Online betting has become the biggest entertainment business in America, and the people getting rich off it are also the ones funding politics — bad news for young men, families, and anyone who thought this administration would push the other way.

• Gambling on phones now pulls in more money than movies, music, books, and museums combined, and it barely existed before a 2018 Supreme Court ruling opened the door.
• The damage shows up in the data: less savings, more bankruptcies, more domestic violence after a home team loss, and the highest suicide rate of any addiction.
• The business model is rigged — most of the profit comes from a small group of addicts, and anyone who actually wins gets banned or has their bet size cut to a few dollars.
• Trump's regulators have gone to court to protect prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket, effectively legalizing betting in all 50 states, including Texas and California, which had refused it.
• The same administration rescheduled marijuana at the request of industry donors and told banks to stop cutting off porn companies, while Trump's own son advised both prediction-market firms.

Outlook: Support for legal sports betting is starting to slip in polls, but with news networks, podcasts, and politicians all taking gambling money, no one in Washington is moving to rein it in.