MAGA Rep. Voted Against Obamacare Because He Says It “Enslaved” People

Nearly 137,000 Iowans stand to lose their access to the Affordable Care Act marketplace if Representative Zach Nunn has his way.

The Hawkeye State Republican has gone on a tear against the ACA, slandering the health insurance solution as a form of modern-day human bondage while broadcasting his intention to dismantle the popular national program.

Last week, Nunn told the Westside Conservative Club that he believed the “ACA keeps people in a position of permanent servitude.”

“Let me be very clear: I am not in favor of the ACA going forward. We have a bill that will immediately end it,” Nunn said. “The ACA is one of the most destructive health care plans out there.”

Nunn maintained a similar tone earlier in January, when he told the “America first” podcast Steak for Breakfast that the Obama-era solution was a “disaster” that had “enslaved” its beneficiaries.

“The Democrats’ plan has failed, but let’s talk holistically about fixing it for everybody, not just the few people that are on the Unaffordable Care Act and have become enslaved into that program,” Nunn told the show.

The Affordable Care Act’s marketplace has had an immense impact on the way that America approaches health insurance coverage. Roughly one in seven U.S. residents are enrolled in the marketplace, according data from the Treasury Department. A record 24 million Americans signed up for coverage through the ACA marketplace at the beginning of 2025, roughly double the number of people who enrolled just four years earlier amid the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Yet Republicans have fought tooth and nail to repeal and replace the program since it was signed into existence in 2010. Donald Trump originally campaigned on the issue in 2016, promising to end Obamacare, though he and his allies have not yet been completely successful.

In July, the conservative caucus slashed $1.1 trillion from the ACA’s appropriations via Trump’s “big, beautiful” law. 

Despite the needs of his constituents, Nunn voted for the deleterious funding package, and in doing so contributed to the closure of multiple health clinics in his state that partially relied on federal funding.

They included a MercyOne clinic in Ottumwa, which is expected to close at the end of February, the MercyOne Family Medicine clinic in Traer, and the Henry County Health Center-Wayland Clinic. 

Several other Iowa clinics have had to lay off their staff or drastically reduce critical services, such as birthing clinics. Some of the impacted sites include the Pella Regional Medical Clinic in Ottumwa, the Southeast Iowa Regional Medical Center, and  MercyOne clinics in Des Moines and Mason City.

Meanwhile, millions of Americans across the country are still waiting for the Senate to pass an extension for the ACA’s premium tax credits, which assist individuals making upward of 400 percent of the federal poverty level. The premium credits expired at the end of December and have yet to be renewed.

Republicans suddenly seemed shocked that President Trump is capable of racism after he posted a video depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes Thursday night. 

On Friday morning, longest-serving Black Senator Tim Scott called the video “the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House”—spurring other GOP senators and representatives to miraculously realize that Trump’s post was indeed racist. 

Representative Mike Lawler, who represents a swing district in New York, called out the president shortly thereafter, saying on X, “The President’s post is wrong and incredibly offensive—whether intentional or a mistake—and should be deleted immediately with an apology offered.”

After Trump took down the video, Representative Brian Fitzpatrick, whose Pennsylvania district voted for Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election, posted, “Racism and hatred have no place in our country—ever. They divide our people and weaken the foundations of our democracy.

“Whether intentional or careless, this post is a grave failure of judgment and is absolutely unacceptable from anyone—most especially from the President of the United States. A clear and unequivocal apology is owed,” Fitzpatrick added. 

Representative Jeff Van Drew too waited until after Trump deleted the video and said, “I condemn racism in any form.”

“These types of videos are morally wrong. Sadly, this kind of behavior happens on both sides of the aisle, and it needs to stop,” Van Drew posted on X Friday afternoon, without mentioning Trump by name. “We should be holding ourselves to a higher standard.” 

Representative Mike Turner also waited until Trump deleted the video, posting that he “didn’t feel the need to respond to every inflammatory statement made by the White House. However, the release of racist images of former President Barack and First Lady Michelle Obama is offensive, heart breaking, and unacceptable. President Trump should apologize.”

In the Senate, a few Republicans were willing to speak out.  

Senator Pete Ricketts of Nebraska posted, “Even if this was a Lion King meme, a reasonable person sees the racist context to this. The White House should do what anyone does when they make a mistake: remove this and apologize.”

Roger Wicker of Mississippi called the video “totally unacceptable. The president should take it down and apologize.”

Senator Susan Collins, who is facing a tough reelection campaign in Maine, piggybacked on Scott’s post, saying, “Tim is right. This was appalling.”

None of these posts demonstrate any real political courage, with most coming after the video was taken down. Trump has yet to comment on his post, and after his press secretary Karoline Leavitt initially tried to downplay the video, his staff later tried to claim one of them posted it without the president’s knowledge. The apology many of these members of Congress are supposedly demanding won’t come—not that any of these politicians were likely to hold Trump accountable anyway. 

The U.S. Marshals Service is defending a federal agent after a video of him violently kicking a small dog made waves on Friday morning.

The agent, part of the Memphis Safe Task Force that the Trump administration unleashed on the city last summer, can be seen in the video kicking the dog after it runs up barking at the agents’ K-9.

The dog is tiny, harmless, and really not doing anything to stop the agents from doing their jobs. Nevertheless, the U.S. Marshals played the victim.

“A woman at the apartment complex recorded the incident on her cell phone and posted the video to social media. While the appearance of the incident is unfortunate, the deputy marshal’s action was not done with malice,” they wrote in a statement. “It was a last-resort, split-second action taken by a law enforcement officer to control the environment and mitigate a dangerous situation. An uncontrolled, aggressive animal can hinder official duties and threaten safety.”

Under Donald Trump’s administration, the National Institutes of Health have slashed more than half a billion dollars in medical research on some of the leading causes of death in America.

A report published Friday by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, the ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, found that the NIH had gutted $561 million in funding for research on cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and Alzheimer’s disease.

Despite research on these illnesses being fully funded by Congress, the Trump administration has chosen to terminate at least 320 grants mid-study and abandon thousands of patients across 304 clinical trials, including 69 trials for children. In addition to destroying years of work, the Trump administration’s actions have prompted an entire generation of medical researchers to question the viability of building a career in the United States.

So, how did the NIH decide what to cut? “The criteria for these decisions are not scientific. They are political,” the report stated.

Interviews with staff revealed that the NIH used a list of banned words to determine which research projects deserved extra scrutiny, including terms such as “COVID,” “climate change,” “diversity,” “disadvantaged backgrounds,” as well as multiple terms for Black men and women.

It’s worth breaking down what exactly losing that half a billion dollars detailed in the report has cost Americans.

The report found that the NIH has terminated or frozen 116 cancer research grants totaling $273 million. Included in that total was $20 million for the Duke Specialized Program of Research Excellence in Brain Cancer in North Carolina, where researchers investigated the leading cause of cancer deaths for children under 15.

The NIH has also terminated or frozen 65 Alzheimer’s research grants totaling $94 million, upending years-long research studies that were finally beginning to yield new drugs and diagnostic tools.

Additionally, the organization halted funding for 14 of the 35 NIH-funded Alzheimer’s Disease Research Centers, totaling approximately $65 million. The agency also canceled meetings of the National Advisory Council on Aging, delaying the disbursement of an estimated $600 million in grants. After years of bipartisan investment, the Trump administration cut the number of new Alzheimer’s research projects by nearly one-third in a single year, according to the report.

Despite Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s crusade to “Make Americans Healthy Again” by flipping the food pyramid upside down, the NIH actively gutted research into diabetes by $83 million and heart disease by $111 million.

Nicholas Tartaglione, a mass murderer and the former cellmate of Jeffrey Epstein, is claiming that the Trump administration wanted the sexual predator dead. 

In a pardon petition filed last summer and obtained by The Daily Beast, Tartaglione claimed that Epstein was placed in harm’s way on purpose, so that he would die before being able to testify in court and incriminate any of the wealthy elites who abused young girls with him.

“It is no coincidence that prior to trial I was transferred to the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan and deliberately placed in the same cell as Jeffrey Epstein,” he wrote. “I clearly was not protected on purpose, nor was Epstein. I truly believe that the government wanted both Epstein and me dead.” 

The “government” would have been that of President Trump in 2019—an interesting claim given that it’s Trump from whom Tartaglione is requesting this pardon.  

Tartaglione and Epstein had a strange relationship, as the latter accused Tartaglione of trying to kill him three weeks before he was found dead. Tartaglione denies the accusation, and says he even saved Epstein when he had a “piece of string” around his neck. 

Tartaglione’s claim only adds more fuel to the fire of speculation surrounding the Epstein files and the elite cabal of abusers held within them. The White House dismissed reports of Tartaglione’s letter, writing “Anyone is able to submit a pardon request—much like everything else the Daily Beast writes, no one should take their garbage seriously.”