Left: Pollster J. Ann Selzer (Jenny Condon Photography, used with permission of FIRE). Right: President Donald Trump speaks during a roundtable at “Alligator Alcatraz,” a new migrant detention facility at Dade-Collier Training and Transition facility, Tuesday, July 1, 2025, in Ochopee, Fla. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci).
Donald Trump”s sudden attempt to drop a federal lawsuit against Iowa’s top newspaper and veteran pollster J. Ann Selzer — only to re-file the case in state court — was a “procedurally improper” bit of maneuvering, a judge ruled Wednesday while striking the president’s notice of voluntary dismissal from the record.
In a brief order granting the Des Moines Register, media company Gannett, and Selzer’s motion to strike, U.S. District Judge Rebecca Goodgame Ebinger wrote that Trump’s dismissal notice “is struck from the record” for the simple reason that he filed it as his appeal remained pending at the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which has jurisdiction.
“The Court strikes Trump’s voluntary dismissal and declines to terminate the case. Because Trump’s appeal confers jurisdiction to the Eighth Circuit over aspects of this case, Trump must first dismiss the appeal before voluntarily dismissing the district court case,” wrote Ebinger, a Barack Obama appointee, noting that Trump did not move to toss the case at the 8th Circuit.
“Because Trump has not filed such motion in either the district court or the circuit court, this Court can take no action that would affect the pending matter before the Eighth Circuit. Giving effect to a notice of voluntary dismissal, for all practical purposes, would result in a dismissal of Trump’s appeal — which is procedurally improper,” the judge added.
The 8th Circuit docket shows that Trump did, on June 30th, file a “stipulation for dismissal,” but the defendants countered that there was no actual stipulation or agreement to dismiss the appeal.
“In this case, the Parties have neither stipulated nor agreed to dismissal, nor has Plaintiff filed a motion for dismissal for this Court’s consideration or to which Press Defendants could respond,” defendants stated. “Therefore, this Court should strike the purported Dismissal.”
As Law&Crime has reported, Trump sued the Des Moines Register and Selzer over a poll published ahead of the 2024 presidential election that predicted then-Vice President Kamala Harris had a slight lead over Trump in Iowa, a state he went on to win by about 13 points.
Though Selzer acknowledged the huge swing and a miss, saying that she was “humbled” by the way her career ended, litigation followed nonetheless.
As recently as Monday, Trump re-filed his complaint against Selzer and the newspaper in Iowa state court, as he had initially done before the case was removed to federal court.
The complaint was filed under an Iowa law against “consumer fraud” in which the president accused Selzer and the Register of being in cahoots with “the Democrat Party” who “hoped that the Harris Poll would create a false narrative of inevitability for Harris in the final week of the 2024 Presidential Election.” The complaint accused the defendants of committing “brazen election interference” through use of the allegedly “manipulated” poll to “deceive voters.”
A spokesperson for the Register noted that Trump’s attempt to re-file in state court came a day before Iowa’s new anti-SLAPP (strategic lawsuits against public participation) law, which the governor signed in May, was set to take effect. Anti-SLAPP measures are designed to prevent people from being intimidated against exercising their First Amendment free speech rights due to the threat of protracted and expensive, and potentially legally baseless, lawsuits.
“After losing his first attempt to send his case back to Iowa state court, and apparently recognizing that his appeal will be unsuccessful, President Trump is attempting to unilaterally dismiss his lawsuit from federal court and re-file it in Iowa state court,” Lark-Marie Anton, the Register’s spokesperson said in a statement to Politico. “Although such a procedural maneuver is improper and may not be permitted by the Court, it is clearly intended to avoid the inevitable outcome of the Des Moines Register’s motion to dismiss President Trump’s amended complaint currently pending in federal court.”
Jerry Lambe contributed to this report.
