DES MOINES, Iowa (IOWA CAPITAL DISPATCH) – Amid allegations of “gamesmanship” and forum shopping, a federal judge has blocked, at least for now, President Donald Trump’s attempt to move his lawsuit against the Des Moines Register and its pollster out of federal court and into state court.

Noting that Trump recently filed an appeal on one specific issue within the federal lawsuit, U.S. District Court Judge Rebecca Goodgame Ebinger found that because the president’s appeal had conferred jurisdiction of the case to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, he must first dismiss that appeal before voluntarily dismissing the underlying lawsuit.

For now, that means the president and his lawyers are pursuing the same legal case against the newspaper and pollster Ann Selzer in both state court and federal court.

The lawsuit was initiated in December 2024 when Trump sued the Register, its parent company, Gannett, and the Register’s former pollster, J. Ann Selzer, in Polk County District Court. The president alleged the newspaper’s Iowa Poll, which was published shortly before the Nov. 5 election, deliberately overstated support for the Democratic nominee for president, Vice President Kamala Harris, by 16 percentage points.

Trump argued the poll amounted to “brazen election interference” and violated Iowa’s Consumer Fraud Act — claims the defendants have denied.

Attorneys for the president later expanded the lawsuit, adding claims by U.S. Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, a Republican who narrowly won reelection in the state’s 1st Congressional District, and by Brad Zaun, a former Republican state senator from Urbandale, who lost his bid for reelection.

At the defendants’ request, the case was transferred to federal court. However, a legal dispute soon arose over whether federal court was the proper forum for the case given the fact that Miller-Meeks and Zaun, like the defendants, are based in Iowa.

On May 23, 2025, a federal judge denied Trump’s motion to remand the case from federal court back to state court. In that decision, the court allowed the president to file an appeal on the issue but also ordered Trump to file an amended complaint removing Miller-Meeks and Zaun from the case, eliminating any claims that were exclusive to the two Iowa-resident plaintiffs.