Long-term readers may remember the suit filed against J. Ann Selzer, head of a now-defunct pollster, and the Des Moines Register, by President Trump after the 2024 election. It was dismissed, but apparently reopened or refiled. WaPo now reports:
An Iowa district court has dismissed a lawsuit by President Donald Trump against pollster J. Ann Selzer and the Des Moines Register, saying the Iowa poll and the newspaper’s reporting were fully protected political speech. …
In a decision Wednesday, Judge Scott J. Beattie wrote that election polling is protected by the First Amendment “because it involves a conversation between a pollster and a voter and because the poll itself is speech.” Beattie dismissed the case with prejudice, which means Trump cannot bring the same claim to court again.
I think that’ll be the end of that. I must say the judiciary, with the exception of a beholden conservative wing of SCOTUS, has come through in the era of Trump.
