Amie Rivers

Around 390,000 jobs were added in the US in May, according to the latest jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics released Friday. The highest sector adding jobs was leisure and hospitality, which tacked on 84,000 positions, though that’s still well below pre-pandemic levels. That was followed by professional and business services (75,000), transportation…

A major employer in Waterloo is offshoring some of its operations to Mexico to make room for new products, though the company was tight-lipped about potential layoffs. John Deere announced Wednesday to its Tractor and Cab Assembly Operations workers in Waterloo it would move those operations to its John Deere Components plant in Ramos Arizpe…

A lawyer for former President Donald Trump wanted to utilize US Sen. Chuck Grassley in a plan to decertify presidential electors in states that President Joe Biden won, eventually aiming to install Trump instead. The congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection released the Dec. 13, 2020, email from attorney Kenneth Chesebro, who Politico said…

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. What’s better than a hike around a lake?…

As he travels the state on his second run at a US Senate seat, Mike Franken is used to meeting fellow military veterans, and getting peppered with a lot of questions about foreign policy. It makes sense: A retired US Navy three-star admiral who served for more than three decades, Franken has extensive military and…

I’m hiking every beautiful place I can think of around my home state, to showcase the beauty Iowa has to offer. Follow along here, or on Twitter using #AmieTakesAHike, to pass along your suggestions and see where I’m headed next. They had me at “waterfall.” Union Grove State Park, established in 1938 outside of Gladbrook…

It’s less than a week after a racist mass shooting in Buffalo, New York, that killed 10 Black grocery store shoppers and employees. It’s one day after 4-year-old Savannah Holmes of Ankeny found her father’s gun on the couch and accidentally shot and killed herself. Most people in the room Thursday night at the Waterloo…

Even as they’ve railed against an extreme shortage of baby formula, particularly Abbott brands that have left Iowa parents scrambling, Reps. Ashley Hinson, Mariannette Miller-Meeks, and Randy Feenstra still voted against a US House bill that provides $28 million to help ease the shortage, with funds for safety inspections, staff addressing the shortfall, and efforts…

Owning a small business has always been difficult, particularly if you’re facing discrimination because of your gender or race. Add in an economic crisis brought on by the perfect storm of a pandemic, supply chain problems, inflation, overseas conflicts, and empty legislative promises, and Iowa’s small business owners have had it rough lately. At a…

It’s tempting, easy, or—let’s be honest—lazy to only think of Iowa as a flat state divided into squares of corn and soybeans. That’s what everyone else thinks of us, looking down from their airplane as it flies over, right? Sure, we’re an agricultural state. Many of Iowa’s once-defining features of windswept prairies, wild woodlands, and…