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Wednesday the Iowa Capitol Dispatch (which does a great job of covering Iowa news) reported that a second lawsuit in the case of the Des Moines Register’s publishing of the Ann Seltzer poll that had Trump losing in Iowa just before the November election. 

The lawsuit was bought by some so-called “conservative non profit” from Chicago. As the story relates this lawsuit is pretty much a copycat of the Trump lawsuit. It looks like one of the major strategies of the right during the next administration is to drain the opposition dry through things like SLAPP lawsuits.

At the end of the article the group defending Seltzer discusses what they believe to be the right’s strategy:

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), a nonprofit focused on freedom of speech protections, is representing Selzer and her company in both lawsuits.

FIRE attorneys Adam Steinbaugh and Conor Fitzpatrick published a news release Tuesday arguing that the Trump lawsuit is “the very definition of a ‘SLAPP’ suit” — a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation meant to punish defendants through time and costs of litigation.

“This lawsuit uses an inapplicable state statute as a cudgel to force Selzer and the Register to waste time and money on lawyers to respond to the allegations,” the attorneys state.

 “Enlisting the courts to settle political grudges is directly at odds with the First Amendment’s protection for political speech.”

It will be a long 4 years and it is going to be bumpy.