Ritchie Torres

Ritchie Torres (born March 12, 1988) is an American politician and member of the Democratic Party representing New York's 15th congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives since 2021. He is the first openly LGBTQ+ person elected to office in the Bronx and the first openly gay Afro-Latino member of Congress. Torres was raised by a single mother in a public housing project in Throggs Neck, Bronx, and attended New York University.

He began his political career as the youngest member of the New York City Council in 2013, taking office in 2014 to represent the 15th district. During his tenure, he chaired the Committee on Public Housing and served as a deputy majority leader, passing over 40 pieces of legislation on affordable housing and the opioid epidemic. Torres was elected to Congress in November 2020 and has since become a prominent progressive voice, co-chairing the Congressional Equality Caucus and the Congressional Albanian Issues Caucus. He is also known for his strong pro-Israel advocacy.

In the gambling-adjacent space, Torres has recently gained attention for authoring the Public Integrity in Financial Prediction Markets Act of 2026, which would explicitly prohibit federal officials from trading prediction market contracts using material nonpublic information. This legislation directly intertwines his political role with the regulatory landscape of prediction markets, which are increasingly treated as gambling-like financial instruments. His work underscores a growing focus on ethics and transparency in emerging financial technologies.