Polymarket withdraws wager on rescue mission in Iran

Polymarket has removed a forum related to the rescue mission of U.S. military personnel amid political pressure, the latest sign of increasing scrutiny of prediction markets.

U.S. and Iranian forces are searching for a missing American airman after his F-15E fighter jet was shot down over Iran on Friday. One crew member was rescued, another is unaccounted for.

Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., criticized the Polymarket site that allowed users to bet on what day the U.S. would confirm the rescue of the two airmen after an American F-15E fighter jet was shot down over Iran. Lawmakers called the site “disgusting” in an X post.

“They could be your neighbor, a friend, a family member,” Moulton wrote Friday. “And people are betting on whether they will be saved or not.”

In a response to

“It should not have been published and we are investigating how this was able to get past our internal safeguards,” Polymarket wrote.

In a separate X post, Polymarket said it “does not make money or charge fees in any geopolitical markets.”

In an email to CNBC, Moulton said: “Polymarket did not close this market because it violated their standards. They closed it because we reported them.”

Moulton also said that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission has the power to regulate prediction market platforms but is doing nothing.

“That too has to change,” he said. “Yesterday there were 219 active bets in Polymarket’s War category. Today there are 223. This is spreading and Congress must act.”

Last month, Moulton banned his employees from using prediction market platforms such as Polymarket or Kalshi, a policy his office says is the first of its kind in Congress.

“The voters we serve should trust that we are making decisions based on the right actions for our nation, not based on the possible outcomes of the bets,” Moulton said Monday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

Moulton also said on

Requests for comment from Trump Jr. were not immediately returned to CNBC.

The Massachusetts lawmaker is part of a growing chorus of voices in Washington calling for greater oversight of these betting platforms amid rising interest.

A group of Democrats in Congress introduced legislation late last month that would ban prediction markets from allowing betting on elections, war and government actions in addition to sports.

In February, six Democratic senators called on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to clarify that it would ban all contracts related to a person’s death. These contracts “pose dangerous risks to national security,” the lawmakers wrote.

The CFTC announced lawsuits Thursday against three states for what it said were attempts to circumvent the organization’s sole regulatory authority over prediction markets.

The NFL has also asked prediction market operators to keep certain event contracts that the league deems “offensive bets” off their platforms. The league cited examples of event contracts that could be easily manipulated, were inherently offensive, related to execution and were detectable in advance – and urged operators to refrain from offering such deals.

—CNBC’s Dan Mangan, Azhar Sukri and Luke Fountain contributed to this report.

Disclosure: CNBC and Kalshi have a business relationship that includes customer acquisition and minority ownership.