NEW: Zach Lahn Said He Wants Ideology Out of the Classroom, but His Own School Promoted Extreme Political Figures
Lahn wants the Wonder School to be “the model for reinventing education” in Iowa
DES MOINES – A new investigation from Raw Story reveals that Zach Lahn used the unaccredited private school he runs in Kansas to push political views from controversial right-wing figures like Elon Musk and Jordan Peterson to kids — despite his campaign promise to “revoke the licenses of teachers seen as indoctrinating students” and “‘wipe out’ the Iowa Board of Education Examiners.”
Lahn has attacked Iowa teachers as “evil” and “sinister,” claiming they are “indoctrinating” students. At the same time, the Wonder School, which he currently serves as president of, pushes extreme political ideologies. The Kansas school “described the school ‘team’ as including ‘fans of Elon Musk’ … along with ‘a couple [of fans] of Jordan Peterson,’” a far-right political commentator who has pushed antisemitic conspiracy theories.
Raw Story reported that “as of at least two weeks ago, the sentence mentioning Musk and Peterson had been removed from the school’s website, replaced by a note that Lahn and his wife serve on the school’s board of directors … Lahn did not respond to a request for comment for this story.”
From Iowa Democratic Party spokesperson Terra Hernandez:
“Carpetbagger and career political operative Zach Lahn spends his time attacking Iowa public schools and teachers while running an unaccredited private school in Kansas that he uses to push far-right political ideologies onto kids. Iowa teachers can’t trust Lahn to protect public schools when he uses them as punching bags to promote his own extreme agenda.”
Read more from Raw Story here, or key points below:
- As Republican Zach Lahn launched his campaign for Iowa governor, the private school he founded in Kansas quietly scrubbed the names of controversial right-wing figures from its website.
- The effort to paint over the influence of Elon Musk and Jordan Peterson, two men widely credited with mainstreaming white supremacist and anti-feminist ideas, took place as Lahn launched a campaign that has centered repeated attacks on what he calls a “sinister” agenda by the left to shape public education, while he vows to revoke the licenses of teachers seen as indoctrinating students.
- “And education is one that they have targeted so deeply because they know that if they can get their hands on your children — on our children — that they can work to change their beliefs to alter society in the future,” Lahn said during a candidate forum hosted by the conservative group Moms for Liberty in January.
- “It is one of the most sinister things you could imagine doing, because you’re taking an innocent, vulnerable child that’s there for curiosity, that’s there to learn new things and make friends, and you’re molding them for a specific purpose — an evil purpose, I’ll say.”
- During the same forum, Lahn said he wants to “wipe out” the Iowa Board of Education Examiners “and put in place people who will hold teachers accountable for when they indoctrinate our kids, suspend their licenses, or permanently take their licenses, if we have to.”
- Lahn often talks about his experience, over the span of a decade, starting schools, including one in Wichita, Kansas, that’s called Wonder. Archived versions of Wonder’s “Who we are” section from September 2021 through March 2025 described the school “team” as including “fans of Elon Musk,” the world’s richest person, along with “a couple [of fans] of Jordan Peterson,” a Canadian psychologist with millions of YouTube subscribers and a large following among the so-called manosphere.
- As of at least two weeks ago, the sentence mentioning Musk and Peterson had been removed from the school’s website, replaced by a note that Lahn and his wife serve on the school’s board of directors. That means the names came down sometime within an 18-month span, which covered the period when Lahn announced his campaign in November 2025.
- Lahn did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
- Lahn’s silence on the school website revision leaves it unclear whether he was a “team” member who was a fan of Musk, Peterson, or both, or what he thinks about the two men. But Lahn has framed public education as a cultural battleground, while accusing the left of introducing “Marxism” into the curriculum. He complains that the left emphasizes the negative aspects of Iowa and American history.
- “Look, when we were starting schools, one of my foundational principles that I said is, ‘We are going to strengthen the parent-and-child bond — not get in between it,’” Lahn said during the Moms for Liberty candidate forum. “Public school is to promote civic virtue — to understand the principles of faith and our country and our culture. And that’s what it will be when I am governor.”
- Following his apparent fascist salute at the time of Trump’s 2025 inauguration, Musk addressed the far-right Alternative für Deutschland party in Germany, appearing to dismiss the country’s historical responsibility for the Holocaust by saying there was “too much focus on past guilt and we need to move beyond that.”
- At that time, the reference to Musk was still on Wonder’s website.
- Lahn did not respond to a question from Raw Story about whether voters should interpret his comments about “culture” and “heritage” as references to race or immigration status, or to an invitation to explain what “culture” and “heritage” he seeks to restore.
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