Iowans Be Aware, and Beware-

Co-founder of Wichita private school contending for Iowa GOP’s gubernatorial nomination

Iowa Democratic Party raises red flag about dozens of Zach Lahn’s flights to Kansas

By:Tim Carpenter-May 29, 2026

TOPEKA — Private school founder, farmer and businessman Zach Lahn is running an insurgent Republican campaign for governor in Iowa.

The former Kansan has labeled this outsider bid as an “Iowa First” campaign. He’s opposed abortion and high taxes, but defended gun rights, school vouchers and religious freedom. He told Iowa voters he admired President Donald Trump’s tenacious fight against the political establishment.

“I told my wife many times, if I ever ran for anything, the only thing I’d ever want to run for was governor,” Lahn said.

Lahn grew up near Sioux City, Iowa, graduated from University of Colorado in Boulder, worked for Montana and Colorado congressmen, served as Montana director of Americans for Prosperity and as an AFP fundraiser, and bought a Belle Plaine, Iowa, farm previously owned by relatives. He launched an unorthodox school in Wichita and voted in Kansas elections in the 2018, 2020 and 2022 cycles.

Lahn’s campaign didn’t respond to a request for comment about why he chose to run for governor in Iowa rather than Kansas or questions raised by the Iowa Democratic Party about his close ties to Kansas and decision in 2024 to transfer his voter registration to Iowa.

Lahn has stood out among Iowa’s GOP gubernatorial candidates by denouncing lobbyists, corporations and organizations with outsized influence on politics. He’s not been shy about criticizing Democrats and Republicans responsible for blocking public policy reform.

“I’m fighting the ‘Uni-party.’ Both sides have been bought off in many ways,” he said.

Lahn is on the Tuesday primary ballot with U.S. Rep. Randy Feenstra, state Rep. Eddie Andrews, former state Rep. Brad Sherman and former Iowa Department of Administrative Services director Adam Steen. The Democratic nominee will be Iowa state Auditor Rob Sand, who is running unopposed.

For the first time since 2006, an incumbent Iowa governor won’t be on the ballot. Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds, with one of the lowest approval ratings in the country, didn’t seek reelection.

Populist approach

Michael Smith, a political science professor at Emporia State University, said old-school political theory dictated gubernatorial candidates had to be rooted in a state’s political infrastructure and local community life to be relevant. That changed as Trump assumed control of GOP politics and showed how firebrand conservatives, including those without prior experience in public office, might find a lane to run, he said.

“It’s all different now,” said Smith, who indicated Lahn could be a beneficiary of that shift. “He’s trying to be his own kind of populist.”

Lahn created momentum for his candidacy by loaning the campaign $2 million and using that cash to fill the airwaves with television advertising.

After working for Americans for Prosperity, an advocacy group associated with founders of Koch Industries, Lahn moved to Wichita to launch the unconventional private school named Wonder. The pre-kindergarten through 12th-grade school opened in 2018 on the campus of Wichita State University. It was financed by Chase Koch, the son of billionaire Charles Koch, and Chase Koch’s wife at the time, Annie Koch.

Annie Koch and Lahn subsequently divorced their spouses and were married. They have seven children in a blended family and the kids have been featured in campaign materials.

Kansas voter registration records show Zach Lahn voted in Kansas with a provisional ballot in November 2018, in-person at a Sedgwick County polling place in November 2020 and with an advance ballot in the August 2022 primary. Zach Lahn registered to vote in Iowa on Oct. 17, 2024. Transferring his registration at that time allowed him to meet the state’s two-year residency requirement for a run for governor in 2026.

Jennifer Konfrst, a professor of journalism and strategic political communication at Drake University in Des Moines, said there was potential for Lahn’s “Iowa First” campaign slogan to come across as disingenuous among voters aware of his lengthy presence in Kansas. Iowa voters appreciate the life history of candidates, she said, but some dig deeper into whether a candidate’s staff came from Iowa or Washington, D.C.

“Being from here matters,” said Konfrst, a Democratic member of the Iowa House not seeking reelection. “It’s not unimportant that somebody who wants to be governor of Iowa isn’t from here.”

Kansas connections

In July 2024, according to Sedgwick County’s register of deeds, Annie Lahn purchased a home in Kechi near Wichita and declared on mortgage documents it was her primary residence. One year after acquiring the property, Zach and Annie Lahn sold the home to an LLC for $1.

Business records filed with the Kansas Secretary of State’s Office identified the LLC’s “authorized person” as Wichita resident Mikaela Ledbetter, who made a modest donation in December 2025 to Zach Lahn’s campaign for governor.

Less than two weeks after the transaction in July 2025, Annie Lahn registered to vote in Belle Plaine, Iowa. Zach Lahn and his previous wife, Lauren, had purchased that Belle Plaine homestead in 2014.

The Des Moines Register reported in April that Zach Lahn flew from Iowa to Wichita in his personal airplane 37 times since Oct. 1, 2025. Zach Lahn told the Register the flights allowed him to be with children that he and his wife had from previous marriages.

“I’m trying my best to be present for things,” Zach Lahn told the Register. “I have no worries that we’ll be able to fulfill every duty we need to do on the campaign or as governor.”

Zach Lahn told the newspaper he moved from Kansas to Iowa in 2023 and was an official Iowa voter in the 2024 general election and a 2025 local election.

Iowa Democratic Party spokesperson Terra Hernandez seized upon the Register’s reporting to declare Zach Lahn a “Kansas carpetbagger.”

“Lahn has been trying to fool Iowa voters since the start of his campaign, thinks he can pay his way to the governor’s mansion with his millions in out-of-state money and spends more time in Wichita than Belle Plaine,” Hernandez said.

On campaign trail

During the gubernatorial campaign, Zach Lahn has emphasized he was a sixth-generation Iowan with family roots as far back as the Civil War.

His campaign has concentrated on restoration of academic achievement in the state’s education system and removal of classroom educators who insisted on advancing personal ideology.

“We don’t have a spending problem. We have a quality problem,” Zack Lahn said during a GOP forum broadcast by KCCI in Des Moines.

He said he would work to preserve Iowa family farms after 10,000 vanished during the past 20 years. He said one-fourth of Iowa land was now owned by out-of-state investors. He proposed raising property taxes on Iowa land held by nonresidents so property taxes for Iowa residents could be lowered.

He’s questioned economic development strategies in Iowa that did little to stem the brain drain of youth to other states.

Zack Lahn, endorsed by MAHA Action associated with U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr., made a campaign issue of rising cancer rates in Iowa. He promised to veto any bill granting agricultural chemical companies immunity from lawsuits tied to alleged failure to accurately warn consumers of health risks.

“I believe big ag and big pharma have treated our farmers and families as numbers, not neighbors,” Zack Lahn said.

Clay Jones, Open Windows

Speaking of the Trump 250 dollar bill…

Don Jr. is also making big bucks off the presidency

Ann Telnaes

Propublica has a story about another Trump family grift

Vanilla 250

A washed-up musician singing for a washed-up president.

Clay Jones

When artists were invited to participate in what’s being called the Great American State Fair, they were promised that it was not political or partisan. And proving that point, Donald Trump will be kicking it off.

The Great American State Fair is described as a birthday bash to celebrate America’s 250th anniversary, and it will include a series of concerts on the National Mall from June 24 to July 10.

After several artists dropped out, including Morris Day and the Time, Young MC, the Commodores, Martina McBride and Bret Michaels, Trump took to Truth Social and said, “I understand Artists are getting ‘the yips’ having to do with their performance … so I am thinking about bringing the Number One Attraction anywhere in the World, the man who gets much larger audiences than Elvis in his prime, and he does so without a guitar, the man who loves our Country more than anyone else, and the man who some say is the Greatest President in History (THE GOAT!), DONALD J. TRUMP, to take the place of these highly paid, Third Rate ‘Artists,’ and give a major speech, rallying the Country forward like I have done ever since being President!”

The “yips” is what Trump has when he TACOs out or something. (snip-MORE)

Treasonous Scales

I don’t trust my scale either

Clay Jones

Donald Trump had another mystery visit to a doctor’s office this week.

Three years ago, only 28% of Americans surveyed by a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll said Trump was NOT healthy enough to serve as president. Today, that same poll found that 55% of Americans don’t believe Donald Trump is healthy enough to serve as president. There needs to be a poll asking if he’s mentally healthy enough to be president.

Trump has always rambled incoherently, but it seems to be distressing people more now in combination with his cankles, hand bruises, swollen eyes, and excessive blinking. Shhhh…he’s sleepy.

Trump had a physical in April of last year, and then he had a semi-annual physical in October, and now he has gone back for his third physical in 13 months. Additionally, he’s been to a Dentist twice over the past five months, which surprises everyone. He still has his teeth? (snip-MORE)

White House Cage Fight

The Trump regime loves them some cages

Clay Jones

All my life, I have heard people say they respect the office of the president, even if they do not like the current occupant. Even though I did not like or respect George W. Bush, I still respected the presidency. But it’s getting harder and harder to respect the office when the current occupant is holding cage fights on the south lawn.

Are we in gladiator times? Are we conducting fights on the self lawn to distract us from our troubles, like inflation, illegal tariffs, ICE goons shooting Americans in the streets, and Donald Trump’s chosen war? In addition to a gaudy oversize ballroom, should we also build a replica of the Roman Colosseum on the White House grounds? Is today’s Caesar, Donald Trump, going to give a thumbs up or a thumbs down to determine the fate of the loser of each bout? Will wenches be feeding Trump grapes during the fights? (snip-MORE)

Some clips from The Majority Report on different subjects

Fun & Music!

Gotta give the heart and mind a break!

Some Good Climate News

Nobody Expected The Spanish (Energy) Transition!

The grid in Madrid is where prices have slid.

Doktor Zoom

As we like reminding you, with Donald Trump trying to kill clean energy, Europe has become the source of much of our clean energy Nice Times lately. Here’s one more example: Spain is among the big sleeper hits on Europe’s energy transition pop chart. In just a decade, Spain has ramped up its use of wind and solar power, resulting in some of the lowest wholesale electricity prices on the continent.

Oxford prof and energy policy analyst Jan Rosenow gets into the details at his “Bright Spots” newsletter, which we’ll recommend for folks who need a dose of climate optimism about now:

In the first four months of 2026, the average wholesale electricity price in Spain was €44 per megawatt-hour. In Italy, it was €127. In Germany, €96. In the UK, €103. Spain is now cheaper than France, well below the central-European bloc, and within striking distance of the Nordic hydro-and-nuclear heavyweights that have always topped the cheap-power league.

The basic reason is pretty simple, Rosenow explains, although he also goes into further detail beyond this. “Spain increasingly pushed gas increasingly out of its electricity supply, and the price of electricity followed.”

Over the last 25 years, Spain has gone from getting a third of its electricity from coal to effectively having zero coal power. Spain replaced most of that capacity with cheaper (and relatively cleaner but still climate-unfriendly) fossil gas, and it’s now replacing gas with renewables. Gas peaked at about 30 percent of Spain’s energy mix near the end of the 2000s, and is now down to about 19 percent. Another 19 percent comes from nuclear, which hasn’t changed over the last few decades and 14 percent is from hydro and bioenergy. The rest has been solar and wind, which combined are up to 42 percent of the mix in 2026. Here’s a pretty chart, with cheerful yellow solar energy and cool blue wind energy growing, and icky grey coal rapidly fading into nothing.

Chart titled 'Spain's electricity mix: coal and gas out, wind and solar in.' Based on Ember's 2025 global electricity review, it displays in graph form the data discussed in the preceding paragraph.

Here’s why the replacement of gas with renewables matters so much: Because wholesale electricity prices at any given time are set by the most expensive energy plants needed to meet demand, and gas is usually that most expensive source, getting more solar and wind on the grid during high-demand daylight hours brings down wholesale prices a lot. (snip-MORE)

Go and read, and click the links if you have time. It is heartening, even though it’s not happening here.

My Favorite Sport Has A New Champion

Shrey Parikh wins the Scripps National Spelling Bee, beating Ishaan Gupta in lightning round

WASHINGTON (AP) — Shrey Parikh felt the pressure of arriving at the Scripps National Spelling Bee as a favorite, but his confidence showed every time he got a word he knew. And when it all came down to a lightning-round tiebreaker against Ishaan Gupta, Shrey left no doubt.

Shrey turned a tense, high-quality final into a blowout Thursday night, racing through the 90-second “spell-off” and getting 32 words right to be crowned the best young speller in the English language. Ishaan spelled 25 words correctly in the tiebreaker.

A 14-year-old from Rancho Cucamonga, California, Shrey finished third in 2024 but lost his school bee last year when he was battling a fever. He has dominated the bee circuit since, winning several online competitions against many of the same kids he outlasted this week in the nation’s capital. His winning haul includes a custom trophy and $52,500 in cash.

“Right now I’m probably the happiest I’ve ever been. I’m just so happy and relieved, and just such a flood of emotions,” Shrey said. “At my school bee last year, I was really dejected and just very upset. It didn’t even sink in until the next day. I had a really tough time, but I’m glad I was able to bounce back.”

Yet Another Thing To Keep Track Of:

Majority of Americans Support Ban on Surveillance Pricing and Electronic Shelf Labels

Surprisingly, 3% saying it would make them more likely to shop at a store.

By Matt Novak

A whopping 68% of Americans say they worry about surveillance pricing increasing the cost of goods, while just 5% believe it will lead to lower prices, according to a new survey from GBAO Strategies distributed by the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. Twenty percent say it will likely just keep prices the same.

The new survey is part of the UFCW’s “Affordable Groceries and Good Jobs Campaign,” an effort to encourage states to pass laws banning surveillance pricing and electronic shelf labels (ESLs), the increasingly common price tags that some activists worry allow companies to rapidly change prices in stores several times per day.

The concern includes obvious dynamic pricing models, like increasing the cost of cold beverages when it gets hot outside, but also involves more sophisticated and as-yet theoretical examples like increasing the cost of food staples when a customer’s data is analyzed in store and it’s determined they’re willing to pay more.

Fifty-eight percent of Americans in the survey say digital price tags would make them less likely to shop in a store, with 35% saying it would make no difference, and 3% saying it would make them more likely to shop there. Sixty-seven percent are in favor of banning ESLs outright, according to the new survey.

Walmart, which has patented AI-powered price changes, has been rolling out electronic shelf labels across its stores, and it aims to feature them in every U.S. location by the end of 2026. But the company has insisted it’s not going to use ESLs for jacking up prices and insists that a human manager must be in the loop when prices change.

Unsurprisingly, 66% of those surveyed say they’re worried about the cost of groceries. And it’s no wonder, given the trajectory of inflation in recent months. The University of Michigan’s May sentiment index hit a record low last month at 44.8, down five points from April, according to Bloomberg.

In April, inflation rose 3.8% on an annualized basis, while wages rose just 3.6%, the first time wages have failed to keep up with inflation since 2023, according to CBS News. And that’s causing major concerns about supermarkets’ plans to squeeze customers for more money with new tech.

The new survey takers at GBAO Strategies noted that some grocery stores are replacing paper price tags with digital price tags and asked Americans whether that technology was likely to increase or decrease prices for consumers. Just 3% thought it would decrease prices, while 65% thought stores would use digital price tags to increase prices. 24 percent of participants believe it will keep prices about the same, with the remainder (8%) saying they don’t know.

UFCW International Vice President Ademola Oyefeso told Gizmodo that he believes electronic shelf labels are a tool for price gouging and that tech companies are marketing them for that purpose.

“The ESL industry sells the prospect of higher prices and job losses as positives,” said Oyefeso. “Across the country, families are having to make tough choices in the grocery aisle every day as a result of sky-high prices, and polling clearly shows that they want these predatory technologies banned.”

Proponents of digital shelf labels take issue with the idea of using the term surveillance pricing at all. They prefer terms like “personalized pricing” and believe that stores have an incentive to make pricing competitive. But unions like UFCW don’t believe that’s true and are urging legislation to be passed around the country to fight it.

“Federal and state lawmakers know these practices are wrong, and the UFCW urges them to get ahead of them before they appear in every store,” Oyefeso told Gizmodo. “Any lawmaker that is serious about cutting costs for hardworking families must support a ban on electronic shelf labels and surveillance pricing in grocery stores.”

At least a dozen states are currently considering legislation that would regulate surveillance pricing, with Maryland recently passing the first law banning the practice at grocery stores. But activists have spoken out about that law and worry that it has way too many loopholes.

White Lion – When The Children Cry (Official Music Video)

I hate the YouTube algorithm and and myself more for giving into it and saving all the hateful abuse videos I get. I am crying now trying not to alert Ron who is in the next room with the door between us open. I had two open windows. In one I had so many tabs of abuse that the algorithm pushed them to me because I occasionally watch them. I deleted 8 of them before switching to the other open window. What does YouTube think I need to see / hear after all that deleting and not watching all those videos? The two videos below.

Am I the one to blame but if so what does that say about all the vulnerable children who are led down hate rabbit holes? At least the harm happening here is to me done myself aidded by the shit pushed into my feeds and I am so stupid that I click on them and leave the tab open while I try to move onto something else. But eventually I end up coming back to the ones that hurt me so much. Who is to blame? As always in my life, as in my childhood … I am, and I have always been according to those that hurt me. Goodnight. Scottie. Hugs

Accessibility For All:

‘Everyone is equal in this space’: the cosmic world of neurodivergent-friendly club night Robyn’s Rocket

Hugh Morris

Trumpeter Robyn Steward thought clubs weren’t for her until she encountered Fabric’s accessible upgrade – the new home for her radically inclusive, space-themed night

Working the crowd … Robyn playing at one of her Robyn’s Rocket nights at Fabric. Photograph: Siân O’Connor

Until May last year, trumpeter Robyn Steward had never been in a nightclub space, save for playing trumpet with Lancaster duo the Lovely Eggs at London’s Heaven, and a few nights in a university hall that doubled as a lunch room. Steward is autistic and has multiple disabilities including cerebral palsy. “Sometimes strobes can trigger migraines for me, or feel overwhelming,” she says. “I feel like my body’s a bit lost.”

When she wanted to see a gig at Fabric nightclub in London, she asked a friend to go with her as a carer. “I was amazed at how accessible it was,” she says. Subtle touches integrate multiple access needs into the space. “The mezzanine level meant that I didn’t have the strobes in my face. There was a rail that I could hold on to, and there was seating opposite the balcony so I could sit and watch the gig.” She also noticed Fabric’s recently upgraded sensory dancefloor, which deliberately transforms sound into tactile vibrations to better cater for the hearing impaired. “I could see that the lights were strobing and everything, but I felt safe,” Steward says.

Inspired, she contacted Fabric to see if they might host her long-running, space-themed experimental music night Robyn’s Rocket, which since 2017 has been booking noise bands, DJs and improv groups in London venues from Deptford to Dalston. While it champions disabled and autistic performers and audiences, Robyn’s Rocket is principally about integration. “People with and without learning disabilities – and autistic and non-autistic people – should spend time together, where there isn’t any kind of power dynamic,” she says. Her aim is to create a space “where people are all just having a really nice time together”.

We meet in a music studio in Deptford, south London, the day before the Rocket’s first night at Fabric. Steward, 39, is relentlessly upbeat; straight after the interview, she heads to the shops where a friend helps her figure out an unspecific drinks rider request. It’s in keeping with the Rocket spirit of clarifying what might usually be assumed or implied. Online, she supplies detailed visual storyboards of how an evening will progress. All artists fill out detailed tech and access riders. Every box and cable is given a name, shape or colour. All Rocket gigs are livestreamed and timings are strictly adhered to so those streaming the gig don’t get lost. “The schedule, once it’s agreed, it’s pretty non-negotiable,” Steward says.

On arrival, everyone is presented with a silver rocket-shaped badge, angled up, across or down as a visual barometer of how much communication they’re comfortable with. Fabric is adorned with more than 100 posters: signposts always feature words and shapes and are populated with cartoon characters, human and alien. Silver foil covers the stage, and live projections from visual artist Rucksack Cinema are suitably astral. “You’re into new planets, are you?” crows the frontman of “cosmic dross” band Henge.

For Steward, the space theme is also about imagining an equitable new world. “You might meet somebody here with a learning disability, or an autistic person. You might not. But everyone is equal in this space.” The Robyn’s Rocket nights echo the aesthetic and political spirit of Afro-futurist jazz visionary Sun Ra and his Arkestra. “The idea that you can create a different dimension, almost a different planetary experience, at these events is very consistent,” says Mark Williams, co-founder of the Deptford-based arts charity Heart N Soul (where Steward is an associate artist). “It’s using imagination and creativity to free people, and to exist on a different kind of plane.”

Steward was born in Suffolk, and took to music when a tutor brought instruments to her primary school: “I really wanted to go on the trumpet, but they ran out of time, so I spent a whole week blowing raspberries.” The tutor returned for an assembly the next week, and Steward immediately requested the trumpet. “I played a clear note straight away.”

As an infant, Steward used Makaton (a language that uses a combination of signs, symbols and speech) to communicate until she attended Musical Keys, a group for children with special needs, aged three: “It was song based, and so I learned to speak that way – there was a lot of repetition.” Once she learned to speak, she wouldn’t stop; her parents got her a Dictaphone for long car journeys: “They’d say, ‘You can talk to this Dictaphone as much as you want, but leave us alone in the front.’ I would make my own radio shows that would come out sounding like Alan Partridge’s Knowing Me, Knowing You.”

Unlike her East Anglian counterpart, Steward is an excellent, direct communicator. The first half of her career was spent delivering autism training, speaking at conferences, and in research. She’s also written books such as The Autism-Friendly Guide to Self Employment. But, by age 30, Steward became “very conscious that I needed to think about what I want to spend the rest of my life doing”. She had recently learned to improvise on trumpet through the big band at a local adult education centre, and seeing a gig by trumpeter Andy Diagram (who plays the trumpet with guitar pedals) proved crucial to developing her own art. With the help of Heart N Soul, she built Robyn’s Rocket up from a small residency in Deptford to a regular slot at Cafe Oto in east London, later inviting musicians including Alabaster DePlume, Coby Sey and Mica Levi to perform.

The vocalist Seaming To played a Rocket night in 2024. “More and more friends of mine are realising that they have neurodivergent aspects,” Seaming To says. “And quite a lot of them find it really awkward coming out to noisy places. At Robyn’s night, you can admit to feeling awkward, and it’s all acceptable.”

On the night, Steward dons her trademark purple fedora and doubles up as space trumpeter and energetic MC. “I’ve done this gig partly because I just wanted to put Henge on,” she says, beaming from the stage. For all the very human practicalities of Robyn’s Rocket, Steward still has celestial ambitions. “And why wouldn’t you want to put them on in a homemade spaceship?”

Go Figure-Did They Cheat?

Maine Trans Sports/Bathroom Ban Referendum Invalid Over Signature Forgery Concerns And Improper Gathering

The initiative was funded by billionaire anti-trans donor, Richard Uihlein, and used out-of-state paid signature gatherers.

Erin Reed

On Tuesday, Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows ruled that a proposed ballot initiative banning trans students from school sports and bathrooms will not appear before voters this November. The billionaire-funded campaign initially submitted 79,692 signatures—well over the 67,682 required to qualify—and the Secretary of State’s office certified the question for the ballot in March. But indications soon emerged that the signature-gathering process was riddled with improper procedures and, in at least one documented case and potentially many others, outright forgery. After a court remand, an evidentiary hearing, and a sworn-testimony review of the petitions, 12,542 signatures were invalidated, leaving the campaign 532 short of the threshold. Barring an appeal—which is likely though its success is far from certain—transgender students in Maine can rest a little easier this election cycle.

The infractions are striking. One out-of-state circulator left his petition forms unattended at a Topsham polling place on Election Day—twice—allowing voters to sign without a witness present, in direct violation of Maine law. Another circulator did the same at a Saco polling place, leaving her table for extended periods while crowds of voters signed unwitnessed petitions. When asked under oath whether she had destroyed the unwitnessed forms as required, she said yes—but a photograph submitted into evidence showed one of those forms was in fact turned in for validation. Most troubling of all, an out-of-state signature gatherer paid per signature submitted forms that appear to contain outright forgeries: one voter listed on her petition testified under oath that she had never signed it and had never even heard of the initiative. After the Oxford town clerk flagged additional suspicious signatures, an Elections Division review compared every name on the circulator’s forms against voter registration applications—and concluded that every single one of her validated signatures should have been thrown out as signed by another person.

Based on the evidence, Bellows ruled Tuesday that the initiative had failed to qualify for the November ballot. The decision marked a reversal of her own March certification, when her office initially determined that the petition contained enough valid signatures to move forward. That earlier ruling was challenged in Cumberland County Superior Court by three Maine voters, who alleged that thousands of signatures had been collected in violation of state law. In April, Justice Deborah Cashman agreed that the original review had been incomplete and remanded the case back to the Secretary of State’s office for further factfinding, ordering a new determination of validity within thirty days. That process produced the May 12 evidentiary hearing—where witnesses, including town clerks and voters whose names appeared on petitions, testified under oath—and ultimately the decision invalidating thousands more signatures than the initial review had caught. Bellows adopted that recommendation in full.

The initiative would have done far more than what its sports-focused branding suggested. It would have defined a person’s sex for school purposes as “a person’s biological status as male or female recorded at birth on the person’s original birth certificate”—a definition that would have stripped transgender students of legal recognition in Maine schools. It would have required public schools to “maintain separate restrooms, locker rooms, shower rooms, and other private spaces for each sex,” extending the ban well beyond athletics and into every gendered space in a school building. It would have created a private right of action allowing any student to sue their school for “direct injury” suffered from a violation of the act, effectively turning every transgender student’s presence in a bathroom or on a sports team into potential litigation. And it would have specifically carved transgender students out of the Maine Human Rights Act.

The anti-trans signature drive was not a grassroots effort. It was bankrolled by Illinois billionaire Richard Uihlein, the co-founder of Uline office supplies, who donated $800,000 to fund the entire effort. Uihlein has given more than $250 million to political causes since 2016, and is a major funder of the American Principles Project, which routinely spends tens of millions on anti-trans campaign ads during election years. He is not alone: an independent analysis published by Atmos and HEATED found that 80% of 45 major anti-trans organizations in the U.S. have received funding from fossil fuel companies or billionaires. The Maine initiative was part of that broader pattern—an attempt by a small handful of extraordinarily wealthy donors to use direct democracy as a workaround in states where elected legislatures have refused to engage in anti-trans legislation.

The decision was greeted with relief by the LGBTQ+ coalition that has fought the initiative since the day it was filed. “Maine has strict rules in place to protect the integrity of our elections and our system of direct democracy. The paid, out-of-state signature gathers and the billionaire who paid to try to put this question on the ballot failed to follow the rules,” said David Farmer, campaign manager for the Campaign for Free and Fair Schools, the coalition led by EqualityMaine, GLAD Law, and the Maine Women’s Lobby. “We believe that the appeals process and the reviews by the Secretary of State are working as the law intends. They are protecting the integrity of our elections.”

The Maine ruling is not the end of fight. Similar billionaire-backed initiatives have been certified for the November ballot in Washington and Colorado, where voters will decide whether to bar transgender students from sports as well as medical care restrictions. Both efforts are also funded by conservative megadonors, and both are part of the same strategy that produced the Maine initiative: use ballot initiatives to roll back trans rights in states whose elected legislatures have refused to do so. The Maine anti-trans campaign is expected appeal Bellows’ decision to Maine Superior Court within the ten-day window the law allows.