On July 23, 2026, a video caught Iowa Rep. Zach Nunn doing something a member of Congress should never do: he reached out and hit a phone out of a person's hand on Capitol Hill. The video was first obtained by MS NOW, and KCCI reported it the same day.
The person holding the phone was a tracker — a staffer paid by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee to film members of Congress in public and ask them questions. Trackers are a normal part of politics. Both parties use them. They film in public places, and members of Congress get asked uncomfortable questions all the time. Most just keep walking.
Zach Nunn did not keep walking. He got physical.
What set him off
The tracker's question was not about anything personal. It was about rural hospitals. In the video, the tracker asks: "Congressman Nunn, do you still think that rural hospital closures are a myth?"
That question stung for a reason. In July 2025, Nunn sat down with WHO13 News in Des Moines and said this, on camera:
"I think the myth here is that rural hospitals are going to close down. That's not the case."
He was wrong. And a tracker asking him to answer for being wrong is not "harassment" — it's accountability.
Instead of answering, Nunn told the tracker, "I'm with a constituent. Come on," and "No, I said I'm with a constituent. You should protect their privacy," before knocking the phone away. Later, his campaign put out a statement admitting: "This wasn't my finest moment, I shouldn't have responded this way, and I set a bad example." But he still went on to call trackers "partisan political operatives" who are "paid to roam Capitol Hill and harass members."
Here's the thing. It's easy to lash out at someone asking a hard question. It's harder to just answer it. Nunn picked the easy way — and picked a fight instead of facing the truth about what his own vote did to Iowa.
Then the clinics started closing
Less than a year after Nunn called rural hospital closures a myth, Iowa clinics started closing and cutting services.
MercyOne, a large Catholic nonprofit health system, has shut down or scaled back multiple Iowa facilities, including:
- A family medicine clinic in Ottumwa — which is in Nunn's own district — closed in early 2026.
- South Des Moines family medicine and urgent care clinics set to close in June 2026.
Separately, the Pella Regional Medical Clinic in Ottumwa announced it was reducing its family practice services.
MercyOne did not hide the reason. In announcing the South Des Moines closures, it cited rising costs, staffing pressures, and anticipated cuts to Medicaid and Medicare reimbursement. Patients in Ottumwa now face drives of up to an hour to get the care they used to get down the road.
This is not a mystery. It is exactly what people warned would happen.
Nunn voted for the cuts
The reason Medicaid is being slashed is a law Zach Nunn voted for. He backed Trump's so-called "One Big Beautiful Bill," which cuts Medicaid by about $1 trillion over the next decade and is projected to push millions of Americans off their health insurance.
Rural hospitals run on thin margins. Many of their patients are on Medicaid. When you cut Medicaid, those hospitals lose the money that keeps their doors open. Doctors and health experts said this over and over. Nunn voted for the cuts anyway — and then told Iowans the closures were a "myth."
So when a tracker asked him to explain the gap between what he said and what actually happened, that was a fair question. It's the same question thousands of Iowans in his district would ask him — if he'd let them.
He won't face voters, either
The phone-swatting fits a pattern. Pressed to hold a town hall, Nunn told the Des Moines Register he wants to avoid hosting "a taxpayer-funded protest event." When more than 100 constituents organized one in Des Moines anyway, he was invited and declined to appear. One constituent traveled all the way to Washington, D.C. with a group of Iowans, got a meeting with a staffer, and got a few minutes with his own congressman only because Nunn happened to step out of his office.
A member of Congress who won't hold town halls, won't answer a tracker, and instead knocks a phone out of someone's hand is telling you exactly how much he wants to be held accountable: not at all.
Iowans in the 3rd District deserve a representative who will look them in the eye and explain his votes — not one who calls hospital closures a "myth," votes to make them happen, and then gets physical when someone asks him about it.
