Iowa has the second-highest cancer rate in the country, and it is the only state where new cancer cases are still climbing. So you might expect the people Iowa sends to Washington to fight for Iowans who get sick. Instead, one of them has been taking money from the companies that make the chemicals scientists have linked to cancer — and then voting to protect those companies from being sued.

That congressman is Zach Nunn, who represents Iowa's 3rd District.

$30,000 from the pesticide industry

Federal campaign records show Nunn has taken $30,000 from agrochemical companies and pesticide makers, Public News Service reported on July 20. That money came from some of the biggest names in the business:

• Bayer — the company that owns Monsanto, the maker of the glyphosate weedkiller Roundup
• Syngenta
• Corteva
• CropLife America, the pesticide industry's main trade group

Nunn sits on the House Agriculture Committee, the very committee that writes the rules for these companies. He says the donations are just part of a "broad coalition" backing his farm work. But there is a difference between backing farmers and backing the chemical giants — and the record shows which side Nunn picked.

He backed immunity for the companies that fund him

Here is the part that should worry every Iowa family. Bayer and its allies have been pushing Congress to give pesticide makers immunity from lawsuits — a legal shield that would stop people who got cancer from suing the companies that made the chemical.

The Senate passed a version of the Farm Bill that included that immunity shield. And according to Public News Service, Nunn once supported the same immunity shield in the House version of the bill.

Think about what that means. The same corporations writing Nunn checks were asking Congress to make sure they could never be held responsible in court — and Nunn was on their side.

"This is a provision that would provide immunity to the very pesticide corporations that Representative Nunn is accepting contributions from," said Sam Bernhardt, political director for Food and Water Action.

"Representative Nunn has put his corporate donors ahead of the interests of Iowa working families when it comes to the issue of pesticides and protecting Iowans from pesticides," Bernhardt said.

The House-passed bill ultimately did not include the shield. But that was not for lack of Nunn's support.

Real harm to real Iowans

This is not a made-up worry. The Union of Concerned Scientists has warned that exposure to glyphosate and other pesticides may be carcinogenic. Iowa's own Cancer Registry has found a link between pesticide exposure and cancer in a state where farmers spread as much as 24 million pounds of glyphosate-based weedkillers on their fields every year.

And Iowans just lost a big protection. The U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled that people who believe they got cancer from using glyphosate no longer have the right to sue. So the courthouse door is already closing on cancer patients. A congressman who cared about his constituents would be trying to pry it back open. Nunn took the industry's money and pushed to slam it shut.

Who is Zach Nunn working for?

This fits a pattern. Nunn's biggest donors are not Iowa farmers — they are Wall Street firms and giant corporations. His single largest funder is AIPAC, and his donor list is packed with private equity firms and big financial companies. The pesticide money is just one more example of a congressman who answers to the people writing the checks, not the people back home.

When a lawmaker takes $30,000 from Bayer, Syngenta, and Corteva and then backs a bill to protect them from cancer lawsuits, that is not a coincidence. That is exactly what donors pay for.

Iowans deserve a representative who will protect them from getting sick — not one who protects the companies that make them sick.

Source

• Mark Moran, "Iowa incumbent Zach Nunn accepted thousands from pesticide makers," Public News Service, July 20, 2026.