Des Moines


  • Local

    Here’s your wallet’s guide to 4 great steaks in Des Moines

    You can enjoy cheap steak at these Des Moines steakhouses.


  • Local

    Hail Mary: Iowa has two women’s tackle football teams you can see this summer

    Do you like football? Do you like women’s sports? Have we got great news for you this summer! Women’s tackle football has been around Iowa for the last two decades, and teams (and leagues) have come and gone in that time. (Diehards will remember the Iowa Crush, which played under the now-defunct Independent Women’s Football…


  • Local

    Increasingly desperate Iowans stretching food banks to capacity

    Leaders of a dozen food pantries across Iowa are sounding the alarm about a “soaring number” of Iowans seeking help at food banks, putting these already stretched organizations into a “crisis situation.” The leaders and other advocates recently issued a joint press release about “a rising number of Iowans experiencing food insecurity” in the past…


  • Food & Drink

    Happy National Beer Day! Here are Starting Line’s favorite Iowa breweries

    For those unaware, April 6 is New Beer’s Eve, because it leads up to National Beer Day on April 7. Why April 7? On that day in 1933, the Cullen-Harrison Act went into effect, making it legal for some low-alcohol beer and wine to be sold in the United States. The law was the first…


  • Local

    7 Iowa events for Transgender Day of Visibility 2024

    Transgender Iowans need joy these days. Eight separate bills have been considered in the latest session of the Iowa Legislature specifically targeting transgender youth, contributing to Iowa Republicans’ 40 anti-LGBTQ bills in total. Fearmongering legislation—like bills banning people from school bathrooms, or erasing LGBTQ history—has led to further stigmatization of the transgender community. That’s contributed…


  • Local

    What will happen to 1,276 laid-off Tyson workers in Perry?

    What will happen to the 1,276 Iowans who will lose their jobs when the Tyson pork processing plant in Perry closes in June? Roger Kail, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 1155, represents workers at that plant, and that is something he is working to figure out. Things had been going…


  • Local

    1,276 people to lose jobs when Tyson plant in Perry closes in June

    1,276. That’s how many people in and around the central Iowa town of Perry will lose their jobs by the end of June, after Tyson announced Monday it would permanently close its longtime pork processing plant there. That’s a HUGE number of workers (and the largest employer in Perry): It’s more than 12% of Tyson’s…


  • Local

    15 Martin Luther King Jr. Day events across Iowa in 2024

    They say Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a federal holiday held this year on Jan. 15, 2024, should be “a day on, not a day off.” So in that spirit, here are some events coming up honoring—and furthering the legacy of—one of this country’s greatest civil rights leaders. (For an even more comprehensive list of…


  • Local

    Rightwing trolls quickly took advantage of Perry tragedy

    Even before the identity of the student who shot multiple people at Perry High School was confirmed by law enforcement Thursday afternoon, right-wing misinformation on social media was filling the void. Posts from verified and other accounts on Twitter (X) in the early hours after the shooting that killed one and injured five others were…


  • Local

    UPDATE: Sixth-grader killed in Perry shooting identified

    A sixth-grader is dead and six others injured—one critically—after a school shooting at Perry High School in Perry, Iowa. On Friday, authorities identified 11-year-old Ahmir Jolliff as the slain child. His cause of death was three gunshot wounds. The incident happened just after 7:30 a.m. Thursday, Jan. 4, 2024, the first day back for students.…