could be sitting next to someone who doesn’t even know they’re infected and perhaps contract the virus,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, director of Brown’s Pandemic Center.
How to spot brewing diseases
There’s precedent for germs invading major sporting events. Canadian scientists linked a community measles outbreak to the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, and clusters of norovirus had to be contained during the Olympics this year in Milan and in 2018 in South Korea.
One way to detect signs of trouble: People with certain viral or bacterial infections shed genetic material that sophisticated testing of wastewater can spot. For example, measles can appear in wastewater days before an emergency room sees its first patients.
A recent surveillance reports from Katz’s center note that wastewater testing recently found diarrhea-causing rotavirus, hepatitis A and norovirus in some parts of the U.S., something to watch as soccer crowds arrive.
In Dallas, officials ramped up wastewater screening including at the international airport, casting a wide net rather than looking for specific illnesses, said Dr. Phil Huang, director of Dallas County Health and Human Services.
His team also is enhancing the usual mosquito testing, checking not just for West Nile virus that regularly spreads in the U.S. but for viruses more common in other countries like dengue and chikungunya.
Public health officials have been preparing for months, said Philadelphia’s Raval-Nelson, including with mock emergency drills and communications with counterparts around the country.
“I don’t want to send a message that there’s one key thing,” she said. “We have the frameworks in place to carry out what we need to.”
The soap star previously opened up about the “breathtakingly hard” final moments of his life, but explained how she was left so inspired looking after him that she has now trained as a carer.
In a new BBC programme, Natalie Cassidy: Caring Together, the actress shines a light on Britain’s struggling care system, and focusing on topics like autism, first aid, dementia, childhood diabetes, and working in placements in a care home and St John Ambulance after returning to school to get a Level 3 BTEC in health and social care.
Viewers were left in tears by the eye-opening programme, with a clip recently shared on social media.
One person wrote: “Fantastic series showing the very important things that all carers and health care professionals have to deal with day in and day out! Good luck to everyone involved. I hope all the students who were in the series get the jobs they want to do! Well done @natcass1.”
Another said: “Just finished watching this. Loved it. Congratulations @natcass1.”
A third wrote: “I cried every day watching this series. It was so beautifully done with amazing respect and understanding for everyone on the show.”
Someone else added: “This has been a most wonderful programme x I can’t wait to hear if you passed x I’m sure you did x the episode about dementia [was] invaluable as my husband was diagnosed with vascular dementia recently x I’ve kept that episode.”
Another wrote: “Loved this series. @natcass1 was so honest about her own life and the job.”
Speaking in the programme, Natalie remarked how much she had loved her training, saying: “This course has been fantastic. The people I’ve met, the placements I’ve been on. I would like to continue this care journey.
“I feel like I’ve scratched the surface. I’ve loved it. I’ve loved every minute of it.”
“Caring for Dad right up until the end of his life, and losing him, was one of the most painful things I’ve ever had to do,” Natalie previously told the BBC.
“But the people I met have changed my life and are so inspirational. That’s what spurred me on to do this.”
“I’ve only ever had one job, but I’ve always wondered what I would have done if I wasn’t an actress,” she added.
Natalie’s father died in April 2021, and she went on to say that filming elements of Caring Together did make her miss him, adding: “Grief never stops – you don’t grieve for someone and then it’s over. It just changes.
“You change as a person – it shapes who you are, it shapes how you look at the world. You just get better at coping with it.”
Natalie left EastEnders last year after 32 years, saying that it was time to move on and adding: “EastEnders is in my bones so I will never forget where I started my career and I will continue to love the show.”
She later explained she was “ready for a change”, telling Bella Magazine: “I adore EastEnders but you can’t do everything. EastEnders is a factory with 60 cast members and 300 staff.
“They can’t cater for someone who says, ‘By the way, I need two months off to do this, I need another three months off to do this’. It’s not fair.”
Executive producer Chris Clenshaw had also said, at the time of Natalie’s announcement: “Over the last 31 years in EastEnders, Natalie has been involved in some of the show’s most iconic and explosive storylines. Her portrayal of Sonia has made her a firm fan favourite amongst the viewers.”
Natalie Cassidy: Caring Together is available to watch on BBC iPlayer.
Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola says he enjoys watching Arsenal play as he can “learn a lot” from them.
The Gunners are in contention for a Premier League and Champions League double, sitting six points clear at the top of the table and with a European semi-final against Atletico Madrid lined up.
But their style of play under manager Mikel Arteta has increasingly been criticised, having scored 37% of their 62 league goals from set-pieces this season and just two goals from open play in their last five games.
Arsenal travel to second-place City in a monumental contest on Sunday (kick-off 16:30 BST) knowing they will go a long way to claiming their first title in more than two decades if they avoid defeat.
Asked if he enjoyed watching Arsenal in action, Guardiola said: “Yes. People are so demanding. From the media, supporters, everyone. I enjoy watching them. I learn a lot in many things.
“What people want is to win and we will fight. An aspect that is really, really important that we cannot fight against is [Arsenal going] 22 years without winning the Premier League. They have something that makes them unique. I know that.
“I knew that feeling when we arrived here. For a long time we didn’t win the Premier League. Manuel [Pellegrini] and [Roberto] Mancini did it but for our era I would say, I know how you feel that first win.
“That is something that we cannot play against, that is why we have to focus on the way we have to play.”
