Election Betting on Prediction Markets, Special Education, Breastmilk Storage

In a single week, three distinct stories reveal how much of American life is governed by rules that are outdated, unclear, or being actively reshuffled. On Up First, NPR’s Scott Simon and Aisha Rasco walk through a prediction market trying to police its own insiders, a special education office being moved without clear legal authority, and a long-standing breast milk storage guideline that a small study is now quietly challenging. Each case turns on the same question: when the rules don’t fit, who decides what happens next?

Prediction Markets Try to Catch Their Own Insiders

Americans have wagered more than a billion dollars on elections so far this cycle, and some of those traders are using insider information. NPR’s Luke Garrett reports that dozens of campaign staffers are still trying to bet on their own candidates during an active midterm election year. The largest prediction market, Kalshi, has launched a new surveillance program to stop them. The program works by cross-referencing names from Federal Election Commission disclosures against its own user base. If a match is found, that individual is blocked from trading on markets tied to their campaign. Kalshi’s head of enforcement, Robert Denault, explained the logic: “If we’re able to identify a potential match, we have markets that are associated with each of the campaigns that are flagged and those individuals wou