ANOTHER ONE DOWN

Trump Suffers Stinging Defeat in Battle Against Pollster

The president has suffered two losses in his war to silence the media in as many days.

An Iowa judge has tossed out President Donald Trump’s lawsuit against The Des Moines Register and its former pollster over a survey that inaccurately predicted the 2024 presidential election results.

TAKING ACTION

Trump Makes Good on His Threat to Sue Iowa Pollster

Dan Ladden-Hall

The president had accused pollster J. Ann Selzer of “brazen election interference” after she released a survey days before the election that found then-Vice President Kamala Harris leading Trump by 3 points in Iowa.

Trump went on to win the heavily Republican state by more than 13 percentage points and later argued that the poll had intentionally created a “false narrative of inevitability for Harris,” in violation of the Iowa Consumer Fraud Act’s prohibition on deceptive advertising.

The defendants countered that political polling was protected by the First Amendment.

Iowa District Judge Scott Beattie soundly rejected Trump’s reasoning on Wednesday and dismissed the case, ruling that the poll and its coverage were constitutionally protected political speech.

The suit sought 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,” Beattie wrote in his ruling.

Trump’s lawyers had argued that the polling was commercial speech, which enjoys a lower standard of constitutional protection, because polls are for-profit products.

As precedent, it cited a Supreme Court case that actually found the opposite: that editorial content is not commercial speech just because it costs money to acquire or produce, Beattie wrote.

Reporting on a political poll during an election year “is speech about a matter of public concern, occupying the summit of the pyramid of First Amendment values,” he added. “The First Amendment has its fullest and most urgent application to speech uttered during a campaign for political office.”

A spokesperson for Trump’s legal team told the Daily Beast in a statement that the poll was a “scam” that was “designed to damage President Trump’s dominant campaign in the final days of the race.”

The president plans to appeal the case to the Iowa Supreme Court, he added.

In a statement, Selzer—who was represented pro bono by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE)—said she was “grateful” that the ruling “reaffirms the fundamental freedom to pursue and publish the truth without political interference.”

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FIRE’s chief counsel Bob Corn-Revere, who led the defense, said the lawsuit was “laughable from the beginning and never should have been brought.”

Since returning to office, the president has tried to control press coverage by filing multiple lawsuits against news outlets, taking away press access to the Pentagon, banning major networks from covering the White House, and belittling and insulting individual reporters, particularly women.

When his approval rating began slipping in January, he announced he was suing The New York Times’ polling operation for reporting in 2024 that he and Harris had been tied at 48 percent to 48 percent in the race for the popular vote. He ultimately won 49.8 percent of the vote to Harris’s 48.3 percent.

Beattie’s ruling came down hours before the president was handed another major loss in his war on journalists.

At about 1 a.m. Thursday, Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly granted a 14-day temporary restraining order that reinstated press credentials for three media outlets Trump had banned from the White House.

The president had announced last week on Truth Social that CNN, MS NOW, and Politico were losing their access “as a result of their constant ‘reporting’ FAKE NEWS!” and warned, “Other Fake News Media Outlets to follow.”

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Government lawyers later argued the credentials were revoked over national security concerns, directly contradicting the president’s own announcement, Kelly wrote.

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