Former Obama Campaign Manager Stephanie Cutter Joins Kalshi As Policy Advisor

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Former Obama Campaign Manager Stephanie Cutter Joins Kalshi As Policy Advisor

2026-04-02 20:02 Last Updated At：20:11

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Apr 2, 2026--

Kalshi today announced the addition of Stephanie Cutter as policy advisor. Cutter is Managing Partner of Precision Strategies, a global strategic communications agency, and a seasoned political strategist with decades of political, policy, and communications experience advising top Democrats, including President Barack Obama. Cutter comes on board as the company continues on its steep growth trajectory, both to drive its data-driven storytelling and deepen its relationships in D.C. and across the country.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260402165500/en/

Founded in 2018, Kalshi is the world’s largest prediction market. Prediction markets harness the power of the wisdom of the crowds, creating data that can effectively complement polling and expert opinion. Kalshi offers financial markets on the outcome of real world events such as elections, macroeconomic signals, sports, and more. It’s widely credited with building prediction markets into a regulated asset class and building a safe, legal, regulated platform for millions of traders in America. Political campaigns and politicians ranging from Leader Hakeem Jeffries to Mayor Zohran Mamdani are embracing Kalshi at an astronomical rate, often referencing their “Kalshi odds.”

"I've spent my career at the intersection of media, politics, and business, where noise and polarization often obscure the truth. Data cuts through that. Kalshi gives millions of Americans a data-driven alternative to opinion and guesswork — and they do it responsibly. In a world drowning in opinion, prediction markets are one of the few places where the data has real skin in the game — and I want to help Kalshi own that story."

At Precision, Cutter has revolutionized the integration of data-driven communications with a campaign-style approach, connecting with audiences and mobilizing people to action. Cutter has worked with a wide range of clients, from Fortune 50 companies to news networks, movie studios, and sports leagues and legends.

Kalshi co-founder and CEO Tarek Mansour: “Stephanie Cutter is the person you want on your team. She understands better than most how to cut through the noise and get your message to the right people. I’m excited to learn from her.”

Before starting Precision, Stephanie served in top government and political roles, rising to become one of the most seasoned, accomplished and forward leaning strategists of her generation. Described as “one of the most prominent voices in the [Democratic] party, and one of its top strategists” by Politico, Stephanie has crafted high-level communications for two U.S. Presidents, U.S. Senate leaders, and every Democratic presidential nominee since 2004.

About Kalshi

Founded in 2018, Kalshi is the world’s largest prediction market. Prediction markets provide accurate, real-time information on the likelihood of events, making humanity more informed about the future. Kalshi is credited with legalizing and establishing prediction markets as a financial asset class. It’s the leading safe and regulated platform trusted by millions of people in America. To learn more about Kalshi, visit www.kalshi.com.

A look at the UK's Royal Navy, which has faced jibe after jibe from Trump and Hegseth

LONDON (AP) — U.S. President Donald Trump and his Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have been damning of the U.K.'s naval capabilities. Their jibes may have stung in a country with a long and proud maritime history, but they do carry some substance.

The U.K. has been at the forefront of Trump’s ire since the onset of the Iran war on Feb. 28, when British Prime Minister Keir Starmer refused to grant the U.S. military access to British bases.

Though that decision has been partly reversed with the decision to permit the U.S. to use the bases, including that of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, for so-called defensive purposes, Trump is adamant he was let down. He has repeatedly lashed out at Starmer and branded the Royal Navy’s two aircraft carriers as “toys.”

“You don’t even have a navy,” he told Britain's Daily Telegraph in comments published Wednesday. "You’re too old and had aircraft carriers that didn’t work.”

Hegseth, meanwhile, said sarcastically that the “big, bad Royal Navy” should get involved in making the Strait of Hormuz safe for commercial shipping.

For numerous reasons, the Royal Navy is not as big and bad as it used it to be when Britannia ruled the waves. But it's not as feeble as Trump and Hegseth imply and is largely similar with the French navy, which it is often compared with.

“On the negative side, there is a grain of truth, with the Royal Navy being smaller than it has been in hundreds of years,” said professor Kevin Rowlands, editor of the Royal United Services Institute Journal. “On the positive side, the Royal Navy would say that it’s entering its first period of growth since World War II, with more ships set to be built than in decades.”

It’s not that long ago that Britain could muster a task force of 127 ships, including two aircraft carriers, to sail to the south Atlantic after Argentina’s invasion of the Falkland Islands. That 1982 campaign, which then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan was lukewarm about, marked the final hurrah of Britain’s naval pedigree.

Nothing on that scale, or even remotely, could be accomplished now. Since World War II, Britain’s combat-ready fleet has declined substantially, much of it linked to changing military and technological advances and the end of empire. But not all.

The number of vessels in the Royal Navy fleet, including aircraft carriers, destroyers frigates and submarines has fallen from 166 in 1975 to 66 in 2025, according to The Associated Press' analysis of figures from the Ministry of Defense and the House of Commons Library.

Though the Royal Navy has two aircraft carriers at its command, there was a seven-year period in the 2010s when it had none. And the number of destroyers has halved to six while the frigate fleet has been slashed from 60 to just 11.

The Royal Navy faced criticism for the time it took to send the HMS Dragon destroyer to the Middle East after the war with Iran broke out. Though naval officials worked night and day to get it shipshape for a different mission than the one it was readying for, to many it symbolized the extent to which Britain’s military has been gutted since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

For much of the Cold War, Britain was spending between 4% and 8% of its annual national income on its military. After the Cold War, that proportion steadily dropped to a low of 1.9% of GDP in 2018, fuel to Trump's fire.

Like other countries, Britain, largely under the Labour governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, sought to use the so-called “peace dividend” following the collapse of the Soviet Union to divert money earmarked for defense to other priorities, such as health and education.

And the austerity measures imposed by the Conservative-led government in the wake of the global financial crisis of 2008-9 prevented any pickup in defense spending despite the clear signs of a resurgent Russia, especially after its annexation of Crimea and parts of eastern Ukraine.

In the wake of Russia's full-blown invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and with another Middle East war underway, there's a growing understanding across the political divide that the cuts have gone too far.

Following the Ukraine invasion, the Conservatives started to turn the military spending tide around. Since the Labour Party returned to power in 2024, Starmer is seeking to ramp up British defense spending, partly at the cost of cutting the country's long-vaunted aid spending.

Starmer has promised to raise U.K. defense spending to 2.5% of gross domestic product by 2027, and the updated goal is now for it to rise to 3.5% of GDP by 2035, as part of a NATO agreement pushed by Trump. That, in plain terms, will mean tens of billions pounds more being spent — a lot more kit for the armed forces.

The pressure is on for the government to speed that schedule up. But with the public finances further imperilled by the economic consequences of the Iran war, it's not clear where any additional money will come.

The jibes will likely keep coming even though the critiques are unfair and far from the truth, said RUSI's Rowlands, who was a captain in the Royal Navy.

“We are dealing with an administration that doesn’t do nuance," he said.

This story has been corrected to show there were 166 vessels in 1975, not 466.