[MUSIC PLAYING]
Prediction markets take plenty of bets on the outcome of elections. Some betters might be cheating. Campaign staffers are awfully tempted to turn their insider knowledge into money. I'm Scott Simon.
I'm Aisha Roscoe, and this is up first from MPR News.
Oh, calcium and other prediction markets try to police themselves and keep the government out of their business. And as the Trump administration dismantles the Department of Education, people with disabilities and their families ask what will happen to special education?
And finally, mothers have been told for years to throw out any breast milk left over in a bottle after feeding some influencers disagree. So stay with us.
“We have the news you need to start your weekend.”
[MUSIC PLAYING] This week on Wayway.com, we talked to legendary musician Jason Nerducey about being in a punk band when he was just 11 years old. We broke up when I was 12. And yeah, I just felt like I needed to go through puberty
without band drama. Don't miss our full conversation and the rest of our game. Listen to the way way, don't tell me podcasts and the NPR app or wherever. You get your podcasts.
This week on shortwave, could your next ride to the airport be in a flying taxi? So you open up your Uber app. And you've got Uber X and Uber Pet. And now they'll be your career.
That reality may be only a few years away. But how is this futuristic travel possible? Find out on shortwave and PR science podcast. Listen on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
Americans have been more than $1 billion on election so far.
Some of those traders are using insider information. The largest prediction market couchie says it's trying to stop political insiders from profiting with a new program. - And bears Luke Garrett, join us.
Luke, thanks for being with us. - Good morning, thanks for having me. - A few months back, he reported that some campaign staffers made thousands of dollars on insider trades. So what do we know?
- For one, we know that dozens of campaign staffers are still trying to bet on their own candidates.
“And remember, this is during an active midterm election year.”
These are people who are on campaign payrolls and are trying to profit on their own races. We know this because calcium has a new surveillance program that uses federal election commission data to track these staffers.
So far, the prediction market says it is successfully blocked dozens of campaign staffers from making these potential insider trades. - How does the program work?
- So basically, calcium finds the names of staffers listed
in these FEC disclosures and then tracks them on their own prediction market. Here's how the companies head of enforcement and legal counsel Robert Donald explained it. - 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 would be prevented from placing trades on those markets. - So in theory, Scott, this tracking program
blocks any bet made by campaign staffer listed in this FEC data. - The board of the holes. - There are a few. So at least one campaign staffer listed in FEC data
was able to trade on an election they were involved in. This staffer shared their records of their calcium bet on the condition of remaining anonymous for fear for future employment. But beyond this one case,
there are also some serious structural issues in calcium monitoring program. Two former FEC commissioners told me, this program won't capture everyone who has insider information on a campaign.
Think volunteers, lawyers, pulsers, and even subcontractors. Here's former FEC chair, Sean Cooksey.
“- While I think this data may be helpful”
in giving some picture about who is working on a particular campaign, it is by no means a complete one. - But Cooksey says this program is a step in the right direction and he applauded the company for it.
Back at calcium, denult acknowledged that no system is airtight and that they hoped to make it more effective. Calshy's top competitor, Polymarket, declined an interview request for this story. Polymarket did send a statement saying
they investigate all possible insider trades. - So the prediction markets tell you is that they're releasing themselves. There's a government doing anything. - So the commodity futures trading commission oversees
and regulates prediction markets. Under the Trump administration, the CFTC has done little to regulate these new financial markets, largely leaving that work to the companies themselves.
Trump appointed CFTC chairman, Michael Selich, has even defended prediction markets against dozens of lawsuits from states seeking to really reign in these markets. But two former CFTC commissioners,
I've spoken with, say current law and regulation, hasn't kept up with prediction markets. And this unsettled legal landscape could make it easier for insider traders to get away with it.
- Does Congress have a role here? - Yes, so lawmakers from both parties have said the CFTC and its outdated rules
Aren't fit to regulate these new markets.
This year alone, 21 pieces of legislation
“have been introduced, though none of them”
have really gained much momentum. - And here's Luke Garrett, thanks so much for being with us. - You bet. (upbeat music)
- Advocates for students with disabilities are worried about changes coming to the Department of Education. Specifically, a plan to transfer the special education office to the Department of Health and Human Services. And a private call earlier this week,
education department officials tried to reassure the disability community that students would not be affected. But those efforts seem to have failed. And if you're obtained to recording of the call
and education correspondent, Chinaki Metta is here to share what you learned. Thanks for joining us.
- Hi, it's got, thank you.
- Speaking by reminding us, we're thinking Stan with the Education Department, the Trump administration has, of course, been trying to dismantle it. - Absolutely, so the Department has already shared plans
to move more than a dozen of its office to other agencies as part of its goal to shrink itself.
“One of the key things the Department does”
is hold schools and states accountable for getting millions of kids for disabilities, the services they need to get a quality education. That's required by a law called IDEA
or the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. And now the Department is moving its office for special education to HHS. That change was the focus of the call with advocates earlier this week.
- Now, again, we've done for a few weeks.
This change was coming. What new information came out of the call? - Yeah, so a little context advocates have been saying it would be illegal for the ad department to move oversight of special education to another agency.
Kelly Rogers, who oversees special ed at the department said this on the call. - The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is not taking over IDEA period. We are not transitioning IDEA and special education
to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. - But then, Scott, in the same breath, Rogers said the staff who actually do the work of supporting state and local school leaders, those workers are going to HHS.
But Rogers says she will continue to oversee them from her perch at the ed department. - Let me follow up, 'cause this is confusing. On the one hand, they're saying that IDEA stays at the ed department.
Rogers stays at the ed department. But a lot of the staff who do the work are moving to another department. How would those changes affect students? - Yeah, Scott, I asked Denise Marshall
who leads the Council for Parent Advocates and Attorneys that same question. She was on the call and said this move ads bureaucracy and more confusion for students with disabilities. - I just don't feel like we got any more clarity
on a practical level about who to call, who will do the work, how do the department's interface, how do we ensure equity for students and a unified approach when everything is so divided and still unclear.
- So what Marshall and other advocates did tell me is that to them, this appears to be a work around for the department of education to keep meeting legal requirements, like by keeping Kelly Rogers at the department of bed, they can say, look, IDEA is still technically
at the education department, like the loss as it has to be and we're only moving staff to another building. - Sounds like the people who walked away from this call were very concerned.
“Do we know how the education department is responded?”
- Yeah, so after the call, I followed up with the department by email, including about the concern that this adds layers of bureaucracy for students with disabilities. Savannah knew how was their press secretary firmly denied that.
She said advocates have nothing to fear and said, quote, "What our partnership with HHS does is place these important federal responsibilities in a better position to agency and draw on HHS's expertise." And Scott advocates told me they're really
hoping Congress steps in and stops these changes, but just this week, we saw congressional Republicans introduce bills that propose officially breaking up the education department. And beers are knocking meta, thanks so much.
- Thank you. (upbeat music) - For years in the US, the guidance around breast milk in a bottle has been pretty clear. Tell us any leftovers, two hours after feeding a baby.
- But recently on social media, some parenting influencers have been questioning that advice. Here to explain the science of breast milk storage is impure our health correspondent Maria Cadoy. Welcome.
- Thank you, Aisha. - So Maria, what are the risks of reusing a leftover bottle of breast milk? - You know, the main concern is bacterial contamination that could potentially make a baby sick.
So what a baby feed from a bottle bacteria from their mouth can get into the bottle and then it'll continue to multiply. And the idea is that the longer the bottle sits, the more of the bacterial will grow.
Then there are also bacteria that can be introduced
at any point during the process.
“And that's why guidelines from the Centers”
for Disease Control and Prevention
and other groups recommend that you always wash your hands
before pumping or handling breast milk. And you know, clean your pump parts after every use. And once you feed the breast milk to the baby, if there's any leftover in the bottle, the CDC says, you can give it to the baby up to two hours later
and then toss it out to be safe. But you know, pumping is a really hard work. - It is another job. And you know, the little bit that I did, I did not like it. - No, no, it's a lot.
It takes a lot of time and effort to pump and clean and it can be emotionally and physically exhausting. So the idea of throwing it away is kind of crushing for some moms, which is why I think a new unpublished study
from Hanover Medical School in Germany, suggesting that milk might be safe for longer than two hours has gotten a lot of attention in parenting circles and a lot of push back, too. - Well, what did the study find exactly?
- Well, researchers recruited parents to feed their babies
“a bottle of breast milk and then they tested the microbes”
in the milk before it was fed to the baby and then at various time points after. And they found, there wasn't really any significant bacterial growth in the milk from the time the baby finished eating up to eight hours later.
- What? I mean, that sounds like good news. So why the pushback? - Well, the study hasn't gone through peer review yet and the sample size was small, only 17 infant to drink breast milk.
But some parenting influencers basically ran with it and said, yeah, go ahead and ignore the guidelines. Don't toss that milk. I spoke to Jennifer Yorkovich, she's a breastfeeding researcher at UNC Chapel Hill
and here's what she said.
- You know, human milk has a lot of antibacterial properties or anti-spoilage properties. So it doesn't surprise me at all. It's promising finding. It's not enough to change a guideline.
- She says a handful of similar studies in different parts of the world have also found leftover breast milk shows little bacterial growth over several hours, but all of them have been super small.
Yorkovich says, we really need a lot more research into this issue, but there's just not much funding for that. I also spoke to April Fogelman, she's a researcher with NC State who did one of those small studies on left over breast milk
and she says the guidance needs to err on the side of being conservative because there are so many different factors involved. - How old is your baby? How healthy is your baby?
How long was the milk stored? How well did the pump parts cleaned? - You know, with so many variables, she says, it just makes sense to play it safe and toss that milk after two hours.
- So what's the takeaway for parents? - A few things, for one, I think, don't listen to just whatever you hear on social media and that goes for a lot of things, but also as Fogelman told me pumping is demanding.
So just do the best you can to follow the CDC guidelines but again, breast milk does have antimicrobial properties. So if you mess up, give yourself some grace. That's in PR's Maria Gadoi. Thank you so much, my pleasure.
- And that's at first for Saturday, the 11th of July, 2026, I'm Scott Simon. - And I'm Ayy Sharasko. Dave Mistich produced today's podcast along with my Radcliffe and Gabe O'Connor.
- Our editor is Diana Douglas, helped along by Brett Neely, Neurvy Shah, and Christopher Hustard. - Our director is Elena Toric, who worked alongside our technical director, David Greenberg.
His engineering team is Simon Lasso, Janssen, J.C.S.s, and Zoe Vankan, help him. - Our senior supervising editor is Shannon Rhodes, our executive producer is Evie Stone, and our deputy managing editor is Katherine Ladelaw.
- Tomorrow, on the Sunday story, from climate change to the rise of AI, it sometimes feels like human civilization could be near the end. What threats are really worth worrying about? - Oh my gosh, that sounds cheery.
So thank you for listening, and for supporting your local NPR station, and if you need to find yours, and you do, go to stations.npr.org. Why are you still sitting here with us?
Find your station.
“- Do it before the end, because what are we actually doing?”
No, we'll probably be right, I think so. - Yeah, but you'll be happy you're finding your NPR station.
- Yeah, yeah, do that first, that's the most important thing.
(laughs) (gentle piano music) - For three weeks in 2020, part of my Seattle neighborhood was taken over by a protest occupation. - We were here to protest police brutality.
- But it ended in tragedy. - The whole space felt darker and angrier. - Join me as I investigate the unsolved killing of 16-year-old Antonio May's junior. Listen to We Keep Us Safe on the Embedded Podcast from NPR.
- Every episode of its been a minute,
NPR is what's happening in culture podcast.
Starts by asking three questions.
Who, how, why now?
“If the culture's asking it, we're talking about it.”
At NPR, we stand for your right to be curious,
and indulge your cultural curiosity.
“Follow its been a minute wherever you get your podcasts.”
and we'll break down the zeitgeist topics
that are filling your feed.
