Scott Crowell's answer landed without any softening

That was Wednesday, during the Indiana Gaming Association's webinar, one day after a closed-door meeting at CFTC headquarters ended with tribal leaders holding nothing. Michael Selig, the sole sitting commissioner, declined to discuss the agency's own proposed rulemaking — a rule that had already completed its public comment period. Jason Giles, the IGA's executive director, said he couldn't identify a single legal reason for the silence.

Crowell went further. He accused Selig of telling Congress the agency would let courts resolve the sports betting question, then directing staff to file amicus briefs in the Ninth Circuit and intervene in state-level enforcement actions. The CFTC, in Crowell's framing, is not a neutral regulator caught between competing legal theories. It is an active participant in a fight it is losing, and it is not telling the people most affected what it plans to do next.

Here is where I think the consensus read is wrong. Most of the coverage on CFTC credibility has focused on the court losses — the Ninth Circuit's sports contract ruling, the state-level setbacks, the death of the CLARITY Act. The argument is that Selig is weakened and the tribal position is strengthening. That is true as far as it goes. But the silence in that meeting last Monday is not a sign of weakness. It is a sign of preparation.

Crowell himself named it. When this administration loses, it doubles down. The refusal to discuss the proposed rulemaking is not embarrassment — it is the tell of an agency that believes its next move is the rule itself, and that engaging with tribal concerns before that rule is final would constrain what the rule can say. Selig is not retreating. He is loading.

This matters for how you weight the next twelve months. The tribal coalition has genuine legal momentum, and the Ninth Circuit ruling on the injunction reversal gives Kalshi room to operate in the near term. But the CFTC's proposed amendments to Regulation 40.11 have not been resolved, and if Selig finalizes language that asserts broad federal preemption — with no commission votes required, because there is no commission — the tribes face a new legal obstacle built from the same federal apparatus that has been losing in court.

I weight my own downside bias here, and after adjusting for it, I still think the probability of a durable federal preemption framework emerging from this CFTC is being underpriced by the people treating the court losses as dispositive. Losing cases is not the same as losing the rulemaking. Selig knows this. The tribal leaders who left that building without answers may be learning it the hard way.