Members of Congress were active at the end of 2017 with their efforts to ban online gambling in the United States. Said efforts are generally referred to as RAWA, which stands for the Restoration of America’s Wire Act, because all movements to stop online gambling seem to stem from the same source as those RAWA bills: Sheldon Adelson.
Whether everyone pushing for the ban is connected to Adelson is unclear, but the efforts borrow from the same refrain and use the same outdated information to support their ideas. And the fact that two letters were sent to the US Department of Justice within one month before the holidays last year seems to indicate some type of coordinated effort.
Meanwhile, however, there are other members of Congress willing to stand up for the rights of states to legalize and regulate online poker and casino games as they choose. US Senators Robert Menendez and Cory Booker (both from New Jersey) collaborated with eight members of the US House of Representatives (also from New Jersey) to tell the DOJ to ignore pleas to reverse the decision.