What is the position of President-elect Donald Trump on Las Vegas Sands Chairman Sheldon Adelson’s pet Restoration of America’s Wire Act (RAWA)? Experts differ.
A regular contributor to the “Rumor Mill,” a blog on the website of the Off Shore Gaming Association, writes that Trump is ready to sign RAWA, the controversial bill to ban online gaming in the U.S., if it reaches his desk.
Blogger Hartley Henderson cites an anonymous source close to Trump’s advisors as saying the president-elect will sign RAWA as a way to mend fences with former Republican adversaries such as Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz, South Carolina Senator Lindsay Graham and Florida Senator Marco Rubio, all of whom signed on as co-sponsors of RAWA.
Even though Trump has supported online gaming in the U.S. in the past, Adelson, who has been one of the nation’s largest contributors to Republican campaigns—including Trump’s—has opposed online gaming on unfounded claims that it promotes underage and compulsive gambling, but most feel his opposition is based on the fact he believes iGaming will harm his land-based gaming interests. In any event, RAWA would ban all forms of online gaming in the U.S. by specifically targeting the 2011 U.S. Department of Justice opinion that the 1961 Wire Act’s ban on interstate wagering applies only to sports betting.
The blogger speculated concerning the challenges inherent in passing RAWA—not the least of which is that three states have already legalized iGaming. Political solutions to these challenges would include possible grandfathering of the iGaming laws in New Jersey, Nevada and Delaware, or tossing New Jersey a bone in moving forward with a repeal of the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA), the 1992 law that banned sports betting in all but four grandfathered states. New Jersey’s latest attempt to pass a sports betting law in defiance of PASPA is currently before the U.S. Supreme Court.
On the other side, CDC Gaming Reports correspondent Aaron Stanley says hopes for the bill, at least in the lame-duck session, are “fading fasts.”
“The surprise election of a Republican president has now dramatically reduced the likelihood of the controversial bill being snuck through Congress,” he writes.
Stanley says while the lame-duck session will probably not include a RAWA rider, he doesn’t dismiss the possibility that a Trump administration may allow such a bill to move forward.
“Weighing more heavily on the minds of internet gambling proponents is what the next session of Congress might hold for the fate of RAWA,” he writes. “While Trump has made past statements in favor of legalizing online play, questions over his personal and financial connections to Adelson and his nomination of Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions as Attorney General have left many curious over his future stance on the issue.”
In any event, RAWA would have to be passed by both houses of the U.S. Congress first. With Republicans in charge of both houses, the chances of that happening are better than they were last year, although gaming industry lobbyists would likely oppose the effort and appeal any rewriting of the Wire Act to specifically ban online gaming.
