🗣️ It’s Friday!

We’ve got the best places to paddle for beginners on Only in Iowa, this week’s sleepy reader photo, plus I interviewed THEE Nikole Hannah-Jones (Pulitzer Prize winner/Iowa native!) about her children’s book giveaway for Positively Iowa.

Want to join the Bumble Bee Atlas in Iowa this month?
Recommendations from Reddit on a summer in Dubuque.
Have you tried serviceberries? (Or do you call them juneberries?)
It’s still kinda tough to hang out on an Iowa beach this summer.
A bunch of new Iowa laws just went into effect July 1, which includes going five miles per hour faster on the two-lanes (which Redditors have thoughts on), and a “three strikes” law that the Iowa-Nebraska NAACP says will create “a dangerous patchwork” of police departments no longer going through bias training. Here’s the full list of new laws.
Tick bite visits to ERs are higher than they’ve been in a decade. (Now I’m wondering why humans don’t have tick preventatives…)
There’s a new bus service connecting Iowa cities to places like Chicago and Minneapolis from Dubuque.
Almost 400 Des Moines residents lost their homes, likely for several weeks or even months, after severe flooding last week submerged part of their apartment building.
Iowa nonprofit YSS just launched the “Before it Becomes More” campaign to raise awareness about opioid abuse and increase early prevention. Fentanyl overdose deaths rose by a total of 313% in Iowa and 730% in the US from 2015 through 2024, but are now starting to decline.
So weird that there’s an outbreak of screwworm after DOGE cut the screwworm prevention program as part of roughly 5,300 grants and programs cut from USAID.
ICE agents are violating judges’ orders constantly in Iowa, which is especially concerning as they ramp up “enforcement” here. (That includes another detainment this week: Mario Bojorjes of North Liberty, turned over by an Iowa State Patrol trooper, according to Escucha Mi Voz.)
Turns out, no, Iowa cannot arbitrarily limit what food you can buy with SNAP.
Iowa has its first case of measles in 2026, in a vaccinated adult in central Iowa.

Amie Rivers

Newsletter Editor, Iowa Starting Line

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Iowa’s best kayaking and canoeing spots for beginners

Calm water conditions on Lake Macbride are ideal for beginner paddlers. (Kailey Knetzer/Shutterstock)

You don’t need to be a kayak or canoe pro to enjoy Iowa’s waterways.

From calm lakes to gentle rivers, these beginner-friendly spots are perfect for new paddlers.

🛶 Get paddling →

🐈‍⬛ 🐈 This is Gracen and Mercy, who belong to reader Gail C.

Please read the rest of this newsletter quietly so as not to disturb them.

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📚 “1619 Project” author Nikole Hannah-Jones may have won the Pulitzer Prize—but she hasn’t forgotten her Iowa roots.

On July 18, she’s bringing back the popular 1619 Freedom School Read-In, flying in three bestselling authors to her hometown of Waterloo, and giving away thousands of books to area children for free.

Watch her talk about why it’s important: