Amie Rivers

There are more jobs open in Iowa—tens of thousands more—than there are people to fill them. Just 46,800 Iowans were unemployed out of 1.7 million working Iowans, an incredibly low unemployment rate of 2.75%, according to a recent announcement from Iowa Workforce Development. According to Gov. Kim Reynolds, who signed a new law limiting unemployment…

From the time he learned English as a young kid, Jorge “Junior” Ibarra was frequently called to translate for his Spanish-speaking parents. Sometimes, the stakes were low. At parent-teacher conferences, when his teacher would say that Ibarra was a frequent talker and getting in trouble, “I’d turn around and say, ‘Mom she thinks I’m a…

I’ve probably never done so many stairs on a single hiking trail before. My calves and the pads of my feet are sore. My dog has never slept so well in his life. But MAN, that VIEW! Palisades-Kepler State Park in Mount Vernon may be an 840-acre M.C. Escher painting. But just like that painting,…

Former presidential candidate and US Sen. Bernie Sanders will stop in Iowa this week to show solidarity with workers who have been on strike for over a month. Sanders will hold a town hall in Burlington at 3:30 p.m. Friday with United Auto Workers Local 807, which represents striking workers at CNH Industrial. The town…

They had me at “one of the most photographed dams in the Midwest” (obviously!). Beeds Lake State Park in Hampton is among the smaller state parks in Iowa. It contains precisely one, 1.79-mile “easy” trail, as rated by the Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR.) But that trail is all you need. I’ve never gotten…

After a mass shooting at an elementary school and a domestic-violence double homicide in Ames, some US senators have put together a set of new firearms rules they think might be able to get enough Republicans on board to pass into law. A group of 20 senators—10 Republicans, nine Democrats and one independent—announced initial agreements…

Elected officials and progressive organizers called out a major Iowa employer they say is directly contributing to higher food prices in the US. Tyson Foods, which operates several large meatpacking plants in Iowa, was taken to task Friday for, among other things, “price gouging” of meat products. “Corporate gains are all done on the backs…

I’m hiking every state park or other cool hiking place I can think of around my home state, to showcase the natural beauty Iowa has to offer. Follow along here, or on social media using #AmieTakesAHike, to pass along your suggestions and see where I’m headed next. You can’t ask 10 Northeast Iowa hike enthusiasts…

A package of stricter gun control bills aimed at preventing mass shootings such as what happened at an Uvalde, Texas, elementary school, passed the US House of Representatives on a mostly party-line vote on Wednesday. Cindy Axne, Iowa’s lone Democratic representative, voted for the Protecting Our Kids Act, which passed the Democrat-majority House on a…