MACKINAC ISLAND, Michigan — Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said Thursday that she won’t run for president in 2028 — then backtracked on the statement later.
Whitmer's initial declaration appeared to remove a marquee name from Democratic primary contention.
“I think there will be a robust group of people running for president,” she told a Detroit television station. “I will not be one of them in 2028, I can tell you that.”
The two-term governor, long seen as a potential contender for the Oval Office, appeared at first to be one of the first major candidates to remove themselves from what’s expected to be a crowded field of candidates looking to succeed President Donald Trump.
Whitmer, speaking from the state’s annual policy conference in Mackinac Island, is barred from seeking another term as governor due to term limits.
She said she was looking forward to taking “a little bit of a break” and had spoken with Democrats Gina Raimondo and Pete Buttigieg, as well as Paul Ryan, the former Republican House speaker, for guidance on transitioning out of the political arena.
“I never thought I would run for governor, so I guess I should know better,” she said.
Then she added: “Never say never."
Whitmer said during the panel that she hadn't intended to make headlines about her political career. “At this juncture, I’ve got nothing to announce.”
Whitmer’s initial statement that she would not run — ahead of the midterms, where her successor will be elected in the battleground state — did come unusually early in the political season. She has hinted before that she may not run for the presidency.
“One of the many reasons she would be a great president is because she is very focused,” said a person familiar with Whitmer's thinking, granted anonymity to candidly discuss her calculus, referencing her 2014 comments that she would not run for governor. “Sometimes she does change her mind."
But Whitmer has maintained that it has been beneficial for her state.
Trump announced a new F-15 fighter mission for suburban Detroit’s Selfridge Air National Guard Base several weeks later, a maneuver Whitmer’s office said could generate $850 million for Michigan.
“All the grief — this shows you why you put the people first,” she told POLITICO. “They see it, and it pays off.”
Adam Wren reported from Mackinac Island, Michigan.
Colorado Democrats censured Gov. Jared Polis late Wednesday for his decision to grant clemency to Tina Peters, a former county clerk who is serving a prison sentence after being convicted of allowing unauthorized access to voting machines in the aftermath of the 2020 election.
The two-term governor’s decision, which he made last week, “materially harmed the Colorado Democratic Party’s institutional credibility and efforts to defend democratic institutions and election integrity,” the party said in a statement.
“Colorado has spent years building trust in our elections and proving they are secure,” the party said. “At a time when democracy and voting rights are under attack across the nation, weakening accountability for someone convicted of undermining that trust is a mistake.”
The state was forced to spend nearly one million dollars to replace it all, Secretary of State Jena Griswold said.
In the years since, her case has become a rallying cry for Republicans who continue to falsely insist that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Trump. Trump himself has championed Peters’ cause.
“The Governor made this decision based on the facts of the case and what he believed was the right thing to do,” Eric Maruyama, Polis’ press secretary, said in a statement. “Sometimes the right thing isn’t the popular thing with everybody. Democracy is strongest when disagreement is met with debate and dialogue, not censorship.”
Polis shortened Peters’ sentence from nine years to 4.5, and she is eligible for parole soon. The governor, who has been careful to insist that his move to halve Peters’ prison term did not constitute a pardon, told CNN last week that the 2024 sentence was draconian and connected to Peters’ political beliefs.
“There should be no consideration of what we say — how unpopular it is, how inaccurate it is — in sentencing or in criminal proceedings,” he said.
But Democrats, including Polis’ potential successor in Colorado, were harshly critical of his decision.
Sen. Michael Bennet, who is running for the state’s governor post in November, told CNN this week that Polis’ “terrible” Peters decision would disqualify him from being considered for the open Senate seat should Bennet win.
“She is a stone-cold election denier,” Bennet said. “She’s never said anything other than that.”
Prediction markets like Polymarket and Kalshi are quickly becoming an economic and political force, accruing multi-billion dollar valuations and drawing support from key officials in the Trump administration.
But backlash to the platforms is spreading — in Washington and in state capitals — with accusations of insider trading dogging several midterm election campaigns and accompanying White House military action in Venezuela and Iran and dogging several midterm election campaigns.
Fault lines over who is in charge of regulation are already emerging, with several frontline Democrats pushing to rein in the companies. In March, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order barring appointed state officials from using insider information to place bets on prediction markets. Regulation discussions are ongoing in other states, including Arizona and Massachusetts.
Here are some of the most recent incidents that have piqued the anxiety of state and federal lawmakers.
The capture of Nicolás Maduro
Federal authorities on Thursday announced the arrest of a U.S. Army special forces soldier they accused of using confidential information to place more than a dozen bets on Polymarket tied to the January capture of Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro.
Gannon Ken Van Dyke, a 38-year-old soldier who helped plan the Caracas operation, spent roughly $33,000 on the bets, earning more than $400,000 in payouts, the Justice Department said. Authorities charged him with unlawfully using confidential government information for personal gain, among other alleged offenses.
Van Dyke’s alleged actions took advantage of that mission, the government officials argue.
“Our men and women in uniform are trusted with classified information in order to accomplish their mission as safely and effectively as possible, and are prohibited from using this highly sensitive information for personal financial gain,” acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement Thursday. “Widespread access to prediction markets is a relatively new phenomenon, but federal laws protecting national security information fully apply.”
"Noise aside, the reality is we work proactively with all relevant authorities on any suspicious activity on our marketplace," Shayne Coplan, the company's CEO, wrote on X. "We flagged this, referred it, and cooperated throughout the process. This happens constantly behind the scenes, despite what many are led to believe.
U.S.-Iran ceasefire
In the hours before President Donald Trump announced a ceasefire with Iran in early April, at least 50 newly created Polymarket accounts spent thousands betting on a temporary peace, according to an Associated Press report.
One account, created just 12 minutes before Trump’s Truth Social announcement, made $48,500 on a $31,908 bet that a ceasefire would occur. Another cashed out for a profit of $200,000, the AP reported.
Israeli authorities, meanwhile, charged two people in February for using classified information to place bets about military operations on Polymarket, according to NPR.
Congressional bets
On Wednesday, Kalshi announced that it was suspending three 2026 congressional candidates from the platform for betting on their own races. Minnesota Democrat Matthew Klein, Texas Republican Ezekiel Enriquez and Virginia Senate candidate Mark Moran were each given five-year bans and faced fines or penalties ranging from roughly $500 to more than $6,000.
Klein, who is running to replace outgoing House lawmaker Angie Craig in Minnesota’s 2nd District, issued an apology on X.
“This was a mistake, and I apologize,” he wrote. “My experience, like many other Minnesotans, points to the need for clearer rules and regulations for these types of markets.”
Enriquez has not appeared to publicly comment on his wager or suspension.
Moran, a former "FBoy Island" contestant who is running a long-shot bid to challenge Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) in Virginia, took a different tack, writing on X that he wanted to be caught.
“I traded $100 on myself, knowing this would happen (also knowing that I wouldn’t be vying for the democratic nomination) and the attention it would create to highlight how this company is destroying young men and as Senator I will go after Kalshi and impose significant penalties on them - 25% - a vice tax - to pay down our national debt,” he said.
Elisabeth Diana, Kalshi's head of communications, said that bringing the bets from Klein, Enriquez and Moran to light is an example of the company's efforts to stay above board in its regulation efforts.
"As a federally regulated exchange, we prohibit insider trading and market manipulation and have meaningful surveillance and enforcement programs in place," she said.
Playing with Mother Nature
Several Polymarket traders made thousands of dollars in profits for accurately predicting sudden, anomalous spikes in the temperature at Paris’ Charles De Gaulle airport April 15, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Météo-France, the country’s weather service, is now investigating the incident, which could be tied to tampering.
MrBeast’s editor
In February, Kalshi reported Artem Kaptur, an editor for MrBeast, one of the world’s biggest influencers and most popular YouTube creators, to federal authorities for allegedly trading “on material, non-public information he obtained because of his employment” regarding the celebrity’s YouTube videos.
Chris Taylor, a liberal Wisconsin judge, won a seat on the state Supreme Court on Tuesday in the latest strong election for liberals since President Donald Trump’s return to office.
Taylor, a former Democratic state representative and current state appellate judge, defeated conservative appeals court judge Maria Lazar in the race for the ten-year term. Taylor's win expands liberals’ majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court to a 5-2 split.
The result comes amid a string of special election victories for Democrats that suggests a difficult political environment for the GOP heading into November’s midterms.
Conservatives haven’t notched a Wisconsin Supreme Court victory since a narrow 6,000-vote win in 2019. In the years since, liberal judges Jill Karofsky, Janet Protasiewicz, Susan Crawford — and now Taylor — have romped to easy wins in a Wisconsin spring electorate trending firmly to the left.
Assuming every justice finishes out their terms, the win locks in a liberal court majority until at least 2030.
Taylor’s win doesn’t come as a surprise. In the days before the Tuesday election, Wisconsin Republicans conceded Lazar stood little chance of victory, with GOP donors refraining from pulling out their checkbooks and the majority not at stake in this election.
The election attracted far less attention than last year’s race, where Crawford beat her conservative opponent by over 10 points. That race saw Elon Musk — the world’s richest man and a Republican megadonor — pour millions into an effort to defeat Crawford, arguing the fate of “Western civilization” was at stake in the race.
The court’s liberals have made use of their majority in recent years. In 2023, the court ordered new legislative maps in Wisconsin, effectively ending a GOP gerrymander that had lasted for over a decade. And last July, the panel overturned Wisconsin’s 176-year-old abortion ban by a 4-3 majority.
Neither party expects the fall governor’s race to follow the same exact path as this spring Supreme Court campaign, with November elections in the battleground state routinely decided by slim margins.
Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez and former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes are the top Democrats running for the right to face Trump-endorsed Rep. Tom Tiffany for governor in November.
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