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 reported by KCCI.
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. According to Mediaite, the tracker asked: "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.
The "myth" came true
Less than a year after Nunn called rural hospital closures a myth, Iowa hospitals and 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.
- A South Des Moines family medicine and urgent care clinic set to close in June 2026.
- Reduced family practice services at the Pella Regional medical clinic.
MercyOne did not hide the reason. Its closure announcement pointed to "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. Nunn has not held public, in-person town halls. He has called constituent-organized meetings "taxpayer-funded protest events" and refused to attend. One constituent said he had to fly all the way to Washington, D.C., just to get a few minutes with his own congressman.
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.
