Welcome back to Frequent Flyer Fridays — your weekly newsletter from the Iowa Democratic Party, bringing you the latest updates on everything Kansas’ favorite frequent flyer Zach Lahn is up to.
This week, Zach Lahn’s record of supporting reckless tariffs and attacking health care came under scrutiny, while his running mate was exposed for having an account on a hookup website for married people.
Let’s get into it.
📍 Where was Kansas carpetbagger Zach Lahn this week? Unclear, since he phoned in to do his Simon Conway interview and got flamed by listeners who “don’t believe” he actually lives in Iowa.
Health care plan on life support: Lahn’s dangerous record of denying people health care
The one-year anniversary of the Big Beautiful Bill put a spotlight on how longtime political operative and Kansas carpetbagger Zach Lahn has spent his career trying to keep people from getting health insurance. Lahn has yet to speak out against his party bosses making the largest cuts to Medicaid in history.
Zach Lahn’s dangerous record attacking access to health care:
- Lahn spent years as a political operative and spearheaded a campaign to block Medicaid expansion in Montana, which would’ve blocked tens of thousands of people from getting health insurance.
- 180,000 Iowans now have access to health insurance because Iowa expanded Medicaid, but that care would be under threat with Lahn in charge.
- Lahn called Medicaid expansion “bad policy” and a “mess.”
- Lahn worked to elect D.C. politicians who cast the deciding vote for the “One Big Beautiful Bill” in the U.S. Senate.
- Medicaid cuts in the budget law have threatened health care for 110,000 Iowans, put at least 23 rural hospitals on the brink of closure, and allowed premiums for 117,890 Iowans to skyrocket.
We’ve got the receipts: Lahn’s running mate is registered on “hookup site” for married people
A bombshell report from Raw Story reveals that Zach Lahn’s running mate, state Rep. Derek Wulf, has an “account linked to his email address on Adult Friend Finder, a hookup service for people seeking casual relationships” — despite campaigning on “traditional family values” and being married for over a decade.
- Adult Friend Finder “promotes itself as a platform for adults seeking casual and non-traditional relationships,” and an email address associated with Wulf “was exposed during a security breach on the website in 2016.”
- Lahn’s campaign desperately tried to kill the story, warning the outlet that “pursuing this in the face of this knowledge will change the nature of our relationship considerably.”
Raw Story reported that “it’s unknown if the account linked to Wulf is still active.”
Zach Lahn’s “let them eat cake” moment: Lahn-backed tariffs cost jobs at Whirlpool’s Amana plant
New reporting from Reuters reveals how tariffs backed by Zach Lahn have caused Whirlpool’s Amana plant to “cut more than half its nearly 2,000-strong workforce in the last year.” Despite the blow to Iowa manufacturing, Lahn has defended chaotic, costly tariffs, saying they “worked as intended.”
- Reckless tariffs “have not halted the job losses in Iowa,” as another “288 workers are set to lose their jobs in July.” Instead, they have jacked up prices for Whirlpool’s imported materials, reduced production, and outsourced supply chain operations to Mexico and China.
- Despite that, Lahn has dismissed the pain that Iowa’s farmers, manufacturers, and small businesses are feeling and claimed that tariffs do not raise input costs.
Iowans deserve to know: As layoffs “may weigh on voters in November’s midterm elections,” does Lahn regret supporting tariffs that cost Iowa workers their jobs?
📲 Tweet of the week:
That’s a wrap for this edition of Frequent Flyer Fridays. Thanks for reading, we’ll see you next week.