President Donald Trump clapped alongside the crowd as he went to begin his speech on affordability at the Horizon Events Center in Clive Jan. 27, 2026. (Photo by Robin Opsahl/Iowa Capital Dispatch)
An Iowa district court judge on Wednesday dismissed the lawsuit brought by President Donald Trump against the Des Moines Register and pollster J. Ann Selzer for the 2024 Iowa Poll published shortly before the election.
Trump filed the lawsuit against the Iowa newspaper; its parent company, Gannett Co., now renamed USA Today Co.; Selzer and her polling company in 2024 after winning the U.S. presidential race against former Vice President Kamala Harris. An Iowa Poll published three days before the 2024 election showed Harris leading Trump among likely Iowa voters 47% to 44%. Trump won Iowa in the 2024 presidential election by 13 percentage points.
The lawsuit alleges the poll was an attempt to “create a false narrative of inevitability for Harris in the final week of the 2024 Presidential Election.”
The lawsuit went from federal court to state court in 2025, when Trump’s attorneys refiled the lawsuit alongside U.S. Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks and former state Sen. Brad Zaun. While Trump’s attorneys had claimed the poll results were “brazen election interference” and a violation of Iowa’s Consumer Fraud Act, District Court Judge Scott Beattie said the claim was incorrect.
Beattie wrote in his ruling, “at its core, the plaintiffs’ petition seeks to stretch both Iowa statutory and common law beyond their current bounds, turning speech that enjoys the highest category of First Amendment protection into a liability.”
The judge dismissed the case with prejudice, meaning Trump will not be able to file the same legal claim.
The organization representing Selzer, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), released a statement celebrating the decision Wednesday.
“We’re pleased that the court recognized what we’ve said all along: This lawsuit was laughable from the beginning and never should have been brought,” FIRE Chief Counsel Bob Corn-Revere said in a statement. “The First Amendment does not allow anyone in government, least of all the president, to punish people under the banner of ‘fake news.’ That may work for him as a campaign slogan, but it is not a thing in the law.”
Selzer reiterated in a statement that the difference between polling and election results are not a deliberate act, nor evidence of fraud.
“Polling is a social science, not clairvoyance, and no responsible pollster can guarantee an election outcome,” Selzer said. “What we can guarantee is that we will follow the data wherever it leads, even when the results are uncomfortable or unexpected. I am grateful that Judge Beattie’s ruling recognizes these principles and reaffirms the fundamental freedom to pursue and publish the truth without political interference.”
Attorney Alan Ostergren, who represented the president in the lawsuit, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the case dismissal.