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Seattle judge deals blow to Kalshi, rejects prediction market’s federal defense

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A judge in Seattle issued a preliminary injunction against Kalshi, finding that Washington state is likely to prove that the fast-growing prediction market is running illegal online gambling.

The ruling by King County Superior Court Judge John McHale, issued Monday, does not immediately halt Kalshi’s operations in the state. McHale granted the injunction in the case brought by Washington AG Nick Brown, but deferred the specifics until early next month.

McHale rejected Kalshi’s argument that oversight by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission preempts state gambling laws. That has been the basis of Kalshi’s defense against regulators across the country. Washington is the latest state where a court has shot it down.

Kalshi quickly pushed back on the ruling.

β€œStates don’t have jurisdiction to regulate prediction markets. Many courts β€” including the Third Circuit β€” have made this clear,” spokesperson Jacki McGavick said in a statement. β€œWe’re disappointed to see Washington State continue wasting taxpayer dollars.”

In his ruling, McHale said Kalshi β€œwillfully ignored” a December 2025 notice from the Washington State Gambling Commission that event-based contracts were not authorized in the state, and cited a Kalshi ad showing a text exchange where one user tells another: β€œI found a way to bet on the NFL even though we live in Washington.”

Kalshi’s platform lets users bet β€œyes” or β€œno” on thousands of events across sports, elections, entertainment, and so-called β€œmention markets” β€” wagers on whether public figures will say specific words. The New York-based company, which markets itself as a federally regulated β€œprediction market,” takes a transaction fee on each bet.

Washington has some of the strictest gambling laws in the country: the legislature banned internet gambling in 2006, and while the state allows a lottery, horse racing, and tribal-casino gambling, online betting is broadly prohibited and sports wagers are legal only in person on tribal lands.

The order requires Kalshi to preserve all records tied to Washington users, including logs, communications, geolocation data and marketing materials.

The specific operational terms of the injunction are still being determined: McHale gave both sides until Aug. 3 to submit proposed language, with a full order to follow by Aug. 5.

DA: Cop covered bodycam to snap nude prisoners on his iPhoneβ€”but other cams caught him

On March 31, 2026, a rather odd complaint arrived at the Bucks County, Pennsylvania District Attorney's Office.

It came from the local sheriff's office, and it concerned one of their own, Deputy Sheriff Ryan Gaffney. The allegation was unusual: Gaffney had used his iPhone to snap photos of nude prisoners he had encountered in his jobβ€”and he had then shared those photos with "several female civilian employees inside the Sheriff's Office."

The main claim involved a local man suffering a mental health crisis on the morning of January 30, 2026. Five fully uniformed deputies had arrived at the house and were in the upstairs bedroom. Their detainee was naked from the waist down and had just been persuaded to put on some pants.

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A Rare Drone Common Sense Outbreak, In Denmark

Last September, Denmark was gripped by a spate of drone sightings near airports. It’s familiar territory for Hackaday, as we reported on a similar drone panic saga at British airports back in the last decade. Back then the British police dragged their feet and hid behind secrecy laws for years to avoid admitting they overreacted, but it seems in Denmark they do things differently (Danish language, Google Translate link.).

The Danish police in Jutland have rolled back their report, and noted that a reported observation alone is not enough to confirm a drone was present. It’s not confirmed why they’ve taken this step, but we’ve been told that there’s been an effort within the drone community to identify possible aircraft flight paths which could have resulted in a false drone sighting at the times in question.

We welcome this correction, and hope that its important message travels widely. Of course it is the right thing to do for a police force to take drone reports seriously, but overreacting as the British police did is of little help. We commend the Danish police for taking this step, and we’re likely to trust any drone reports from them a little bit more in the future. If you’d like to read our plea for a sensible response at the time, it’s here.

Thanks [UAVHive] for the tip.

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