Cowboy State Daily's The Roundup

It's time to take a look at what's happening around Wyoming for Friday, March 20th.  I'm Mac Watson. – Some lawmakers say the Legislature didn't ask voters to settle whether abortion is health care. Cowboy StateDaily's Clair McFarland reports lawmakers claim it's because they fear the pro-abortion lobby will flood Wyoming with out-of-state money.  "I think most people went into this year's legislative session thinking that an abortion amendment Proposition would come out of it would head for the ballot this fall, and ask voters, do you want to codify this? Right? And that didn't happen. I talked to some lawmakers who said, 'Yeah, but you got to really amp up for that, because other states have had lots of out of state money come in when they have this ballot question, and then all this public messaging starts, and they can't they, they end up with that right codified instead of reversed.'" Changing the Wyoming Constitution would take a two-thirds majority in both the House and Senate, then a majority vote by the people at the next general election, which is Nov. 3 of this year.  Read the full story HERE. – Without cold winter temperatures to keep them subdued, Wyoming's summer could be dominated by mosquitoes. Cowboy State Daily's Andrew Rossi reports that one entomologist says prepare for more flies and mosquitoes. "Wyoming's winter has a direct impact on the life cycle of insects, and now that we've had an abnormally warm winter that could lead to a much more buggy summer with swarms of insects, the term but the ones that are going to thrive in those conditions are the ones that people don't like. It's too early to say whether we're going to have swarms of insects this summer, but the conditions are already set up for a lot of insects to thrive, as it wasn't that cold this winter, so a lot of insects that would have stayed dormant or suppressed during the colder months are already active and out and about. You're going to see more filth flies, and you could see more mosquitoes." University of Wyoming Extension's entomologist Scott Schell tells Cowboy State Daily that the earlier mosquitoes hatch, it could lead to a higher transmission of West Nile virus which can affect livestock and humans. Read the full story HERE. – Police say the former CEO for the Saratoga Chamber of Commerce admitted to writing herself more than $77,000 worth of checks drawn on a chamber account. Cowboy State Daily's Greg Johnson reports that Amanda Knotwell's case was elevated to felony court on Wednesday. "Anything over $1,000 is felony. So $77,000 is more than that. What's interesting is that the police chief did his accounting from the bank records, and came to an amount a little over $77,000 when he asked the former chamber president. how much she thought it was, he pulled out a spreadsheet. Apparently she had anticipated figuring this out. She pulled out a spreadsheet and gave him a number that was only $25 off from what he had found." If convicted on the single charge of felony theft, Knotwell could face up to 10 years in prison, a fine of up to $10,000, or both. Read the full story HERE. – Bar Nunn's mayor said it was "sleazy" that a Reid Rasner defamation lawsuit was served against a councilman during a public meeting Tuesday. Cowboy State Daily's Clair McFarland reports the mayor said it was probably the lowest thing he's ever seen in his life. "So Mayor Peter Boyer told me, yeah, I said I've never seen anything worse. That was on the hyperbolic side, but he still reiterated his point that he found it sleazy. He said those council meetings are for the business of bar none, not for someone to serve a civil suit on one of the council members. Sabrosky's next step is he can file a motion to dismiss if he believes that the evidence pled doesn't uphold the legal mechanisms that are also alleged. And then if the judge isn't swayed and keeps the case alive after that, then they would exchange evidence. And if the evidence then doesn't support the claims, then he can file a motion for summary judgment." Bar Nunn Town Councilman Dan Sabrosky was sitting in a public council meeting Tuesday when a man served him with a defamation lawsuit from Wyoming congressional candidate Reid Rasner during the public participation part of the meeting. That's according to a video of the incident and an interview Sabrosky gave to Cowboy State Daily. Read the full story HERE. – I'll be back with more news from Cowboy State Daily right after this.   Cowboy State Daily news continues now… – According to a report to the Wyoming Game and Fish Commission earlier this week, there were more than 6,000 human-grizzly conflicts in Wyoming from 1982 to 2025. Outdoors Reporter Mark Heinz reports that neither attack last year resulted in life-threatening injuries. "The Game and Fish Commission sat down for a meeting in Torrington, and the Game and Fish department's large carnivore section gave their yearly report some pretty interesting things. Conflict has to involve an actual attack on a human, actual attack on livestock, a human illegally killing a large carnivore, or a carnivore causing significant property damage. So, all told, there were more than 6000 of those sorts of things involving grizzly bears between 82 and 2025, and then in 2025 I think there were around 220."  Brian DeBolt, Game and Fish large carnivore conflict coordinator, told the commission that conflicts are defined as incidents involving human injury or death, the illegal killing of predators, agricultural damage/loss of livestock and property damage. Read the full story HERE. – A family who moved to Powell in 2025 with their four dogs are pleading to the city council to reconsider an ordinance that allows only two pets per residence. Cowboy State Daily's Kate Meadows reports that they vow not to take two of them to the shelter. "The ordinance is that the city of Powell allows only two pets per resident, so not two dogs, not two cats, two pets per household. They have four. So the question becomes, what do they do with their dogs? If they can't, you know, legally have them in town. So the Pittmans went to the Powell city council meeting earlier this month and basically pleaded with the City Council to let them keep their dogs, and their plea included asking the city council to extend the ordinance to allow for up to four pets, the city council unanimously voted to send the consideration to the city's planning and zoning committee, and that committee will review it on March 30." Mayor John Wetzel told Cowboy State Daily, "Whenever we start talking about people's pets, there's emotion involved." Read the full story HERE. – Rep. Rachel Rodriguez-Williams has entered the race for Wyoming Secretary of State. Cowboy State Daily's Clair McFarland reports that the representative supports Chuck Gray's conservative platform but said she'll collaborate well with clerks.  "She certainly aligns ideologically with Chuck Gray. She said that was a fair characterization. He was in the Freedom Caucus when he was a lawmaker. She chairs it. Now you're going to see, you know, a lot of emphasis on election Security reform, that kind of thing. And so she said, Yeah, I aligned ideologically with him, but my leadership style is a little different. She talked about working with different personalities. She talked about her work in nonprofits, her willingness to listen." Robert Short is also vying for the GOP nomination, and Bryan McCarty's running as a Democrat for the Wyoming Secretary of State position. Read the full story HERE. – A Wyoming fish hatchery is expected to churn out well over 1 million walleye per year, and anglers are excited. Outdoors Reporter Mark Heinz reports that the Wyoming Game and Fish Commission on Wednesday approved putting over $9 million toward a massive upgrade of the Dan Speas Fish Hatchery near Casper.  "The Game and Fish Commission, that's the commission that has oversight over the department, approved the last roughly 9.5 million of that budget. They went ahead and said, Okay, here's your 9.5 million to get up to budget so that project can get underway. So they're hoping to start construction in September and start turning out fish in April of 2028 and I talked to a couple walleye fanatics here in Wyoming, and they're stoked."  The total estimated budget for the project is roughly $25 million. Construction is set to begin in September and end in October 2027. The upgraded facility is scheduled to begin hatching its first walleye fry in April 2028. Read the full story HERE. – And that's today's news. Get your free digital subscription to Wyoming's only statewide newspaper by hitting the Daily Newsletter button on Cowboy State Daily Dot Com - and you can watch this newscast every day by clicking Subscribe on our YouTube channel, or listen to us on your favorite podcast app.  Thanks for watching - I'm Mac Watson, for Cowboy State Daily.  

It's time to take a look at what's happening around Wyoming for Thursday, March 19th.  I'm Mac Watson. – A 14-year-old accused of shooting his mother in the head after she called him "retarded" and a "thief" over a stolen electronic tablet was bound over to felony court Wednesday. Cowboy State Daily's Greg Johnson reports that Havoc Leone has been charged as an adult with first-degree murder. "The 14 year old team was brought in wearing the, you know, the juvenile jail garbs, most people adults, they wear the, you know, the bright orange jump seats. He was wearing a tan one. And he's rather small, so it looked very big on him. He came in and he sat down. I didn't see much emotion from him, but he just sat there quietly and watched the testimony. Some of it was pretty gruesome, but he just didn't, he didn't react." Laramie County Assistant District Attorney Kelly Strickland argued during Wednesday's preliminary hearing that the boy expressed a long-simmering hatred for his mother, and had thoughts about killing her. Conversely, the defense argued that Leone is an emotionally vulnerable child who had been subjected to a pattern of degrading treatment by a mentally ill mother. Read the full story HERE. – A Wyoming reporter posted bond and left jail Wednesday in a case claiming she submitted forged documents and lied to a state panel about a controversial wind project near Chugwater. Cowboy State Daily's Dale Killingbeck reports that April Marie Morganroth faces 10 felonies and up to 65 years in prison if convicted. "April Morganroth, who's also known as Marie Hamilton, in court documents. Got out of jail today. Her attorney was able to convince the judge to reduce her $50,000 cash bond of $5,000 and so she left the jail, according to jail personnel, and they waived her preliminary examination on those 10 charges, so she now faces arraignment in Platte County District Court. We also know that her husband posted online to a fundraising website that they're asking for people to help out in the defense saying that there may be, quote, unquote, some political things going on in her prosecution." Morganroth, 40, faces three counts of possession of forged writing, three counts of forgery and four counts of perjury in judicial, legislative, or administrative proceedings. Read the full story HERE. – U.S. House candidate and Casper businessman Reid Rasner has sued three more people for defamation. Cowboy State Daily's Clair McFarland reports that one of the persons said she welcomes the lawsuit. "One of those is another former legislator, Kit Jennings, and then two are Natrona County residents, a man and his ex wife. So that's Dan Sabroski and Michelle St Louis. He claims that Kit Jennings has been accusing him of sexual misconduct, and that Dan Sabraski and Michelle St Louis have been waging a social media and whisper campaign that has damaged his business. But Michelle St Louis said, 'Yeah, bring it on.'" The three new lawsuits are in addition to his July 2025 defamation lawsuit against former state Sen. Anthony Bouchard, a Republican who represented parts of Laramie and Platte counties. Read the full story HERE. – With over 750,000 acres of agricultural land destroyed by wildfire, Nebraska ranchers are facing tough decisions about where to graze their cattle. Cowboy State Daily's Kate Meadows reports that one expert says Wyoming is also in a drought, so we can't offer much pasture. "Jim McGagana is the executive president of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association. He said that he hopes and he encourages Wyomingites to help out where they can. But he also said Wyoming is in a drought of its own, and that leaves good pasture land at a premium. The Nebraska cattle men's association has set up a district resource page on its website. Cattle ranchers say the damage is done. They're out of hay. A lot of the fences have burned down. They don't have any land, really, that they can graze their displaced cattle on." According to wildfire.gov, neither the Cottonwood nor Morrill fires grew notably beyond their current perimeters Wednesday, despite Tuesday's strong winds. But for many ranchers, the damage is already done. Read the full story HERE. – I'll be back with more news from Cowboy State Daily right after this.   Cowboy State Daily news continues now… – Hunters in northern Wyoming say the BLM destroyed some of the best pheasant hunting in the entire region by removing entire strands of Russian olive trees near Greybull. Cowboy State Daily's Mark Heinz reports that the BLM says it's an invasive tree species. "Some hunters, a group, at least four hunters, that I took out of the Cody area, really loved it, because that provided really good cover for pheasants, primarily for bird hunters. But the BLM and the county weed and pest district came through there and just wiped out all just basically laid the land bare of Russian olive trees. And these hunters are saying it was like the coolest spot to go bird hunting in this whole area, you know, because Wyoming's kind of a challenging place to find good bird hunting as it is." Russian olive trees are widely regarded as an invasive species and the general rule among land management agencies is to get rid of them. Read the full story HERE. – Rep. Ken Pendergraft, a member of the Freedom Caucus who wants to defund the Wyoming Business Council, is running for an open Senate seat in Sheridan County. Cowboy State Daily's Clair McFarland reports that Pendergraft faces Wyoming business owner Melissa Butcher who says defunding isn't the answer. "He's now hoping to ascend to the Senate from the house, saying he can, he can bridge some discord between the two chambers, saying he would like to see true conservative fiscal restraint. And Butcher, meanwhile, said that she wants to really listen. She said she's seeing a lot of ideology, not as much good policy, and she wants to listen and to reform things, rather than, in her words, 'burn it down.'"  That Sheridan County seat, Senate District 21, won't have an incumbent in the Aug. 18 primary election, since it belongs currently to Senate President Bo Biteman, who announced last week that he's running for the Republican nomination for the U.S. House of Representatives instead.   Read the full story HERE. – The Lander community is rallying to help an 11-member family recover from a devastating house fire. Cowboy State Daily's Dale Killingbeck reports that the mother of the family says, "People have been so generous. Every little bit helps." "On Thursday, March 12. The Sweeney family and lander woke up to a huge boom. That's what the dad, Owen Sweeney, told me. He said when they looked outside, they saw that their deck was on fire and by the time they got outside, it was on the roof. And they had, they called the fire department. The fire department showed up. And the fire chief told me when he got there, everybody was outside, so they quickly exited the house. The fire chief says he believes it's a total loss." Lander Fire Department Chief Eric Siwik tells Cowboy State Daily that at the peak of the blaze, there were 36 firefighters representing both Lander and Fremont County Fire Protection districts on the scene. Read the full story HERE. – A cow elk walked out onto the roof of a building in Gardiner, Montana, just outside of Yellowstone National Park to the amazement of onlookers. Outdoors Reporter Mark Heinz reports that apparently, she wanted the roof's sod all to herself. "It's an inoperable or maybe empty, old business building, but this building is kind of built into a slope, and then it has a sod roof. So they surmise that this elk was just, you know, kind of walking along the slope beside that, and saw the sod going out across the roof. And that looks good. I guess I'll go get that." Gardner residents Dan and Cindy Buell tell Cowboy State Daily that normally, elk are just part of the spring scenery but that's the first time they've seen an elk on a roof. Read the full story HERE. – And that's today's news. Get your free digital subscription to Wyoming's only statewide newspaper by hitting the Daily Newsletter button on Cowboy State Daily Dot Com - and you can watch this newscast every day by clicking Subscribe on our YouTube channel, or listen to us on your favorite podcast app.  Thanks for watching - I'm Mac Watson, for Cowboy State Daily.  

It's time to take a look at what's happening around Wyoming for Wednesday, March 18th.  I'm Mac Watson. – A flood of political endorsements for some Wyoming statewide candidates is surging after the end of the state's lawmaking session this month. Cowboy State Daily's Clair McFarland reports that Megan Degenfelder and Chuck Gray appear to be the most active in pursuing endorsements. "I asked a couple of long-time Wyoming politicos like, "How much does this matter?' And they've both cast it as a second-tier strategy. Tim Stubson said that it's name recognition, it's campaign spending that does the job. And Rob Wallace said it's the caliber of the candidate and the campaign and the messaging." U.S. Senate candidate Rep. Harriet Hageman landed endorsements earlier this year by both sitting U.S. Sen. John Barrasso and outgoing Sen. Cynthia Lummis for her bid to win the seat Lummis is leaving. Read the full story HERE. – Three men accused of roping, riding, and spurring a cow moose on an Evanston-area ranch in 2021 pleaded not guilty Tuesday to various cruelty charges. Cowboy State Daily's Dale Killingbeck reports that the men allegedly took video of themselves treating the moose "as if it's a horse being broken to ride." "They told the judge that they understood the charges against them, and those charges include felony charges related to two of them for felony animal abuse, the other one for accessory to that abuse. They're facing the potential of two years in prison on the felony charges. So it's, it's a serious thing, and the judge scheduled a trial date for August 11th. And the attorneys that represent each of them, it sounded like they're not going to be cutting any deals. It sounds like this is going to go to a jury trial." Charges stem from a Wyoming Game and Fish Department investigation that began with the seizure of Justin Martin's phone on a separate issue and finding video and screenshots of the alleged abuse . Read the full story HERE. – With out-of-control wildfires across his state, Nebraska's governor has declared a state of emergency. Cowboy State Daily's David Madison reports that Wyoming agencies are sending help, even as conditions at home are just as dry and windy. "The size and scope and damage is unprecedented in some areas and conditions that led to those fires exist in Wyoming, that was the message we got from the state forestry office. Spoke to the fire manager there. He said, 'Yeah, it's looking pretty similar, but we have rushed to the aid of our neighbors.' We've sent gear and engines and people to more than one state. Conditions have been extremely dry, and then when you get 50 mile an hour winds on top of that, it really just sets you up for what happened. And some of the aerial photos at night were just apocalyptic." Cowboy State Daily meteorologist Don Day said the fires ravaging Nebraska were born from the same conditions that have gripped Wyoming all winter — but with one critical difference. Wyoming has gotten some moisture in recent weeks, while the fire zone in Nebraska has been almost completely shut out.  Read the full story HERE. – Speaking of the Nebraska wildfires, Wyoming fire engines, firefighters, and communications personnel have rallied to help battle record-breaking wildfires that have consumed 750,000 acres. Cowboy State Daily's Kate Meadows reports that one Wyoming fire chief called the dry, windy conditions a "recipe for disaster." "Dozens of Wyoming firefighters are in Nebraska fighting multiple wildfires right now, including what is the largest wildfire to be recorded in the state of Nebraska. Kristie Thompson is the Public Information Officer for the road 203, fire, but she also lives in Cody, and she spoke about the neighborliness that she's seeing between Wyoming and Nebraska, as all these individuals from Wyoming are so easily coming across the state to help their Nebraska neighbors. She said, 'We know Nebraska would do the same for us.'" The Morrill Fire, one of four wildfires raging in the state, has scorched more than 572,000 acres, making it the largest wildfire in Nebraska history and among the 30 largest in United States history.  Read the full story HERE. – I'll be back with more news from Cowboy State Daily right after this.   Cowboy State Daily news continues now… – Lever-action rifles are getting tricked out with "tactical" accessories like red-dot sights, giving them new life with younger shooters. Cowboy State Daily's Mark Heinz reports that mounting accessory rails on lever-action rifles might have seemed absurd — until people started doing it. "Apparently, it really appeals to the younger shooters. It comes like a steam punk thing. It's retrofitting an old technology with its grafting new technology on top of an old technology. And some people think it's really cool. I imagine there's purists out there that really hate it. and so it's kind of marrying the old with the new." Lever-action rifles were among the first repeating long guns to be mass marketed in the United States, with many models introduced right after the Civil War. Read the full story HERE. – A Powell man facing 20 felony charges relating to the distribution and possession of child pornography faces up to 222 years in prison and $200,000 in fines if convicted. Cowboy State Daily's Greg Johnson reports that police say Christian David Petty admitted to having a yearslong addiction to porn. "Apparently this was an investigation that went on for about 13 months, so went on more than a year, and it was conducted by the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigations, child Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force. And basically what they did was they identified known files that are out there, out in the interwebs floating around that they know contain child pornography, and they, you know, they can see where they end up, who's sending them, who's receiving them, that type of thing. And some of those files got linked to a computer that came up in a Powell home." If convicted and given concurrent sentences, Petty could face between 55 and 222 years in prison and up to $200,000 in fines. Read the full story HERE. – U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman announced a $100 million federal appropriation to rebuild a collapsed Goshen County irrigation tunnel that feeds Wyoming and Nebraska farmers. Cowboy State Daily's Clair McFarland reports that Hageman says securing the money "was a huge priority." "Tuesday's big announcement was, yeah, 100 millions going into that Wyoming project that serves farmers there in the southeast corner of the state. So I heard from Hagaman in the morning Tuesday, and then I called Senator Sherry Steinmetz, for whom this has been a big deal, and she was just brimming. The irrigation district manager was thrilled. And then Governor Mark Gordon, who's also been working on this issue, he had a press conference today that was supposed to be a recap of the legislative session, and that was the first thing the irrigation rebuild was the first thing he came out with. He was so excited as well." Out of an $889 million appropriation the U.S. Department of the Interior received via the Trump-backed one Big Beautiful Bill Act, $100 million is now officially earmarked for long-term repairs to the Fort Laramie Tunnels.  Read the full story HERE. – And that's today's news. Get your free digital subscription to Wyoming's only statewide newspaper by hitting the Daily Newsletter button on Cowboy State Daily Dot Com - and you can watch this newscast every day by clicking Subscribe on our YouTube channel, or listen to us on your favorite podcast app.  Thanks for watching - I'm Mac Watson, for Cowboy State Daily.  

It's time to take a look at what's happening around Wyoming for Tuesday, March 17th.  I'm Mac Watson. – The prosecutor charging Rep. Bill Allemand on drunk driving allegations says he was handcuffed during his Buffalo traffic stop for safety reasons, not as part of an illegal interrogation. Cowboy State Daily's Clair McFarland reports that the Representative made a "reckless movement" near a gun, the prosecutor wrote. "Representative Bill Allemand had this argument like he was detained and then asked incriminating questions while he was detained. and that his case should be dismissed where the prosecutor fired back Friday saying, 'Well, yeah, the deputy handcuffed you for a bit during that traffic stop because you were moving around near a loaded gun. And so it was a safety thing, not an interrogation thing.' The defense attorney, Mike Vang, is well known for representing people charged with DUI, and it's really his emphasis. And so he was saying, 'I haven't seen such a hefty counter motion in a misdemeanor DUI case across the state.' And I asked him to theorize on why that is. And he said, 'This is obviously important to both sides.'" The matter is set for a March 25th hearing in Buffalo Circuit Court. Read the full story HERE. – The Wyoming Highway Patrol confirmed one person died in a multi-vehicle incident that occurred on I-80 near Rock Springs on Sunday and another died near Lander on Thursday. Cowboy State Daily's Andrew Rossi reports that of the 33 blowovers counted in just one day, 22 drivers were issued citations. "That reflects that the drivers maybe they weren't being willfully ignorant, but they didn't either know about the closures or they didn't check on the status of the highways, and decided to go out there anyway. Aaron Brown, the spokesperson for the Wyoming highway patrol, said that's a really expensive lesson to learn, that if you go up against Mother Nature during a windstorm on Wyoming's highways, you will lose every time." The WHP's initial report identifies the victim as J.C. Slaugh, 29, of Utah. He was driving a Chevrolet Trailblazer that struck a guardrail and rolled over and down a steep cliff after overcorrecting a turn. Read the full story HERE. – A new law aimed at shutting down illegal gambling halls in Wyoming bars rewrites the rules for every friendly poker game in the state. Cowboy State Daily's David Madison reports that in Alpine, Yo's Poker Palace continues to insist it's running a friendly — and legal — game. "We're talking about poker here. It's synonymous with the West, right? You know, the swinging saloon door as you walk in and they're in the corner, is a game going on. And I don't think lawmakers were out to end poker. I think they really wanted to close this loophole where really big profits were being made by bars that were exploiting the friendly game loophole. That's what my sources in the legislature and at the Gaming Commission say."  For years, Wyoming law has allowed poker games among friends — the kind of Saturday night kitchen-table affair where somebody loses 20 bucks and nobody walks away from the table flush with cash. But some professional operators found a way to turn the friendly game exception into a business model. Read the full story HERE. – After a near-fatal December crash, Brittany Knop of Lovell is home recovering. Cowboy State Daily's Dale Killingbeck reports that Brittany was Christmas shopping for needy children when hit by two cars.  "There were two kids at the bank she worked at that were part of this Angel Tree Project, their names were on her list. She wanted to get those ghost presents, and so she was headed out on a Saturday afternoon, and apparently hit some ice. She was hit twice, once head on, once T boned and her life, her blood, her body started bleeding internally, and she almost lost her life. Was taken to Billings Hospital and spent a month there. First thing she said when she woke up was, did the kids get the presents? One interesting thing was she had an Apple watch that had the crash. As soon as she went into the crash, it sent alerts to her parents. And her dad and stepmom just happened to be in Cody at the time, and so they were able to drive to the crash site." The Lovell 21-year-old, recovering from a broken pelvis, knee and other injuries, can't yet get her body to do her favorite relaxation position after spending more than a month in a Montana hospital and then rehabilitation facility. Read the full story HERE. – I'll be back with more news from Cowboy State Daily right after this.   Cowboy State Daily news continues now… – A car plowed into a Cheyenne Subway store on Sunday, taking out a wall of windows and closing the sandwich shop. Cowboy State Daily's Greg Johnson reports that employees say it's at least the fourth time it's been hit.  "Apparently people in Cheyenne really want this Subway location to have a drive in, but it doesn't, but they keep driving their cars into it. The latest happened on Sunday morning, car driving up on the road and not sure exactly what, whether is trying to avoid something or was just going too fast, but popped up the curb and right into the front of the subway building, which which is right on a busy corner, and it's mostly glass, so in this pretty tough glass, because it didn't actually break through the glass, it just pushed it in." The assistant manager of the Subway restaurant tells Cowboy State Daily that this is the fourth time someone has run into the front of the store. No one was seriously injured in the incident. Read the full story HERE. – Teton County said it miscalculated a $24,325 fee it charged a couple for building a home on their own property and gave them a refund plus interest. Cowboy State Daily's Clair McFarland reports that Trey and Shelby Scharp sued Teton County in May 2025 over the fee. "The Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution says that private property shall not be taken for public use without just compensation, meaning the government can't just take your stuff without paying you back. And in Teton County, they talk about the Fifth Amendment a lot because they have an elaborate Housing Mitigation Scheme where, if you want to build a house, you have to pay so much or provide so much housing for the workforce that the county theorizes your build is going to require. So the argument has been heating up since about 2024 the Supreme Court tightened its view on constitutionality of systems like these." In Teton County, advocates of the practice say it helps build affordable homes for the working class as ultra-wealthy transplants spike the housing market. The Wyoming Legislature tried and failed this year to ban such housing mitigation fees statewide. Read the full story HERE. – A Missouri man who was listed as a most-wanted FBI fugitive for more than a month was arrested in Los Angeles for his alleged part in a $220 million cattle fraud scheme. Cowboy State Daily's Kate Meadows reports that Joshua Link is the fifth and final person to be arrested on fraud allegations in connection to Agridime, LLC, a Texas-based company.  "32-year-old Joshua Link of Stratford, Missouri, was charged with 10 counts of wire fraud, one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and two counts of money laundering, including wiring money to purchase real property. If Link is convicted, he could face up to 20 years in federal prison for each wire fraud charge, 20 years for each wire fraud conspiracy charge, and up to 10 years for each money laundering charge. Essentially, if he's convicted, he could get life in prison." U.S. Attorney Ryan Raybould said in a statement that thousands of unwitting investors, ranchers, and others in the cattle industry nationwide, were drawn in and victimized by this multi-million dollar scheme. Read the full story HERE. – Washakie County first responders mobilized to rescue a reported vehicle that had driven into the Bighorn River. Cowboy State Daily's Andrew Rossi reports that instead of a car, they recovered a submerged smartphone with its flashlight turned on.  "There's an ongoing investigation in terms of who the owner of the phone is that has not been disclosed if they even know. The thing that everybody found kind of remarkable it's the fact that the phone was still on. It hadn't short- circuited in the water. Not only was it still on and operable, but it had the light still on, which is how the two teenagers walking along the Big Horn River got turned on to that in the first place. It was an unknown light glowing from the depths of the river." Worland Volunteer Fire Chief Chris Kocher tells Cowboy State Daily that law enforcement officers are still investigating the incident and trying to find the owner.  Read the full story HERE. – And that's today's news. Get your free digital subscription to Wyoming's only statewide newspaper by hitting the Daily Newsletter button on Cowboy State Daily Dot Com - and you can watch this newscast every day by clicking Subscribe on our YouTube channel, or listen to us on your favorite podcast app.  Thanks for watching - I'm Mac Watson, for Cowboy State Daily.

It's time to take a look at what's happening around Wyoming for Monday, March 16th.  I'm Mac Watson. – A Wyoming reporter faces 10 felony charges for allegedly forging documents and lying about her credentials while opposing a controversial wind farm project in southeastern Wyoming. Cowboy State Daily's Clair McFarland reports that according to court documents, investigators found evidence she tried to deceive the state's environmental permitting panel. "Platte County authorities asked Converse County Sheriff's investigators to come in and help and put this investigation together. And in addition to the documents that already formed part of that meeting, discussing whether they were real, whether the authors, purported authors, actually wrote them, there were other things like that she supposedly, or I guess, allegedly, lied under oath about her credentials, where she had gone to college, what kind of degree she had, what kind of land she owned. So there's three counts of possession of forged documents, there's three counts of forgery, and there's four counts of perjury." 40-year-old April Marie Morganroth, who also has listed aliases of April Marie Hamilton and April Marie McClellan, now faces 10 felonies in Wheatland Circuit Court. If convicted, she could face up to 65 years in prison and $65,000 in fines.  Read the full story HERE. – Thursday's windstorm was one for the record books with the highest wind speed ever recorded at the Cheyenne airport. Cowboy State Daily's Greg Johnson reports that although 14,000 people lost power, it was restored quickly by linemen who dangled from cherry-pickers in the record-breaking winds. "It was a record breaking windstorm, really, 109 mile an hour gust was measured near Chugwater, 92 mile an hour gusts that are at the airport here in Cheyenne, 94 there's a couple 98 mile per hour gusts. At one point, the highest point, 14,000 customers in and around Cheyenne were without power. Black Hills energy reported that, and a lot of that was down power lines, broken power poles." Cowboy State Daily Meteorologist Don Day says that along with record-setting gusts, that same spot near Chugwater that produced the 109 mph gust also had legitimate hurricane-force winds, which were sustained 75.2 MPH for 2 minutes. Read the full story HERE. – A Gillette therapist has installed a "Wind Phone" in a park to allow a person to pick up the receiver and speak freely to a loved one to share memories or grief without judgment. Cowboy State Daily's Jen Kocher reports this is the first of its kind in Wyoming. "The concept is to put an old style rotary phone in a in a garden or idyllic place, so you can literally sit in serenity with your deceased loved one and process your grief by you can either pick up the phone and call that person, pretend to call that person, or you can just sit in the space and talk to your loved one. She was able to speak to her grandparents and her friend." A Japanese garden designer came up with the concept of a "Wind Phone"  following the death of his cousin in 2011. He wanted to provide grieving people with a symbolic mechanism to connect with their loved ones in a serene setting to promote healing and reflection.  Read the full story HERE. – A Kaycee-area rancher has been charged with theft after prosecutors say he tried to steal an elk head from hunters who helicoptered into public land near his ranch. Cowboy State Daily's Mark Heinz reports the hunters say the hunters have video proof and filed a complaint. "The new development is, is that rancher, or the person who was allegedly the rancher that the hunters say has been charged with misdemeanor theft, and so there has been a charge filed in connection with this, entered or not guilty plea. Trial is scheduled for June. I did talk to one of the hunters from whom the elkhead was there was an alleged attempt at theft, and he said, 'Yeah, you know, it's cool that they're following up on this, because we did file a report with both Game and Fish and the sheriff's office.'" The court case against Brett D. DeLapp continues with a pretrial hearing set for June 10 and a trial to begin June 26 in Johnson County Circuit Court after the landowner pleaded not guilty last month, according to a letter and court documents. Read the full story HERE. – I'll be back with more news from Cowboy State Daily right after this.   Cowboy State Daily news continues now… – Grocery store beef prices jumped 15% last year, and the USDA says they're not done climbing. Cowboy State Daily's David Madison reports that across Wyoming, families are cutting out the middleman and buying whole, half or quarter cows straight from local ranchers – and saving a lot of money. "This might not be news, but there's a lot of us out there that don't realize that you can go out and buy a quarter, a half or a whole cows' worth of beef. And you know, beef from Wyoming, beef from perhaps your neighbor down the road, who raises cattle more and more in Wyoming, there are smaller processors, and there are ranchers willing to team up with consumers to create a buying opportunity that they say is better than relying on your local grocery store. Why not get a better tasting, less expensive, healthier cut of beef from right here in Wyoming?" The U.S. Department of Agriculture report paints a grim picture across the meat case: beef and veal prices were 15% higher in January than the year before, and the agency predicts another 5.5% increase through 2026 as the national cattle herd continues to shrink while consumer demand stays strong. Read the full story HERE. – Wyoming's famous 21-foot Tumble Inn Cowboy sign, which was falling apart and rescued from remote Powder River, has been re-painted, polished and the neon glass tubes are being restored. Cowboy State Daily's Dale Killingbeck reports that once completed, it will be publicly displayed in its full neon glory. "The 21 foot tumble inside that used to stand alongside the road, the highway and Powder River is looking pretty good. and all that's left now is for the neon lights that are to cover them to be completed. And that's that's a little bit of a job still yet to go, according to the neon artist Connie Morgan. And so the plan is to have that put up along West Yellowstone highway on the west side of Casper." The sign's origins can be traced to a Wyoming oilman who wanted to own a steakhouse and bought the log restaurant and bar. He found the sign in Las Vegas and had it revamped for his purposes. Read the full story HERE. – Casper Fire-EMS Capt. Brian Dixon's diagnosis of lymphoma is the latest in a line of Casper firefighters diagnosed with cancer. Cowboy State Daily's Zak Sonntag reports that the community is calling him a hero. "It's kind of daunting to realize that only in the last few years, decade at the most, there really has been a consensus about how threatening and how dangerous this work really is for long term cancer. It is now officially the top, the number one line, of duty-cause of death for firefighters. That's seven distinct cancers that have collectively been identified as the number one cause of line of duty death for firefighters, and this is just in the last few years. Brian Dixon is the third captain from the Casper department alone to get cancer, and two previous captains have died of cancer, one of pancreatic and one of testicular." According to Dr. Jeff Burgess, director of the Center for Firefighter Health and Collaborative Research at the University of Arizona's Zuckerman College of Public Health, research in recent years has made it unequivocally clear: cancer is the highest occupational risk for firefighters worldwide. Read the full story HERE. – The Landmand Golf Course in Nebraska is called the toughest place to get a tee time in the U.S., booking all 11,000 of its tee times in 45 minutes. Cowboy State Daily's David Madison reports two Sheridan golfers were locked out but were selected in a lottery to represent Wyoming in an August tournament. "On New Year's Eve, Josh had his computer set up in Sheridan. He was ready to pounce when the tee times for 2026 became available. He spots a link on the Landmand Golf Club website that is announcing this new tournament called the heartbeat. And so he just on a lark, put his name in with his friend Jared, and they got it." The format is unlike anything on the national amateur scene: 52 two-man teams, one representing each of the 50 states, one for Washington, D.C., and one wildcard. Three tournament rounds plus a practice round. The whole package for $7,000 per team. Read the full story HERE.   And that's today's news. Get your free digital subscription to Wyoming's only statewide newspaper by hitting the Daily Newsletter button on Cowboy State Daily Dot Com - and you can watch this newscast every day by clicking Subscribe on our YouTube channel, or listen to us on your favorite podcast app.  Thanks for watching - I'm Mac Watson, for Cowboy State Daily.

It's time to take a look at what's happening around Wyoming for Friday, March 13th.  I'm Mac Watson. – A Wyoming windstorm with gusts reported as high as 109 mph has left a trail of destruction across the state. Cowboy State Daily's Greg Johnson reports that strong gusts have blown over dozens of commercial trucks, ripped roofs off buildings, and uprooted trees.  "It was sustained winds in the high 50s, low 60 mile per hour with gusts up to 90. Here in Cheyenne, they set a record at the airport with a 90 mile per hour gust. There was a 94 mile per hour gust registered at NCAR, which is the super computer location, and other reports had come into the National Weather Service over 101 and 109 out between Laramie and Centennial. The entire stretch of I 80 through Wyoming was closed. I talked to a trucker at a truck stop who is from Alabama, and he was just, he had like a deer-in-the- headlights look. He just couldn't believe this type of wind." For perspective, Category 1 strength hurricanes have sustained winds of between 74 mph and 95 mph. Read the full story HERE. – It's being described as a showdown in Crook County as House Speaker Chip Neiman has announced he's running for Sen. Ogden Driskill's senate seat. Cowboy State Daily's Clair McFarland reports that Driskill wasn't going to run again but changed his mind as voters tell him they don't want to see "the Freedom Caucus move to the Senate." "It's a former Senate President versus the state speaker of the house. So heavyweights leadership, big influences in legislature. This is the Senate seat in the northeast corner of Wyoming, currently held by Senator Ogden Driscoll, a former Senate President, and the current House speaker, Chip Neiman, is vying for the seat. So it's a showdown between an incumbent and a very successful House candidate who for years has been his counterpart in the house, and now is going to give him a run for his own seat." Driskill took the first swing Thursday upon hearing of Neiman's state Senate bid, calling the Freedom Caucus long on rhetoric and short on results, prone to groupthink and clumsy. Neiman fired back, saying Driskill is broad-brushing him and the issues in general. Read the full story HERE. – A mild winter means easy living for Wyoming's big game, but it also means hard times for predators. Cowboy State Daily's Mark Heinz reports that's because of fewer weakened animals to hunt or winterkill carcasses to devour. "If the next four months, like this month through June, we don't see significant amounts of moisture, that could spell trouble. Because what people might not realize, in the case of bears, they're really dependent on fresh green grass. They get a lot of their springtime protein by you'll see Grizzlies walking out into metals and gorging themselves. Grizzlies, especially mama Grizzlies, with new cubs, become grazers. They eat as much or more grass than they do meat and other food sources." During the 2022-2023 winter, the brutal weather killed deer, elk and antelope by the tens of thousands. When the deep snows finally melted in the spring of 2023, landscapes were littered with big game carcasses, which was an all-you-can eat buffet for carnivores. Read the full story HERE. – Wyoming state Senate President Bo Biteman announced on Thursday that he's running for the state's lone U.S. House seat. Cowboy State Daily's Clair McFarland reports that Biteman describes himself as a "constitutional conservative."  "Often lawmakers don't declare for higher office until that session is over, even while their competitors are able to campaign. it's one day after session and Senate President Bo Biteman said, 'Yeah, I'm running for that lone US House seat in Washington, DC.' He characterized himself as a constitutional conservative. I asked, 'So what parts of the Constitution does Washington DC need a refresher on?' He said, 'All of it.' He said that he wants to push toward a constitutional amendment that Washington DC, that Congress has to do single subject bills, so you can't pile lots of policy goals and do a big omnibus bill, and if you don't pass it, the government shuts down. He said Wyoming's government works really well, and I think that Congress could borrow that strategy and be a lot better off." The 47-year-old Biteman tells Cowboy State Daily that, if elected, he vows to protect Wyoming's public lands from being sold off to private buyers and he'd like to see reform so that Wyoming could control the mineral leasing the federal government now runs – and the management of which vacillates with every presidential party change. Read the full story HERE. – I'll be back with more news from Cowboy State Daily right after this.   Cowboy State Daily news continues now… – A proposed three-quarter percent sales tax to cover ambulance services, public transportation, and commercial air in Fremont County could land on the August primary ballot.  Cowboy State Daily's Kate Meadows reports that   Fremont County Commissioners narrowly passed a resolution in a 3-2 vote. "If it goes to the voters in August, it needs to be approved by a majority of the county's six municipalities and a majority of the county commissioners. So far, county commissioners narrowly approved the measure in a three to two vote, and three of the six municipalities have voted for it, one municipality, Dubois, unanimously voted against it on Wednesday. Fremont County Commissioner, Chairman Larry Allen said in the most recent county commissioners meeting that we're running out of time to get this on to the August 2026 ballot." Two remaining municipalities — Shoshoni and Pavillion — have yet to vote. If the measure makes it to the August ballot and county voters approve the tax increase, the tax would take effect on Jan. 1, 2027. Read the full story HERE. – Starting July 1, Wyoming 18-year-olds can get permits to carry concealed firearms. Cowboy State Daily's Mark Heinz reports an 18-year-old Riverton woman plans to do so because it will make her feel safer in "sketchy" places like isolated roadside gas stations. "I was able to track down an actual Wyoming 18-year old who does want to do that once that option is available to her on July 1. She wants to go get her concealed carry permit so she can start concealed carrying a handgun. And she acknowledges why some people are worried that 18-year olds, especially 18-year olds, like a lot of people she knows, who've never been around guns, have never handled them." Wyoming has Constitutional carry, meaning people over age 21 who can lawfully own firearms may carry them concealed without a permit. That won't change; 18 to 20-year-olds will still need permits to carry concealed weapons. Read the full story HERE. – A new 470-page history book, "Cowboy Soldiers," has been released chronicling the Wyoming National Guard's evolution from 1870-1945. Cowboy State Daily's Dale Killingbeck reports that even today's Guard members are making history with recent combat missions in Syria. "People don't know they were sent to the border during the chase of Pancho Villa under General Pershing. So there are lots of nuggets in the group in the book. So lots of cool stories in the book, and it coincides with some honors that were given to the Wyoming National Guard in the state budget session this year where they were recognized for their work in Syria with the HIMARS rocket unit. So they received kudos from the Wyoming Legislature this year." Wyoming Adjutant Major General Greg Porter pointed out to legislators that the guard's beginnings stretch all the way back before statehood and have been called on in its history to serve national needs. Read the full story HERE. And that's today's news. Get your free digital subscription to Wyoming's only statewide newspaper by hitting the Daily Newsletter button on Cowboy State Daily Dot Com - and you can watch this newscast every day by clicking Subscribe on our YouTube channel, or listen to us on your favorite podcast app.  Thanks for watching - I'm Mac Watson, for Cowboy State Daily.  

It's time to take a look at what's happening around Wyoming for Thursday, March 12th.  I'm Mac Watson. – The young daughter of a 24-year-old woman was found dead on Saturday, shot in the face in a Riverton motel room. Cowboy State Daily's Clair McFarland reports court documents say that the little girl told authorities: "Daddy was mad at mommy," and "Mommy's dead." "What we know from the affidavit by Riverton Police Department detective Peter McCall is that the original caller was reporting that the little girl had found her mother unresponsive in the room. And we also know that there's video showing the little girl entering the room with her family at about 11pm the night before, and the footage shows the father leaving and coming back in the wee hours of the morning, according in court documents, so the evidence at this juncture indicates that the girl was in the room. There may be evidence later to read, but at this juncture, that's the indication. And when a victim witness coordinator was, you know, talking engaging with a little girl, later at the police station, she was saying things like, 'Daddy was mad at mommy, mommy's dead,' according to the affidavit." According to court affidavits, 25-year-old Sterling Louis Black Jr., turned himself in to police on Saturday afternoon, and now faces one count of second-degree murder.  Read the full story HERE. – A 14-year-old Cheyenne boy is being charged as an adult with first-degree murder, accused of shooting his mother in the head from behind. Cowboy State Daily's Greg Johnson reports Havoc Leone initially reported to the Laramie County Sheriff's Office investigators that his mother, Theresa McIntosh, had killed herself. "The call was called in as an attempted suicide. When authorities got there, they discovered that the situation just didn't add up to suicide. Number one, she was shot in the back of the head by the ear, in a spot where they said, it's not usual that someone would put a gun to themselves. It wasn't obvious from the wound that there was contact with the gun, and it came at a little bit of a distance. And the boy himself said there was a struggle for the gun, and it just went off. But at another time, he told them in pretty good detail how he had the gun in his closet, he retrieved it, and that he shot her in the back of the head." According to court affidavits, the buildup to the shooting began about 90 minutes before McIntosh was killed when she and her common-law husband — Leone's biological father — argued with the teen about an electronic tablet he stole from the home of a cleaning client of his mother's. Read the full story HERE. – Wyoming House leaders on Wednesday dismissed ethics complaints against Democratic Reps. Mike Yin and Karlee Provenza over the "CheckGate" scandal. Cowboy State Daily's Clair McFarland reports that House Speaker Pro Tem Jeremy Haroldson said they didn't break any rules, but their actions did cause fallout. "Representative Carly Provenza shot a photograph February 9 of Rebecca Bell handing out checks to lawmakers on the House floor after a tournament. And she handed that off to the press, and she has given multiple reasons for this thing. She didn't want the incident to be swept under the rug. Now the allegation has been that she violated the rules by not filing a confidential ethics complaint. Instead, you know, the ethics complaint rule doesn't say you have to file an ethics complaint when you have an issue. It lays out what happens when you do that and how you do that. Now, some of her detractors are saying, well, when she was calling for an investigative committee, that was tantamount to an ethics complaint. The ethics committee didn't find that she had, that she had actually broken the rules, but said that that the way she chose to do it caused pain." One House lawmaker and multiple private citizens filed a total of four official complaints this session against Yin, of Jackson, and Provenza, of Laramie. Read the full story HERE. – A massive pileup on Interstate 80 between Laramie and Sinclair during a blizzard on Wednesday sent two people to hospitals and shut down the highway in both directions. Cowboy State Daily's Kate Meadows reports officials blame winter's sudden return for the pileup. "Wyoming Highway Patrol Public Information Officer Aaron Brown said the accident caused a 20-vehicle pile-up. Meteorologists were predicting snow in the I-80 corridor between Laramie and Rollins, but there ended up being more snow than they predicted. So that snow coupled with this high wind led to blizzard like conditions and then slick roads. And Brown told me that we've basically, Wyoming has had a really long November. People have kind of been operating under this false sense of security." National Weather Service Meteorologist Timothy Trudel tells Cowboy State Daily that a cold front caused a heavy band of snow to linger across parts of Carbon and Albany counties, with the area receiving 3 to 6 inches of snow. Read the full story HERE. – I'll be back with more news from Cowboy State Daily right after this.   Cowboy State Daily news continues now… – The Wyoming Senate tried and failed by nine votes Wednesday to override Gov. Mark Gordon's veto of a bill called the "Second Amendment Protection Act." Cowboy State Daily's Clair McFarland reports that sheriffs for all 23 Wyoming counties opposed the bill, calling it messy and overreaching. "So the legislature contemplated three vetoes on Wednesday. One was an attempt to get rid of an account that the governor uses for projects. The other two were his veto of the Second Amendment protection act and his veto of a bill aimed at blocking governments from deducting union dues from people's paychecks from public employees' paychecks. And all three override attempts failed, so all three vetoes held the two we reported on Second Amendment protection act. All Wyoming sheriffs opposed because they said they'd get in the crossfire of broad language and be chilled all together from ever working with federal agents." Senate File 101 would have expanded existing Wyoming law, which already imposes a misdemeanor for state police officers who violate people's Second Amendment rights by enforcing unconstitutional federal gun laws. Read the full story HERE. – A Torrington woman accused of allowing her boyfriend to perform sex acts with a 4-year-old girl is scheduled for a plea hearing Thursday. Cowboy State Daily's Greg Johnson reports the boyfriend of Angela Montoya, already convicted for abusing the child, will be sentenced on Friday. "There are totally different ends of the prosecution spectrum here. After he'd been convicted, they learned, oh, he's a second secret cell phone. His attorney had custody of it. They got us. They got a search warrant. The attorney turned it over. When they looked in there, they found all kinds of other stuff, including lengthy text messages, text threads between the boyfriend and girlfriend about sex acts with the girl." Montoya's affidavit outlines a convoluted relationship between her and Syrovatka, who lived together while he was married to someone else in another town in Wyoming. Read the full story HERE. – Wyoming has launched a $4 million Outdoor Rec and Tourism Trust Fund to expand trails and amenities. Cowboy State Daily's Renee Jean reports the goal is to manage the impacts of a booming tourism industry while improving quality of life for residents and boosting local economies. "Part of the idea behind the outdoor recreation tourism account is, how can we be more proactive about our outdoor amenities? Lots of places in Wyoming that are already too popular and don't have the right amenities, don't have parking spaces, don't have camping sites. So, this Wyoming tourism account Trust Fund was set up. It's being funded by tourism dollars. Again, heads and beds are paying for this. Compared to Wyoming's neighbors, Utah put $40 million on the ground last year." The first installment from its newly created Outdoor Rec & Tourism Trust Account, finalized in 2024, will be awarded this spring. That's an initial $4 million for developing new outdoor tourism across the state or solving existing problems at places that have already become too popular.  Read the full story HERE. – A Wyoming fly-fisherman and his clients were on a stretch of the North Platte River legendary for its trout when they caught a muskrat on their line instead. Cowboy State Daily's Mark Heinz reports the determined rodent chased and bit a string leech on a fishing fly, just like a trout would. "The guy, he says, you know, once in a while, like muskrats, they'll get accidentally snagged on people's hooks, but he's never actually seen one deliberately try to bite it like that. So the way it ended up is, you know, they got it reeled in and he managed, you know, to pick the poor thing up and then use his forceps and, you know, get the hook out of its mouth. And they took a couple pictures and let him go. And the muskrat was fine, apparently. But it's definitely within the realm of possibility, because rodents, including muskrats, will occasionally eat insects." Craig Kwiatkowski, a fishing guide with the Wyoming Fly Fishing Guide Service tells Cowboy State Daily that he's seen a few muskrats get accidentally snagged by angler's hooks, but a muskrat aggressively hitting a fishing fly was a first. Read the full story HERE. – And that's today's news. Get your free digital subscription to Wyoming's only statewide newspaper by hitting the Daily Newsletter button on Cowboy State Daily Dot Com - and you can watch this newscast every day by clicking Subscribe on our YouTube channel, or listen to us on your favorite podcast app.  Thanks for watching - I'm Mac Watson, for Cowboy State Daily.  

It's time to take a look at what's happening around Wyoming for Wednesday, March 11th.  I'm Mac Watson. – Noting the Trump administration backs his decision, Gov. Mark Gordon on Tuesday vetoed the Second Amendment Protection Act. Cowboy State Daily's Clair McFarland reports the bill would penalize Wyoming agencies that help with federal gun enforcement operations. "Pretty much all Wyoming law enforcement and the Trump administration's acting ICE Director do not like this bill, and so what local law enforcement are saying is they could be caught in the crossfire of vague remedies. Whereas the gun lobby is saying, this is making sure that local law enforcement stands against federal law enforcement when it comes to an issue of our gun rights. Gordon had a letter from the acting director of ice saying, this could chill other lawful operations and collaborations between state and federal law enforcement" Senate File 101, which would impose $50,000 civil penalties on Wyoming police agencies that help with federal gun-crime enforcement operations against "law-abiding" citizens, or hire former federal agents who've conducted those operations, garnered massive controversy during this year's legislative session – as all 23 Wyoming sheriffs opposed it.  Read the full story HERE. – Laramie County School District 1 says it's "aware" of a video showing a Cheyenne junior high teacher on his knees begging a student, telling her that, "I did something very wrong." Cowboy State Daily's Greg Johnson reports that one parent says the video is "creepy" "Parents are still asking other questions, like, 'Is this person still teaching at the school? Was there a suspension?' The parents are just saying, 'Look, we just want some transparency.' We just want you to say, 'Yes, something happened, and we're addressing it.' The school did send out a statement about it to parents on their automatic system. And it basically says, 'We're aware of this situation.'" The Cheyenne Police Department has said it's investigating a report about the incident, which involved a man, now confirmed to be an eighth-grade McCormick math teacher. Read the full story HERE. – The Cheyenne City Council voted on Monday to delay a final decision on forcibly annexing a farm that sells fresh, local produce. Cowboy State Daily's Kate Meadows reports the council decided to delay for eight months after hours of testimony from concerned residents. "50 people came and actually spoke at the meeting in favor of why fresh farms being able to continue to operate their business as they have, without having to abide by city code. This ordinance took up the bulk of the meeting, and the meeting overall lasted almost six hours. This part of it lasted more than four hours. At the end of it, the city council agreed unanimously to postpone the third reading to November, which gives the city eight months to work through some more definitions, especially defining what an urban farm is and putting that into city code."  The proposed annexation has been a point of contention for months. It is part of a larger plan Mayor Patrick Collins introduced when he took office in 2021, intending to annex portions of the county that are surrounded by city land. The city council will meet again on Nov. 9th. Read the full story HERE. – Federal judge Tanya Chutkan threw out approval for Wyoming's massive 5,000-well Converse County Oil and Gas Project over environmental flaws. But Cowboy State Daily's David Madison reports that drilling continues under a different plan as conservationists and industry battle over wildlife and revenue. "This judge found that there were concerns around water, groundwater, specifically, and concerns around greenhouse gas emissions that weren't up to snuff, and so she vacated the whole Environmental Impact Statement. A lot of work goes into those things, so that's a huge move. However, she didn't prevent the BLM from issuing individual permits under this resource management plan that wasn't contested in court now, that could go to court one day, and these permits that are being issued right now could be challenged, but it's, it's a messy situation that's left no one really fully satisfied." Despite Judge Chutkan's ruling, drilling permits are still getting approved in the Powder River Basin  Read the full story HERE. – I'll be back with more news from Cowboy State Daily right after this.   Cowboy State Daily news continues now… – A Wyoming judge rejected a new DHS policy that detains immigrants who have been living in the U.S. consistently during their immigration proceedings. Cowboy State Daily's Clair McFarland reports that the judge also ordered a bond hearing for a detained immigrant trucker, who is now free while his case continues. "This is just the latest in a wave of judges saying, 'No Trump, this long standing federal law that has applied to people who are already in the country has guaranteed that they can, they can get a bond hearing, right? Whereas the Trump administration is saying, 'Look, even if you're established here, we want to detain you. We don't want to give you a bond hearing. We want to detain you while your case is ongoing.'" This was not Judge Skavdahl's first time adhering to the older reading of federal immigration law. Back in November, he ruled that an illegal immigrant who says he's been living in the U.S. for 20 years does not fall under the detention mandate the federal government historically applied to people just arriving in the nation. Read the full story HERE. – The Laramie County Sheriff's office says a teen is in custody after a 41-year-old woman was shot in the back of her head on Friday. Cowboy State Daily's Greg Johnson reports that the woman was life-flighted to a Colorado hospital, where she died. "The Laramie County Sheriff's Office put out information on Tuesday about a shooting that happened Friday. Doesn't say how many times she was shot, but that this juvenile was taken into custody at the scene. There's no word yet on whether this teen is going to be charged as a juvenile, as an adult, but until that decision is made, it's treated as a juvenile. They're also not releasing the name of the woman who was shot because that could potentially ID the juvenile in this case."  The Sheriff's Office reports that the investigation remains active, and further details regarding charges or the identity of the involved parties are being withheld at this time. Read the full story HERE. – The first official sighting of a grizzly in Yellowstone has been confirmed. Cowboy State Daily's Jimmy Orr reports that Park officials say the male bear was, not surprisingly, eating.  "The first grizzly is usually spotted in northern Yellowstone in early March. And where the grizzly was spotted is not a surprise either, because he was feasting on a bison carcass. A grizzly was spotted by a photographer on January 26, but it doesn't count. Why? Because Yellowstone, it's got to be a Yellowstone spotting. And so they spotted this one, this one, this one counts the earlier one didn't." Despite an abnormally warm winter across Wyoming, Yellowstone's first official grizzly sighting isn't abnormally early. It falls right within the window of when biologists expect and typically do see big bruins emerging from hibernation to voraciously find and feast on whatever food they can find. Read the full story HERE. – And that's today's news. Get your free digital subscription to Wyoming's only statewide newspaper by hitting the Daily Newsletter button on Cowboy State Daily Dot Com - and you can watch this newscast every day by clicking Subscribe on our YouTube channel, or listen to us on your favorite podcast app.  Thanks for watching - I'm Mac Watson, for Cowboy State Daily.

It's time to take a look at what's happening around Wyoming for Tuesday, March 10th.  I'm Mac Watson. – A disturbing video has surfaced of a man on his knees, repeatedly saying he did something wrong while begging a Cheyenne junior high school girl for her name after a physical altercation last week. Cowboy State Daily's Greg Johnson reports that school officials are saying "no comment," while parents are demanding answers. "He continues to ask for her name because he says he wants to report himself for his behavior. Parents are really upset, not so much that something happened, but what they're upset about is that the school in the school district haven't contacted the parents to tell them, 'Hey, something happened and we're dealing with it.' And so of course, people start speculating, 'Oh, they're trying to cover it up. Why didn't they say anything about that?'" The short video appears to have been taken by another student outside McCormick Junior High School in north Cheyenne last week. The man in the video can be seen with credentials on a lanyard around his neck — similar to ones worn by school employees, but it's not known if he works at the junior high school.  Read the full story HERE. – Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon on Monday let the state's new $3.9 billion K-12 education plan become law without his signature. Cowboy State Daily's Clair McFarland reports that the governor says his biggest issue is the Legislature cordoning off instructional funding so it can't help if a "school loses a roof."  "Governor Gordon allowed it to go into law without his signature. So, it's him saying, 'I don't love it enough to sign it. I don't hate it enough to veto it. It's just going to become law.' The teacher, teachers aid, paraprofessional money is all going into this part of the block grant that the districts aren't allowed to pull from. And Gordon's point was, 'What if the roof falls off and they're not allowed to touch this money? You know, you rob them of this flexibility, and I don't like that.' The legislature is under some court pressure to recalibrate, or, you know, recalculate what education costs and issue that amount of funding to the school districts." Although the governor didn't sign the education bill into law, he lauded the work of the legislative Select Recalibration on School Finance, which met multiple times last year and this January to tailor the state's K-12 spending plan to the educational needs of the current era. Read the full story HERE. – TerraPower officially received a construction permit Monday for its first-of-a-kind Natrium reactor in Kemmerer. Cowboy State Daily's David Madison reports the CEO of the Bill Gates-backed project says, "This demonstrates advanced nuclear technology is moving from concept to commercialization." "There was a historic ceremony today in Rockville, Maryland, at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. They gave Terra Power its construction permit. It was a formal signing of the permit. The CEO of the company was there saying, 'Hey, we've gotten the seal of approval from the NRC. That's the gold standard globally. And so we're going to use Kemmerer, the natrium reactor project they're going to start building now with this permit as our showpiece.'" Five years of engineering, a million staff hours of preparation and 18 months of federal safety reviews culminated Monday in a formal ceremony at Nuclear Regulatory Commission headquarters, where officials signed and handed TerraPower its construction permit for the Kemmerer Unit 1 Natrium reactor. Read the full story HERE. – An Iranian blockade sent crude oil above $100 a barrel on Monday, boosting producer profits and state revenues. But Cowboy State Daily's Renee Jean reports that Wyoming's oil patches aren't likely to see that spur production, as economists predict the blockade will boost inflation and tank demand. "There's a little bit of a balancing act with oil prices, right? There's kind of a balancing act, a sweet spot, if you will, where you're producing a barrel of oil profitably and not dragging the economy down into the tank. Right now for Wyoming, that price is around $80 a barrel. So $80 oil in a sustained structure. What's happened here is oil prices have spiked to almost $120 a barrel. That is a very significant amount. It starts to have immediate impacts at the gas pump." Iran has blocked the Strait of Hormuz, which is a strategic choke point which provides the only sea passage from the Persian Gulf to the open ocean.  Read the full story HERE. – I'll be back with more news from Cowboy State Daily right after this.   Cowboy State Daily news continues now… – The World Championship Snowmobile Hill Climb in Jackson Hole has been canceled because of a lack of snow for just the third time in its 50-plus-year history. Cowboy State Daily's Kate Meadows reports that Mother Nature hasn't cooperated this year. "Conditions in Jackson have been great for skiing. So the question is, what's the difference? Why can skiers still ski Snow King mountain, where the hill climb is held, and why can't snowmobiles race up the mountain in their world competition? So Snow King Mountain is prepped right now for ski racing because of the snow conditions around Jackson Hole. Therefore the mountain right now is prepped for ski racing, and so to have these snowmobilers come and ride up and down the mountain, and have all these people there, could actually really put the ski race the following weekend in jeopardy." The event began as a friendly contest between local riders in Jackson Hole in 1975 and has since grown into a worldwide competition that draws thousands of people each year. Read the full story HERE. – Gov. Mark Gordon signed Wyoming's Human Heartbeat Act on Monday, banning most abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be heard. Cowboy State Daily's Clair McFarland reports that the state's only abortion clinic says it is an "attack on Wyomingites' constitutional freedom." "The interesting thing about this ban is it says it has a safety net. So it says that if the court blocks the provision banning of abortions after the point a heartbeat can be heard, then a viability standard would spring into place. And so Gordon signed that saying, 'Yeah, I value life, but this looks like just another band aid where we've had court, court litigation over this for nearly four years now.' And this looks like just more of that he had during his February, 9 State of the State address to lawmakers, asking them to advance a change to the Constitution for the voters to decide the issue in November, and the legislature did not do that." The law has exemptions for dire health circumstances of pregnant mothers, but not for rape or incest, which Gordon called a flaw.  Read the full story HERE. – Insurance rates have soared for rural and vacation properties across Wyoming due to wildfire risk designations. Cowboy State Daily's David Madison reports that some insurance rates skyrocketed.   "What we've seen is the two and 300% increase over the last few years that's driven by increased wildlife danger. Basically, the further away you get from a fire station, the more expensive your insurance is going to be. And if you're paying a mortgage, that gets packed onto the mortgage so your mortgage payment balloons. It's an unfortunate symptom of the increased wildfire danger, and not only wildfires like the one up around Dayton and Ranchester a few years ago, the Elk Fire. It's not just that. It's the ones you've read about in California and other parts of the West." Senator Taft Love of Cheyenne tells Cowboy State Daily that he's seen his insurance rates triple from one year to the next because they changed the fire rating. Read the full story HERE. – Echinus Geyser suddenly burst back to life in Yellowstone National Park last month after being dormant for five years. Cowboy State Daily's Andrew Rossi reports it's the world's largest acidic geyser. "So Echinus Geyser erupted on February 6, and then erupted 60 times between the sixth and the 24th and I just checked, it has not erupted since then. So it had this very brief period of intense activity, and that's kind of what it's been doing for the last several decades. It was once one of the most reliable geysers in Yellowstone. In fact, if you go there today, you'll actually see a bunch of seating around it, because it used to erupt so frequently, then it petered off. So it has these brief periods of frequent eruptions, and then it goes dormant again." Echinus Geyser, named in 1878 by mineralogist A.C. Peale, was one of the premier attractions in the Norris Geyser Basin since Yellowstone's inception, even called a "star performer" by some in its heyday. Read the full story HERE. – And that's today's news. Get your free digital subscription to Wyoming's only statewide newspaper by hitting the Daily Newsletter button on Cowboy State Daily Dot Com - and you can watch this newscast every day by clicking Subscribe on our YouTube channel, or listen to us on your favorite podcast app.  Thanks for watching - I'm Mac Watson, for Cowboy State Daily.

It's time to take a look at what's happening around Wyoming for Monday, March 9th.  I'm Mac Watson. – The Wyoming Legislature overrode four of Gov. Mark Gordon's 25 line-item vetoes to the budget Friday. Cowboy State Daily's Clair McFarland reports that the governor says everyone is calling his budget a win. "So, while the House maybe had more qualms with Gordon's line-item vetoes to the budget, the Senate only sent seven overrides, and the Senate had pretty much no debate, no issue. Overrode those – sent them on. The House had debates, and then ultimately only overrode three. And the big one was the budget footnote. Gordon, when he was talking to Cowboy State Daily's Jake Nichols on Friday, was saying, 'Wow, this budget, everybody's claiming a win.'  He said that more than 90% of his recommendations were ultimately adopted. So yeah, he was happy with the budget. Had some qualms about separation of powers, and wanted to give business-ready communities back its money and give UW more flexibility. And he succeeded at both of those vetoes." The budget no longer hinges $10 million of the University of Wyoming's $40 million block grant on UW crafting a road map to $5 million in savings by Dec. 1st. Read the full story HERE. – An Evanston couple is celebrating the latest additions to their family — fraternal twins who together weighed more than 18 pounds. Cowboy State Daily's Dale Killingbeck reports the big babies were brought into the world naturally by an 82-year-old midwife.  "When they went for their 20 week ultrasound, they found out that they were going to have twins, fraternal twins. And so she wanted to have, still wanted to have the babies at home, but in Wyoming, there's a law that says you can't do that. You can't have twins at home with a midwife. And so she looked to a friend in Utah that she had mentored under, and called her and that that midwife, Chris Miller, helped her through prenatal time, and when it came time for the babies to come to birth, they went over to Ogden, Utah, and the babies were born. They were both over nine pounds, and according to the Wyoming Department of Health. They set a record with their weight together being over 18 pounds. So two new babies in the world, both of them very healthy, and both of them pretty hefty." Hope and Raleigh Henderson welcomed the twins, a boy and a girl, into the world on March 3rd, — weighing 18 pounds, 10 ounces combined. Read the full story HERE. – It's been nearly 60 years since Doug Chamberlain, a Marine veteran and later a Wyoming legislator, came home from Vietnam. Cowboy State Daily's Zak Sonntag reports that the war changed him, as he's still haunted by the soldier he was ordered to leave behind.  "He was commanded to bury one of his fellow Marines, which was totally against the protocol of never leaving a fellow Marine behind. And he did so. And it got worse because he organized a follow up rescue mission to get this marine, and he would discover that some of the higher ups on the chain of command had also attempted to cover up the fact that they made this order, which was very much against everything that every Marine was told." Long before he was a rancher, a rural postman, or speaker of the Wyoming House of Representatives, Chamberlain was a Marine Corps captain in Vietnam who survived firefights, landmines, leeches, and cobra snakes. Read the full story HERE. – A Triceratops named "Trey" has been a popular exhibit at the Wyoming Dinosaur Center in Thermopolis for 30 years. Cowboy State Daily's Andrew Rossi reports that the dino is now on the auction block and has a pre-sale estimate of $5.5 million.  "The reason why the Triceratops skeleton, which was previously on display at the Wyoming dinosaur center for almost 30 years, is on the auction block is because it's private property. It's the property of the owner and the founder of the museum.  And if that dinosaur could be sold, that raises the possibility that others could be sold as well, as long as they have that potential price tag on there. And let's not forget, it was just about two years ago that a stegosaurus sold for $44 million." A nearly-complete 150-million-year-old Stegosaurus skeleton named "Apex" sold for a record-breaking $44-and-a-half million dollars at Sotheby's auction in New York back in 2024. Purchased by billionaire Ken Griffin, the 11-foot-tall and 27-foot-long specimen is the most valuable fossil ever sold at auction. Read the full story HERE. – I'll be back with more news from Cowboy State Daily right after this.   Cowboy State Daily news continues now… – Wyoming author C.J. Box drew a huge crowd in Cheyenne for his new Joe Pickett book, "The Crossroads," which debuted at No. 1 on The New York Times bestseller list — Box's sixth in a row. Cowboy State Daily's Renee Jean was at the signing and reports one fan brought 30 books, the most he's signed for a fan in one sitting. "There was kind of that little, momentary bug-eyed look. He just kind of laughed and shook his head and started signing. If you're an author, that's a good problem to have, somebody liked your book so much that they wanted every one of them signed." Not only did "The Crossroads" debut on the New York Times bestseller list, it also topped Apple's list and the Associated Press' list. That's the first time CJ has ever had a book sweep. Read the full story HERE. – Artist and fish taxidermist Allen Darlington grew up in Upton, said he majored in going to the Buckhorn Bar at the University of Wyoming, and learned his craft from a master fish taxidermist in Rawlins. Cowboy State Daily's Mark Heinz reports that for Allen, fish taxidermy is more of an art than science.  "He actually wanted to be an artist. He was like, one class short of an art degree from UW, and got some kind of job at the state archeology office, and walked into a taxidermy shop one day and was like, Hey, this is art. I want to do this. And then a fish taxidermist came in and said, came into the shop one day and said, 'Hey, I'm looking for someone to mentor and fish taxidermy, and I think you'd be a good candidate, because you're essentially an artist.'" Darlington tells Cowboy State Daily that he gravitated toward fish taxidermy because it involves his two favorite mediums as an artist: sculpting and painting.  Read the full story HERE. – Frontier cowboys, coal miners, buffalo hunters, prostitutes, saloon keepers and lawmen did dangerous, dirty work in the frontier West. Cowboy State Daily's Renee Jean reports that dynamite, disease, stampedes, and shootouts made death an everyday occupational hazard. "Think about being a cowboy back then. Nobody's your friend out there on the open range: wolves, bears, American Indians, cattle rustlers. You work a 15 hour day. At the end of it, you don't even get a hot shower, because they don't exist yet. But probably the most dangerous job would have been working in a coal mine. You know, they sent those guys down into the dark, basically, you had headlamps, but they were open gas flame. You think a town job might have been better? I don't know. Think about being a saloon keeper. There you are with rowdy ranch hands and traveling merchants, quote, unquote, who knows? Who might have just been bank robbers, all of whom have drank enough whiskey to make really poor decisions." Life in the Wild West was, as Buffalo Bill Center of the West historian Paul Hutton puts it, "tough, grim work" in a frontier world where everything was inherently dangerous and there wasn't much in the way of either cleanliness or comfort to soften life's harsh edges. Read the full story HERE. – Cowboy State Daily's Anna Jackson joined the cast of "Sharktana," a shark horror-comedy filmed in snowy Montana, and landed a role. Anna says it was fun being on the set with so many actors who were extras from the popular television series "Yellowstone." "So the main scene I'm in, my daughter – her name is Alice –  she's playing with a snowman, and a shark is coming to attack, and I'm frantic. I'm looking for her. One of the leads is telling everyone to get off the mountain. I rush toward my daughter as the shark is coming out, you'll see it in the photo on the story. What happens to me? You'll have to wait and see when the movie comes out." Anna says that the movie should be coming out in 2027. No word on where we can stream or watch Sharktana. Read the full story HERE. – And that's today's news. Get your free digital subscription to Wyoming's only statewide newspaper by hitting the Daily Newsletter button on Cowboy State Daily Dot Com - and you can watch this newscast every day by clicking Subscribe on our YouTube channel, or listen to us on your favorite podcast app.  Thanks for watching - I'm Mac Watson, for Cowboy State Daily.  

It's time to take a look at what's happening around Wyoming for Friday, March 6th.  I'm Mac Watson. – In a notorious case that made international headlines, Wyoming man Cody Roberts pleaded guilty Thursday to torturing a wolf and apologized publicly, telling the court he sincerely regrets his actions. Cowboy State Daily's Clair McFarland reports from Pinedale.  "He signed a plea agreement last month. Thursday, he gave his guilty plea in court, which was accompanied by a recitation of evidence from the prosecutor, Clayton Melinkovich, and an apology from Roberts himself. And the judge said, 'Well, I'm not sure if I'm going to accept this plea agreement. I want a pre-sentence investigation, which is a book report on your life, your history, an interview, more details about this crime, and then he will set sentencing,' If the judge rejects the plea agreement. Roberts can revert back to a not guilty plea and go to trial if he wishes."  If the judge accepts Roberts' plea agreement, he would spend 18 months on probation. Terms include bans hunting including shed hunting and fishing, plus a $1,000 fine. If he violates probation, Roberts could be sentenced to between 18 months and two years in prison and pay another $4,000 in fines.  Read the full story HERE. – The Wyoming Highway Patrol is being audited after the agency blew past its annual overtime budget by more than $2.4 million last year. Cowboy State Daily's David Madison reports that legislators have really heard from the public responding to a social media campaign offering anecdotal evidence of low staffing and low pay.  "Now the Wyoming Department of Transportation is auditing the Wyoming highway patrol, looking at what went on here. There's a real surge in overtime. They ran way over budget by 226% and some say, look, it's because we're just trying to fill the gaps. This audit and an internal investigation is going to help both sides of this argument. According to the sources I have spoken to, all agree that the staffing level itself, even at full capacity, could be insufficient, given Wyoming's huge size." Patrol Chief Col.Tim Cameron, who took control of the Highway Patrol in 2023, tells Cowboy State Daily the the roots of the problem can be traced to the COVID era, when the agency began using heavy overtime to fill staffing gaps, with spending above the baseline allocation going back to at least 2017. Read the full story HERE. – After the warmest winter in Wyoming's recorded history, the quality of snowpack ranges from "just okay" to "a new record low" to "nonexistent." Cowboy State Daily's Andrew Rossi reports that the state climate office isn't panicking but… "When it comes to talking about the quality of the snow pack in Wyoming, it ranges from Okay, which means that it's at or above the median snow water equivalent for this time of year, or it's absolutely horrible. And that's quoting the Wyoming State climate office. Now it's not a problem yet, because December, January and February are historically the driest months of the year, but this has been the warmest and driest winter in many Wyoming communities in recorded history. So it's possible that we could be facing some problems already that are going to persist as we move into the spring and summer." Snowpack is one of the American West's most important and unpredictable natural resources. The amount of snow retained in the mountains determines the quality of spring runoff, which has a significant impact on river flows, agricultural productivity, and wildfire risk during the summer heat. Read the full story HERE. – Nearly three years after an aggressive traffic stop of a local high school student, a Cody police officer can keep being a cop. Cowboy State Daily's Greg Johnson reports that the state board that oversees certifying law officers ruled on Wednesday Blake Stinson's behavior didn't rise to the level of losing his badge. "The board ruled that while the behavior wasn't the best. It didn't rise to the level of stripping him of his badge. So the officer gets to stay, stay an officer, which he has been since it happened. The incident everybody knows, is because there was a video that was put out about it that shows his interaction with the 17-year-old, traffic stop right out in front of the High School where he argued with the teen. And the video was heavily edited." While the Wyoming Office of Administrative Hearings recommended pulling Stinson's accreditation as a police officer, the Peace Officer Standards and Training Board ultimately rejected that on Wednesday. Instead, the seven-member board decided he'll be cited for a code of conduct violation and be ordered to have additional training. Read the full story HERE. – I'll be back with more news from Cowboy State Daily right after this.   Cowboy State Daily news continues now… – A 28-year-old Cheyenne exotic dancer is being sought on a warrant after sheriff's deputies say she assaulted another dancer at gunpoint over a dispute about a "regular." Cowboy State Daily's Dale Killingbeck reports Breanna Ellzey is also charged with stealing a pistol and assaulting her boyfriend with her vehicle. "Apparently, a woman from that club, who is a quote, unquote dancer, had assaulted another woman over regular that was at the club, she had brought a pistol with her, and before she assaulted the other dancer, she took a pistol from that dancer's boyfriend, took it back with her, assaulted the dancer, then took off in her car. The affidavit states that she takes off, but her boyfriend tried to stop her, stood in front of her car, and then she tried to bump him with her car, and then pushed him out of the way with her car, after repeatedly pushing him with her car. She is still on the loose, according to the Laramie County Sheriff's Office." A warrant has been issued for Ellzey's arrest on charges of aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon, aggravated assault and battery — threatening with a weapon, theft more than $1,000, and domestic battery. Read the full story HERE. – Though widely opposed by Wyoming law enforcement, the Second Amendment Protection Act cleared both chambers of the Legislature. Cowboy State Daily's Mark Heinz reports that SF 101 must pass concurrence with both chambers before heading to Gov. Mark Gordon's desk.  "It might, might not be a done deal at this point, because Gordon, they essentially tried the same bill last year, and Gordon vetoed it. But this is that one that basically the bill lays out that if for whatever reason, a federal entity or federal agency is coming into Wyoming with the express purpose of seizing firearms ammunition or firearms accessories, Wyoming law enforcement may not help them in that endeavor. No law enforcement officers that testified regarding it during the committee hearings were in favor of it." Having previously passed the Senate, Senate File 101, the Second Amendment Protection Act (SAPA), passed the House on third reading by a vote 40 to 21. Read the full story HERE. – The office manager for a Sheridan nonprofit foundation admitted stealing more than $630,000 since 2013, police say. Cowboy State Daily's Greg Johnson reports that Bobbi Jo Neeson, blames a shopping addiction and taking the money was "an easy fix." "This is how it worked. She was in charge of managing and issuing loans and payments to these customers, these people who had these loans through the Foundation. And what she would do is, with an open account, she would add another loan to she would add, like, another $2,500 loan to their account, without the person's knowledge on the books, but when they actually deposited that money, instead of directing it to that person's account, she directed it to one of her personal accounts…until it added up to more than $630,000."  The 56-year old was arrested Tuesday on 13 counts of felony theft for making 276 transfers totaling over $630,000 into multiple personal bank accounts from 2013 through the first part of 2025. Read the full story HERE. – By the stroke of Gov. Mark Gordon's pen Thursday, now all Wyoming police officers and deputies, not just federally-certified state troopers, can pull non-English-proficient commercial truck drivers from the roads. Cowboy State Daily's Clair McFarland reports that this has been in the works a long time. "So this has been brewing since last year. Governor Gordon, on Thursday, signed into law a bill giving any Wyoming cop the ability to pull a non English proficient trucker from the road. So this is a saga, right? The federal government had a long-standing rule saying, if you're going to drive a commercial truck, you've got to be able to converse with the general public, fill out log books, answer official inquiries and read signs in English. You got to be decent at that. And then-President Barack Obama suspended that rule in 2012 saying, 'Stop pulling people from the roads for failing these tests.' And so it basically mooted that whole rule." Gov. Mark Gordon on Thursday signed House Bill 32, which cements into state law an option for local law enforcement to cite non-English-proficient commercial truckers from the state's roadways. Before Thursday, only Wyoming Highway Patrol troopers certified federally for this action could do so. Read the full story HERE. – And that's today's news. Get your free digital subscription to Wyoming's only statewide newspaper by hitting the Daily Newsletter button on Cowboy State Daily Dot Com - and you can watch this newscast every day by clicking Subscribe on our YouTube channel, or listen to us on your favorite podcast app.  Thanks for watching - I'm Mac Watson, for Cowboy State Daily.

It's time to take a look at what's happening around Wyoming for Thursday, March 5th.  I'm Mac Watson. – A committee charged with investigating the so-called CheckGate controversy over handing out checks on the Wyoming House floor said Wednesday it found no bribery or wrongdoing. But Cowboy State Daily's Clair McFarland reports that the incident warrants a rules review, extra signage, and more training for legislators. "There was no bribery or misconduct. According to the special committee's findings, they treated it as a learning opportunity, saying we should develop a lesson on the institution of this house, avoiding the appearance of impropriety. Management Council should consider putting more signage at the entrance to the chamber, and this is a good time for a rules review.  The highlight was actually a kind of a connection moment between Representative Steve Harshman of Casper and Representative Darren McCann, who's involved in the controversy, received a check. All of this kind of blew up. So Darren McCann said, 'I mean, a lot of you get to move on, but forever, when you Google my name, this will come up.' And Representative Steve Harshman, who has had rather an explosive controversy himself that he ended up apologizing for cursing another member said, 'Hey, I've been there. We're in this. You know, there's social media trolls, and we deal with this, but we do heal, and we can't move on.'" Special Investigative Committee Chair Art Washut, from Casper, read aloud to the House on Wednesday from a special report all seven committee members signed. "Taken together…the committee recognizes that the conduct that occurred on the House floor was undesirable and must never occur again." Read the full story HERE. – TerraPower was approved Wednesday for a construction permit to build a first-of-its-kind nuclear power plant near Kemmerer. Cowboy State Daily's Greg Johnson reports this is the first such approval in 10 years. "It's the first nuclear construction permit that the federal government has issued in about 10 years. But it's also for this very new one of a kind type of plant that nobody's ever built before. So in a lot of ways, it's breaking a lot of ground, literally in Kemmerer, and figuratively in the industry. And so today's announcement that that construction permit has been approved means that Terra power can actually start building the actual reactor part of their facility." The National Regulatory Commission announced the approval of the project's construction permit which will allow the Bill Gates-backed company to start work on building the actual reactor at its site about four miles outside Kemmerer. In a statement, the company calls it "a historic day for the United States' nuclear industry." Read the full story HERE. – A head-on crash on Sunday evening has left a Torrington family of three without a father and a Buffalo father of four in the hospital. Cowboy State Daily's Dale Killingbeck reports that authorities say no cause has yet been determined. "Cody Thomas of Torrington was headed to Gillette and Andrew Winter was going to the Wyoming police academy. He'd been there since early January on his way to becoming a Buffalo Police Officer, when their cars collided. Andrew Winter died at the scene, and Cody Thomas was air flighted to Casper's Banner Wyoming Medical Center for treatment. What we know now is that he's out of the hospital and he's recovering at home, and that the family of Andrew winter is just reeling because his three children and his wife now don't have the main provider in the house." Wyoming Highway Patrol spokesman Aaron Brown says a crash report for the incident on Highway 59 between Gillette and Douglas has not yet been completed. The head-on crash was called into the department at 8:42 p.m. and no cause has yet been determined, Brown added. Read the full story HERE. – I'll be back with more news from Cowboy State Daily right after this.   Cowboy State Daily news continues now… – The Wyoming Department of Education has completed a weeklong review of a Rock Springs special education program. Cowboy State Daily's Kate Meadows reports that this comes after complaints of staffing and supervision of special education children as well as responsiveness and transparency concerns. "The Wyoming Department of Education is not saying a whole lot about the special monitoring that happened last week, because they still have a report to do. They said a written report is going to be available within 60 days. Dickie Shaner, who is the Department of Education's Chief of Staff, said that his monitoring team encountered a caring and concerned group of teachers, parents and staff during their visit." School District Superintendent Joseph Libby told Cowboy State Daily in an email that the district's staff and faculty were professional and cooperative throughout the monitoring process. However, he criticized multiple aspects of the process, citing "operational challenges due to repeated, unilateral schedule changes made by WDE monitors without notice to the district."  Read the full story HERE. – Hunters and law enforcement tell Cowboy State Daily that the failure to pass a corner crossing bill really doesn't make any difference. Outdoors Reporter Mark Heinz reports that House Bill 19 died in the Wyoming Senate on Monday. "That bill died in the Senate, but some people are saying that it doesn't make any difference, because that 10th Circuit Court decision came down that, you know, more or less, said it's legal, at least on federal land. And a lot of people are saying, You know what, that's good enough. Folks are going to do it anyway. And I did talk to the executive director of Wyoming association of sheriffs and chiefs of police, and he said looking at a statewide perspective, sheriff's departments just are not getting a lot of complaints about corner crossing trespassing anyway."  If the bill had passed, it would have clarified in Wyoming Statute what many argue that a federal court already established; that crossing corners between parcels of public land adjacent to private property isn't trespassing. Read the full story HERE. – Sen. Troy McKeown tried on Wednesday to resurrect a bill that sought to pull sexually-explicit books from children's sections in libraries. Cowboy State Daily's Clair McFarland reports that the effort failed. "Senator Troy McKeown brought a motion to suspend the rules and resurrect House Bill 10. That's a bill that would implement a statewide book challenge process for sexually explicit books and children's sections of libraries, and if libraries refuse to follow that process, they could be sued. So McKeown brought it to kind of a late session, suspend the rules, resurrect this thing, vote and the Senate rejected that 13 to 18." To resurrect House Bill 10, the Senate would have needed to secure a two-thirds vote to suspend the rules. Read the full story HERE. – The Laramie County Sheriff's Office's three-day "Truck Around and Find Out" sweep of commercial trucks last week saw deputies nab 32 drivers who were in the country illegally, so says Sheriff Brian Kozak. Cowboy State Daily's Greg Johnson reports that support from truck drivers and industry groups are flooding in from across the U.S. "A lot of them are responding with things like, 'Hell, yeah, go! Go for it! Keep it up!' And it's coming from truckers. It's not political, that's not the political side of it. It's the trucker side of it. It's because of safety, not because of Border Patrol or Immigration. And Kozak, he said, he's getting a lot of support from around the country. People have been emailing him. He says the number one question he gets about it is, how they can get one of his hats in his video." The operation, according to Sheriff Kozak, was a joint effort with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Read the full story HERE. – And that's today's news. Get your free digital subscription to Wyoming's only statewide newspaper by hitting the Daily Newsletter button on Cowboy State Daily Dot Com - and you can watch this newscast every day by clicking Subscribe on our YouTube channel, or listen to us on your favorite podcast app.  Thanks for watching - I'm Mac Watson, for Cowboy State Daily.  

It's time to take a look at what's happening around Wyoming for Wednesday, March 4th.  I'm Mac Watson. – State Treasurer Curt Meier said Wyoming needs $6 billion for housing in the next 15 years and that doesn't count infrastructure. Cowboy State Daily's David Madison reports that legislators considered housing legislation this year, but nothing passed.  "Housing is kind of the hot topic of this session, but nothing happened. No bills passed. You might say it was the radioactive topic of this session. It was interesting to hear from Senator Gierau from Jackson, Senator Sherwood from Laramie about how, yes, they were disappointed that nothing really passed. They were disappointed that nothing passed this session to address the housing needs in Wyoming and Gierau took it a step further. He said, 'Do you know why Teton County has such a booming economy? Is because we've built 1,700 affordable units and even with that kind of build out of affordable housing,' he says only 15% of the 100 employees involved in his businesses actually live in Jackson."  After touting his office's role as the single largest supplier of revenue in the state budget, Meier pivoted to what he called the intersection of affordable housing, workforce development and capitalism — telling the Republican faithful that housing and a great economy "go arm-in-arm with, essentially, capitalism." Read the full story HERE. – Wyoming legislators denied amendments Tuesday to allow districts to use money for instruction and teacher pay on other things. Cowboy State Daily's Clair McFarland reports that some say districts need leeway, others that the rule guards against districts "continually saying, 'Not enough, need more.' "Teachers, paraprofessionals, other educators, their compensation and instructional money would all be in kind of its own section of the grant that the districts can pull from. And that's because there's been a controversy in the past of the legislature saying, 'Oh, here's money for you to give all your teachers raises, raises, or to hire more teachers.' And sometimes the money, you know, it can be pulled for other things. And so some of the really small school districts, especially are saying we have to have that flexibility. As the recalibration sits now, it would give teachers raises, and it would make it so that instructional direct to classroom teachers, paraprofessionals, money can't go for other things." The recalibration bill must survive one more reading in the House, an approval of House changes by the Senate, and the governor's desk to become law.  Read the full story HERE. – This winter has certainly been record setting for little-to-no snow and warm temperatures in Wyoming as the East has been getting hammered with blizzards and record cold. Cowboy State Daily's Andrew Rossi reports that meteorologist Don Day says, "We have never seen anything of this magnitude in modern times."  "So, it's really been a tale of two winters. Meteorological winter was over at the beginning of March. And if you want to get an idea of just how extreme and unprecedented this winter was, between December 1 and February 28 Salt Lake City received 2.5 inches of snow over that same period. Augusta, Georgia, in the Deep South, got 3.5 inches. So we're really looking at an extreme divide between the western and eastern United States, where the West was dry and warm. In Wyoming, it was the warmest winter on record, going back 135 years in some places." Cowboy State Daily meteorologist Don Day says this weird winter can be chalked up to a weak La Niña, a prolonged block, and an underwater volcanic eruption that most people never heard about. Read the full story HERE. – Cheyenne is another step closer to landing the PRCA headquarters and museum with $15 million approved in the $9.9 billion biennial budget on Monday. Cowboy State Daily's Renee Jean reports that Sen. Ogden Driskill says the funding "probably had deeper support statewide than anything I've seen." "This is the 15 million that Governor Mark Gordon had asked the legislature to approve. We knew going in this session, I'm going to liken it to a bucking bull. You know, it's an eight second ride, and nobody knows what's going to happen. The Freedom Caucus was in a cutting mood. There was just millions and millions of dollars that they wanted to get rid of in the Wyoming budget. It survived, ultimately, without any more hiccups, no more machinations, it kind of sailed through, basically, and now I guess the ball is in the PRCA court." While the PRCA has voted to "seriously consider" moving to Wyoming, moving forward on the deal is contingent on having a suitable location that will not cost the association anything.  Read the full story HERE. – I'll be back with more news from Cowboy State Daily right after this.   Cowboy State Daily news continues now… – A bill elevating the penalty for dodging a legislative subpoena from a misdemeanor to a felony carrying up to one year in prison passed both chambers this week. Cowboy State Daily's David Madison reports that the bill drew sharp criticism from senators who said they handed themselves "authoritarian power." "It all stems from the Weston County election scandal where the clerk there defied a subpoena. Opponents of the bill said, 'Look, that's one example. This is overkill.' And supporters said, 'No, we got to take this seriously. And it's actually happened before.' In 2022 an Agricultural Committee was trying to question the Attorney General and required her presence, and she refused. And so that was brought up on the Senate floor by Senator Brian Boner, he's experienced firsthand. He was a supporter of the bill, along with most of the senators." HB 83 was indeed a product of the Management Audit Committee. Weston County clerk Becky Hadlock did not appear to answer her subpoena last year and was subsequently charged with failure to appear, a misdemeanor carrying a maximum penalty of $100 and six months in jail. Read the full story HERE. – A push to ban the sale of trapped wildlife fur has become an emotional powder keg in Colorado, with a vote on it expected Wednesday. Outdoors Reporter Mark Heinz reports that opponents say it's an "extremist" move by "vegans and vegetarians," while supporters call it closing a loophole.  "What they've got going on is there's a proposal on the table to ban the sale of wildlife for In other words, if trappers catch Bobcats or Pine Martens or any of those kind of things, in Colorado, they can't turn around and commercially market the first they've always been able to do that. They're talking about shutting that down. And proponents of the idea say they were to kind of help mitigate what they think is a lot of unnecessary slaughter of wild Colorado's wildlife, either through trapping or people hunting those fur bearing animals during trapping season. And of course, opponents to the idea, which includes CPW, the agency itself, is there's no evidence that trapping is any sort of an existential threat to any of Colorado's wildlife." Anticipating a packed house, Colorado Parks and Wildlife moved its meeting to a larger venue, the DoubleTree by Hilton in Westminster, which is a suburb of Denver. CPW is also reminding attendees to leave their weapons at home, per the hotel's policy. Read the full story HERE. – A Riverton man was shot and killed in an apartment just after midnight Tuesday, according to official and witness reports. Cowboy State Daily's Clair McFarland reports the apartment complex's assistant manager was on scene and told Cowboy State Daily the victim had a headshot wound. "Assistant manager, Ernie Brown, described coming down on the scene after midnight, as Tuesday morning began, and seeing an 18-year-old man with a headshot wound in the top of his head. So he described all of this vivid detail to me. Said that the shooter was kind of breaking down, you know, shouting on the ground and the time, but then fled. As of Tuesday afternoon, the shooter was still at large. Witnesses were identifying him as another 18-year- old male." Cowboy State Daily reached out to the deceased man's sister and she confirmed that it was her brother, Charlie Washington who was killed. And the sister said that she wanted the public to know that he was the light of every room he walked into. Read the full story HERE. – Brittany Miller lost "her entire life" when her blue horse trailer was stolen in Billings on Jan. 31. Cowboy State Daily's Andrew Rossi reports that a month later, she's recovered her trailer and most of the $15,000-worth of items stored inside.  "As soon as Brittany Miller realized that her trailer was stolen, she embarked on a really ambitious and determined social media campaign to get the information out there. Here's what it looks like. Here's what was stolen. And that's how bit by bit, most of her gear and the trailer itself turned up. People recognized it. She said she was very sorry for anyone who owned a blue horse trailer, because they probably got pulled over at some point between January 31 and February 7, when she found hers." Miller's trailer was stolen under the cover of darkness while it was parked overnight at the Public Auction Yards. Miller tells Cowboy State Daily that The trailer was found on private property near Billings on Feb. 7. The windows and lock had been destroyed so the thieves could get her gear inside. Read the full story HERE. – And that's today's news. Get your free digital subscription to Wyoming's only statewide newspaper by hitting the Daily Newsletter button on Cowboy State Daily Dot Com - and you can watch this newscast every day by clicking Subscribe on our YouTube channel, or listen to us on your favorite podcast app.  Thanks for watching - I'm Mac Watson, for Cowboy State Daily.

It's time to take a look at what's happening around Wyoming for Tuesday, March 3rd.  I'm Mac Watson. – Despite compromises from all sides, Gov. Gordon, Senate leaders, and House leaders all claimed victory on Monday as the Wyoming Legislature passed a $9.9 billion, two-year budget. Cowboy State Daily's Clair McFarland the budget falls $143 million under the $10.13 billion draft Gov. Mark Gordon recommended. "The governor called it a win for Wyoming. It's the $10 billion budget, 43 million shy of his recommendation. So it's a win for us too. Wyoming public media remains funded. Wyoming public television, and so yeah, he was casting as a win. So, too, was Ogden Driscoll. Senator Ogden Driscoll in the State Senate said, 'Yeah, good job holding the Senate's position,' whereas House Appropriations Chair John Bear was like, 'Yeah, but we still shaved 143 million from the governor's recommendation. So it's a win for us too.' University of Wyoming gets their $40 million block grant from the state with a twist. So, they have till December 1 to chart out a road map showing how they might save $5 million and the final 10 million of that 40 would be released to them after that point. So yeah, 30 million right out the gate, the last 10 million of that 40 you can have once you show us a road map to savings." The state Senate voted 28-3 in favor of a compromise draft between its budget negotiators and those from the House of Representatives, while the House voted 59-1 in favor of that same compromise. Read the full story HERE. – The 70-year-old Fort Diablo in Glenrock was gutted by a fire on Sunday. Cowboy State Daily's Greg Johnson spoke to the owner who says he's not sure if he can rebuild the historic restaurant. "It's a total loss. The fire chief said, even though it didn't burn totally to the ground, everything has smoke damage, there's heat damage, and it's just, it's just gone. It happened during Sunday's breakfast service. They noticed then everybody got out. They don't know what caused it. They're still investigating it. The owner, he suspects it might be one of the old pieces of neon that may have sparked, sparked the fire, but he's not sure." Owner Kevin Tate tells Cowboy State Daily that Fort Diablo, known to locals simply as "The Fort," has been the go-to place for date nights, family dinners, celebrations, and lunches featuring killer French dip and Reuben sandwiches since the 1950s. Read the full story HERE. – A vocal minority in the Wyoming Senate tried and failed Monday to resurrect a housing bill linked to the "CheckGate" scandal. Cowboy State Daily's Clair McFarland reports that Senate President Bo Biteman said the bill was "tainted." "So, prodded by some senators who wanted to resurrect House Bill 141, Senate President Bo Biteman said, 'Sure, I will make a movement to suspend the rules, to resurrect this, but I'm not voting for that, because this bill is tainted.' Reason, he said that is because it's at the heart of now two bribery investigations, one by a House committee, one by Laramie County Sheriff Brian Kozak. Senate President Biteman was like, 'Look, I pushed for this policy in the past,' and he lamented that, because of the controversy, senators who favor that policy have to choose between voting against the bill because of the controversy or but, but betraying their, you know, their policy conscience in the meantime." There was no rule against the act itself at the time, though the House, Senate, and governor have all responded by banning the exchange of campaign contributions in the Capitol. Read the full story HERE. – Rep. Chris Knapp's effort to repeal Wyoming's carbon capture mandate failed on Monday as it was the final day for bills to advance out of committee. Cowboy State Daily's David Madison reports that the bill's death extends the debate over whether carbon capture helps or hurts Wyoming's coal industry. "Chris Knapp, a Republican from Gillette. He says it's a yoke around the coal industry. And given all of the enthusiastic moves that the Trump administration has done, that this legislature has done. Let's get rid of this last yoke. Let's get rid of this requirement on carbon capture. It's been the subject of vigorous debate, but it has moved through the legislature this year, and Knapp at the beginning of the hearing this afternoon, said he hopes this is when it finally will get over the hump. Well, it didn't get over the hump. There was no vote. It simply ran out of time."  House Bill 56, which would have repealed the Reliable and Dispatchable Low-Carbon Energy Standards created by House Bill 200 in 2020, died after the hearing ran out of time on the final day for legislation to advance out of committee. Read the full story HERE. – I'll be back with more news from Cowboy State Daily right after this.   Cowboy State Daily news continues now… – If lawmakers in West Virginia are successful in legalizing fully automatic firearms, Wyoming could follow suit. Cowboy State Daily's Mark Heinz reports that experts say they could see Wyoming and Montana adopting similar laws. "They're working on a bill in their legislature that would basically, it would create a new department. Within their state police department, there'd be a new sub-department through which…the state could issue machine guns or  fully-automatic weapons to civilians. The way they're doing this work around is that the state is issuing you the firearmYou're not going out and buying it yourself." The West Virginia bill was authored by Gun Owners of America. Johnson County resident Mark Jones, a GOA national director, tells Cowboy State Daily that similar legislation is "doable in Wyoming" and might be introduced during the 2027 session.  Read the full story HERE. – Bills making child stalking and grooming stand-alone felony crimes are headed for the governor's desk. Cowboy State Daily's Jen Kocher reports that the legislation came from a high-profile case out of Glenrock. "The first bill HB 8 originates, kind of the impetus for that was a very nefarious stalking case out of Glenrock in which a 41 year old woman, Marcy Smith, stalked two teens. The other bill adds legislation where there was none before. Prior to this bill, there was no legal recourse for law enforcement to intervene during the grooming process. This now puts a mechanism in place where they can actually charge grooming as a crime." Both bills easily passed their final hurdle Friday and are heading to Gov. Mark Gordon's desk to be signed into law. Read the full story HERE. – A 53-year-old Jackson man who drove his SUV about a mile up the Gros Ventre River is scheduled to plead guilty to his fifth DUI in 10 years on Tuesday. Cowboy State Daily's Greg Johnson reports that Christopher David Eickhoff almost hit a fisherman before getting his vehicle stuck in the middle of the river. "This guy's driving his white Chevy Tahoe into the river, driving up the river. Fisherman says he almost ran over him, so he called and reported it. When deputies got there, he was gone. He was up the river about another mile or so, and they hiked up and found him. The report is that he failed a series of sobriety tests, even though he claimed that he wasn't drinking any alcohol." Eickhoff will plead guilty to driving while under the influence in a deal with prosecutors in exchange for the dismissal of a charge of possessing a controlled substance and a recommendation of two to four years in prison, according to a copy of the deal in his court file. Read the full story HERE. – After a Powell McDonald's made international headlines last week for banning a farmer who used a drive-thru with a team of horses, the man said the franchise apologized and reversed its ban. Cowboy State Daily's Andrew Rossi reports that team driver Allen Hatch says, "The support across the state has been staggering." "What started out as just an interesting photo opportunity quickly turned into an international story. Several international publications picked up what Hatch was doing and found it interesting enough to make a story out of it. And a lot of Wyoming businesses have reached out to say, 'We are horse and wagon friendly, so you're encouraged to bring your horses and your wagon down to us.'" Hatch said he was contacted by a representative of Yellowstone McDonald's, and received a "personal, private apology" and was told he and his horses are welcome back. Read the full story HERE. – And that's today's news. Get your free digital subscription to Wyoming's only statewide newspaper by hitting the Daily Newsletter button on Cowboy State Daily Dot Com - and you can watch this newscast every day by clicking Subscribe on our YouTube channel, or listen to us on your favorite podcast app.  Thanks for watching - I'm Mac Watson, for Cowboy State Daily.  

It's time to take a look at what's happening around Wyoming for Monday, March 2nd.  I'm Mac Watson. – Some Wyoming parents are calling for schools to dump LifeTouch photos after its parent company has an alleged link to notorious sex-trafficker Jeffery Epstein. Cowboy State Daily's Mark Heinz reports one parent in Natrona County says the company shouldn't be anywhere near his kid's school. "One of them brought it before the school board. They say, you know, get rid of this company. Let's use local photographers and put the local photographers through a full scale background check before we even let them into the school. It's become a big enough deal that Life Touch took the time to email at least one of our superintendents that I know of. They took the time to send a message directly to him, saying, 'Please don't get caught up in this controversy.'" In a statement emailed to Cowboy State Daily, Wyoming Superintendent of Public Instruction Megan Degenfelder said state school districts should "demand full transparency and ensure airtight privacy safeguards are in place" when it comes to children's school photos. Read the full story HERE. – There was no dealing with the so-called "CheckGate" controversy at Saturday's state GOP Central Committee meeting. Cowboy State Daily's David Madison reports that instead, party leaders blamed the media for its coverage and redirected attention on Gov. Mark Gordon's campaign spending. "One surprise came from Vice Chairman Ferguson. He wanted to talk about all the spending that Governor Gordon had directed. He brought up Gordon's essentially war chest that he had raised and distributed to lawmakers, and suggested, look how big this number is. It's something like $360,000. Why isn't the media looking into that? I spoke directly to the governor's office on Saturday, and they said, 'This is old news. They're trying to redirect attention. There's really nothing here.'"  Despite the poor optics, Vice Chair Bob Ferguson maintained the donations were legal and that the real story was the governor's far larger financial fingerprints on Wyoming elections. Read the full story HERE. – It's been four years since Kenyan nursing student Irene Gakwa vanished from Gillette in February 2022, and her family fears she's dead. Cowboy State Daily's Jen Kocher reports that her ex-boyfriend, now out of prison for stealing her bank card, hasn't been charged but remains a person of interest, police say. "They found out that Nathan Heightman had actually taken Irene's money. He drained her bank account and maxed out her credit card in the amount of about $7,000. Nathan is currently still on parole. He has not been cleared as a person of interest because Irene's Missing Person case is still ongoing, so police are still investigating what happened to Irene, and until they clear that, until they find the answers, Nathan remains a person of interest in that investigation." In the years since her disappearance, authorities say there have been no confirmed sightings of Gakwa nor has she reached out to family or friends or left any digital footprint online. Read the full story HERE. – Teton County has again been named the richest county in the nation with a per capita income of $532,903. Cowboy State Daily's Renee Jean reports that not only is it six times greater than the national average of $73,204 but beats the second-highest county by more than $250,000. "Obviously not everybody makes anywhere close to this 532,000 figure for per capita income, but it does show how much wealth has moved into that portion of Wyoming, and it kind of helps explain, you know, some of the problems that they face there with home values just ratcheting up to the point that regular workforce has trouble finding housing. One time Teton County was not the wealthiest in Wyoming, it was a needy county so needy that they qualified for a federally subsidized loan to try to help them with economic development."  In fact, sixty years ago, Teton County was poor enough to qualify for a federally subsidized loan meant for the nation's neediest communities. That loan started a little place called Jackson Hole ski area. That's better known today as the world-famous Jackson Hole Mountain Resort.  Read the full story HERE. – I'll be back with more news from Cowboy State Daily right after this.   Cowboy State Daily news continues now… – Beside pheasant, duck, and goose, crow hunting is a thing in Wyoming, too. Outdoors Reporter Mark Heinz reports that no license is required, and there's no bag limit. In other words, hunters can just blast away. "There is a season. It runs from November through February, but there's no license required and no bag limit. They're basically considered a nuisance bird in Wyoming and many other states. One of our staff members knew somebody. And so I called him the guy. 'Oh, yeah, I love crow hunting.' He sets out decoys and sits in a blind with a call and calls in crows." Dan Kinneman of Riverton has been hunting crows since he was 14. He tells Cowboy State Daily that crows are harder to hunt than ducks and geese, because they're smarter. Read the full story HERE. – Wyoming's plumber shortage is about to get worse. Already creating delays for homeowners and businesses, Cowboy State Daily's Renee Jean reports that a huge wave of data centers and mega-projects are sweeping into the state, and changing the way we think of what plumbers do. "They've really been fighting against this idea that it's a dark, dirty, dangerous job. So you're not going to see them on TV anytime soon for claiming how dirty and dangerous the work is. This guy told me his workers, they come to work in polo shirts. They have iPads. It's high tech. It's not a dirty, grungy job anymore." To put the plumber shortage into perspective, Mechanical Systems Incorporated's VP and COO Larry Fodor calculated that if every single high school graduate in Laramie County suddenly decided to become plumbers, it would still take a dozen years just to meet the demand created by recently announced data centers. Read the full story HERE. – Sweetheart is a longhorn cow who just gave birth to her 20th calf in 20 years. Cowboy State Daily's Kate Meadows reports that Jeff Ketcham, a rancher near Cheyenne, says not only is Sweetheart reliable but easy to handle. "He loved watching Longhorns at stock shows in Denver and just throughout the West, and finally decided he was going to buy a few. One of the four heifers that Ketchum purchased had a shape right in the middle of its forehead that looked like a heart, and that earned her the name sweetheart. And Ketchum told me that her disposition also matches that name. She's very easy going and just really causes no trouble. So just last week, she gave birth to her 20th calf in 20 years." With diverse coat colors and spectacular horns that can span more than 8 feet from tip to tip, Longhorns are known for their longevity and their ease and reliability of calving. Read the full story HERE. – With a terminal illness tightening its grip, Wyoming musician Michael DeGreve wants to finish his last major work before the music stops. Cowboy State Daily's Zak Sonntag reports that even though Michael was raised in LA, he came out to Cheyenne over 30 years ago and was an icon at Cheyenne's Hitching Post for decades. "His agent called them one day in 1977 out of the blue, and said, Hey, what are your thoughts about Cheyenne? And he goes, I don't know. Where is it went there thinking he was going to stay for two weeks. He says, agent said, 'Yeah, we got you a two week gig. It's a little fun, little stopover. Why not?' He said, 'Yeah, I'll go.' And he fell in love with the place, and he stayed on this open-ended arrangement. And it stayed open for 30 years, and he performed, and this is what's also just stunning. He performed six nights a week, for hours each night." Now 78-years old, you'd never guess by that gentle voice that Michael had dropped LSD with Jimi Hendrix, got drunk with Janis Joplin, or cut a record with Graham Nash.  Read the full story HERE. – And that's today's news. Get your free digital subscription to Wyoming's only statewide newspaper by hitting the Daily Newsletter button on Cowboy State Daily Dot Com - and you can watch this newscast every day by clicking Subscribe on our YouTube channel, or listen to us on your favorite podcast app.  Thanks for watching - I'm Mac Watson, for Cowboy State Daily.

It's time to take a look at what's happening around Wyoming for Friday, February 27th.  I'm Mac Watson. – At the first CheckGate hearing in the Capitol on Thursday, the four members who received checks on the House floor said they never felt it was an act of bribery. Cowboy State Daily's Clair McFarland reports Rebecca Bextel, who delivered the checks, said she just "wafted toward the House floor." "So there were four people who received checks on the floor, Bextel testified. Other testimonies confirmed, and the two people who are standing near Representative Knapp, when he got his check, two of those people were on the investigative panel, and that's Majority Floor Leader, Scott Heiner, and Representative Ruben Tarver. And Tarver addressed this saying, 'Yeah, I saw something get handed to him, but I had no idea what it was.' Nina Weber was also called to testify, and did and said that there was an arrangement for her to escort Bextel onto the floor. Since you need an escort if you're a guest. The women that were in that cluster, testified that they weren't involved in any sort of check passing scheme and Bextel herself said it was kind of spontaneous. The committee descended into a private, administrative segments. They said the next part of our work is administrative. So under the rules, it doesn't have to be public, and everyone was dismissed." There were no rules against giving campaign donations on the floor at the time, though the House, Senate, and governor have enacted rules banning the practice since this controversy, which Capitol regulars deemed "CheckGate", erupted.  Read the full story HERE. – The now-17-year-old who held 14-year-old Bobby Maher down while a friend stabbed him was sentenced Thursday to 30-75 years in prison. Cowboy State Daily's Dale Killingbeck reports that Bobby Maher's father told Cowboy State Daily that justice has been served. "He was charged with conspiracy to commit second degree murder, and what came out in the police affidavit, and today, again in the sentencing hearing was that he was the one that grabbed the 14 year old at the mall in Casper and threw him down on the ground and held him down while his accomplice, Jarreth Plunkett stuck a knife into Bobby Maher two times. And in court today, he apologized to both the Mahar family and to the court." Emotions exploded Thursday into tears and a cry to allow a hug from the supporters of the 17-year-old after being sentenced for his role in the April 7, 2024, stabbing death of a 14-year-old at a local mall. Read the full story HERE. – Under a cloud of public questioning, Gillette Police Chief Chuck Deaton abruptly retired from the department on Thursday. Cowboy State Daily's Greg Johnson reports that Deaton said in a statement that it was time to move on. "I had left a message for the mayor. I called all the city council people, talked to the city administrator, and basically got the same, got the same response for the ones who got back to me or answered phones, and it was personnel matter. Two hours later, the announcement from the city comes out that he is, that he is retired. Apparently, there's a personnel matter involved that we don't know about." Cowboy State Daily reached out to city officials after being contacted by local residents inquiring about rumors regarding Deaton's status as chief. Read the full story HERE. – In speaking against an election audit reform bill Thursday, Sen. Tara Nethercott said the state's county clerks don't support the measure. Cowboy State Daily's David Madison reports that the senator also stated that lawmakers should stop "pandering" to fears manufactured by national rhetoric.  "Senator Tara Nethercott really came at this bill and called it out as basically inflammatory rhetoric. You know, in legislative form, that it was pandering to this phony concern about election fraud. It was onerous, and that it would open up the election process to perhaps an intimidating crowd that it had in hand. It had enhanced record keeping requirements that I think the opponents found were unnecessary, and down that bill went." The legislation ultimately failed 21-9. Read the full story HERE. – I'll be back with more news from Cowboy State Daily right after this.   Cowboy State Daily news continues now… – A corner-crossing bill received pushback from both hunters and ranchers Thursday but the committee still forwarded it to the Senate. Cowboy State Daily's Mark Heinz reports that one hunter said, "let's just go out and corner-cross," then write a new bill to address any problems that come up.   "They tried to put it in the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court refused to hear the case, which many people took to mean that, at least in a de facto sense, corner crossing was legal, so all this bill is attempting to do is clarify it, codify it in Wyoming statute, just to make it crystal clear, black and white…There were actually people from both sides that kind of had misgivings about it. And again, it wasn't that, oh, this idea just stinks. We don't want this. But it's not about the concept, it's about the details of how to apply the concept in real life." House Bill 19 aims to codify into Wyoming Statute what was essentially decided by a federal court decision, that corner crossing is legal. Corner crossing is stepping from one parcel of public land to another at a shared corner without touching the private land that also meets at that point.  Read the full story HERE. – A former U.S. Army Ranger on Thursday formally entered Wyoming's U.S. House race for the seat U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman is vacating to run for Senate. Cowboy State Daily's Dale Killingbeck reports that David Giralt says he will run a "grassroots and bootstraps" campaign. "He means by grassroots and bootstrap that he does not have a ton of money. He doesn't have the money like some of the other candidates have in this race, so he plans to go door-to-door, and he says that's the way he would do it anyway. So he's just going to put his next foot forward and keep marching." David Giralt of Casper, who among other roles has served as a policy advisor for U.S. Sen. Cynthia Lummis, is a first-generation American who has enjoyed opportunities growing up in Casper that never would have been possible for his parents in their native lands. His father was born in Costa Rica and mother, in Cuba. Read the full story HERE. – A Kentucky mother is suing Bandit Industries, claiming a Bandit Intimidator woodchipper without key safety features caused her son's fatal 2024 workplace accident near Alpine, Wyoming. Cowboy State Daily's Clair McFarland reports that Brenda Crnkovich's complaint says her son "frantically" tried to stop the machine but couldn't. "She's gotten herself appointed wrongful death representative, and she's suing for negligence and product liability, which is saying you made a dangerous product and for wrongful death. So, the lawsuit complaint says that William's leg got caught in the machine, and its internal mechanisms with 4000 pounds of force pulled him in and he could not deactivate it."  Brenda Crnkovich filed her wrongful death suit in the U.S. District Court for Wyoming against Michigan-based Bandit Industries, Inc.  Her son William Crnkovich died June 18, 2024, at the age of 43. He was born in Montpelier, Idaho, graduated from Wyoming's Star Valley High School in 1998, and deployed in Iraq as part of his decade of service in the Army National Guard, according to his obituary.  Read the full story HERE. – Powell resident Allen Hatch was banned from McDonald's earlier this week for driving his draft horses and wagon through the drive-thru. Cowboy State Daily's Andrew Rossi reports that although employees were excited to see them, the manager reportedly was not.  "The Powell manager brought up, I think, it's a fairly legitimate point, that if the horses left some horse apples in the drive through, they don't have anybody to clean that up. And that's fair. I would say that's beyond the purview of a typical McDonald's employee. But fortunately, the horses didn't leave any road apples, and they had a particularly eventful time going through the drive thru, and that was actually important training for them, because they're being slowly conditioned to life in Powell and moving along the streets." Hatch tells Cowboy State Daily that even though McDonalds "86'ed" him, he still got his order and went on his way. Read the full story HERE. – And that's today's news. Get your free digital subscription to Wyoming's only statewide newspaper by hitting the Daily Newsletter button on Cowboy State Daily Dot Com - and you can watch this newscast every day by clicking Subscribe on our YouTube channel, or listen to us on your favorite podcast app.  Thanks for watching - I'm Mac Watson, for Cowboy State Daily.  

It's time to take a look at what's happening around Wyoming for Thursday, February 26th.  I'm Mac Watson. – Accused of torturing a wolf two years ago in a case that received global condemnation, Cody Roberts has agreed to plead guilty or no contest to one count of felony animal cruelty. But Cowboy State Daily's Clair McFarland reports that Roberts could still face prison time. "It's 18 months probation, strict requirements like no hunting, no fishing, no shed hunting, even so, like, you will not interact with the wild animals at all. And if he fails probation, then he could spend 18 months to two years in prison and pay another 4000 in fine. So he's supposed to pay 1000 and fines right out of the gate, and could pay another 4000 if he fails probation." The 44-year-old Roberts was indicted last August by a grand jury. Felony animal cruelty carries a penalty of up to two years in prison and up to $5,000 in fines.  Read the full story HERE. – There's been hardly any winter in Wyoming so far this year, but highway fatalities are up nearly double compared to the last two years. Cowboy State Daily's Greg Johnson reports that the Wyoming Highway Patrol says that speed, not weather, has the most impact on highway fatalities. "As a driver, the Highway Patrol explained, you can control how you drive in those conditions, and it's usually speed and driver inattentiveness is usually listed as suspected causes in most of these cases. They do see more and more evidence of people, you know, using devices and their smartphones and stuff while they're driving. Not only is it not a good idea, it's illegal." On Tuesday, a 19-year-old woman from Powell became the 20th person to die on Wyoming roads so far this year. That's well ahead of the 13 fatalities recorded by this time last year, so says the Wyoming Highway Patrol. Read the full story HERE. – Wyoming lawmakers on Wednesday advanced a bill expanding homeschoolers' access to public school activities from grades 6-12 to all K-12 students. Cowboy State Daily's David Madison reports that the move mirrors "Tim Tebow Laws" in other states allowing equal participation for homeschooled athletes. "Senate Education Committee moved a bill, approved a bill, and moved it forward that would allow homeschool kids to have official access to all kinds of activities, K through 12. That was the main discussion this morning was, should it be sixth grade through 12th or K through 12? They landed on an amendment that made it K through 12 and so it's looking like this bill is probably going to pass, and Wyoming is going to have its own Tim Tebow law where home school kids can participate." The Senate Education Committee voted 4-0 to advance House Bill 23, which requires school districts to allow students not enrolled in a district to participate in cocurricular and extracurricular activities. Read the full story HERE. – A Laramie County rancher shot a roughly 2-year-old male wolf near Carpenter, Wyoming, where wolves are almost never seen. Outdoors reporter Mark Heinz reports that this may be the first recorded legal wolf killing in the county. "A rancher, it was a father and son. Ranchers were doing something they do anyway. They're out hunting coyotes on their land. And there happened to be a wolf in the area, and in that part of Wyoming that we're talking Laramie County, extreme, far eastern, southeastern part of Wyoming, you are completely within your legal rights to shoot a wolf on site. You don't need a license or anything like that. The unusual part is where it was. I mean, we mostly associate wolves with Northwestern Wyoming, Yellowstone National Park and kind of that area surrounding it." Royce Breeden tells Cowboy State Daily he shot the wolf about two-and-a-half miles north of the Wyoming-Colorado border. That means it's possible the wolf came from Colorado. However, most of the Colorado wolves have tracking collars. Breeden says the animal he shot didn't have one. Read the full story HERE. – I'll be back with more news from Cowboy State Daily right after this.   Cowboy State Daily news continues now… – The U.S. lost 15,000 small farms in 2025 due to being sold or consolidated. Cowboy State Daily's Andrew Rossi reports that although Wyoming has avoided major losses, Farm Bureau president Todd Fornstrom says, "When you get rid of so many small farms, you're taking rural people out of rural America." "Speaking with representatives from the Wyoming Farm Bureau Federation, they said that the closure and consolidation of small farms across the United States, it's a trend that's been ongoing for decades. Farms have a lot of costs and not a lot of profits. That's not happening as much in Wyoming. It's not that Wyoming's immune to these national trends. It's more that Wyoming's agricultural industry is dominated by livestock predominantly, and crops like wheat and other things that aren't as volatile." According to statistics compiled by the United States Department of Agriculture, Texas lost the most, with 2,000 farms gone before the end of the year.  Read the full story HERE. – One year ago, Troy Lake was in federal prison for "deleting" emissions systems on ailing diesel engines. Cowboy State Daily's Clair McFarland reports that on Tuesday evening, Lake attended President Donald Trump's State of the Union address at the Capitol in Washington, D.C.  "Troy Lake, the diesel mechanic who spent seven months in federal prison at the age of 65 for deleting emission systems on ailing diesel engines, was Senator Cynthia Lummis special guest to the State of the Union. Now this is not too long after Trump pardoned him, even while Trump is scaling back some of these interpretations of federal law that led the Biden administration to prosecute delete mechanics criminally. When I interviewed Troy Lake a few hours before the State of the Union, he said he was mostly sad that he couldn't bring with him all the people who helped him get pardoned." Lake joined U.S. Sen. Cynthia Lummis at the State of the Union address. That's after Lummis championed his cause and Trump pardoned him Nov. 7.  Read the full story HERE. – A Buffalo man who walked into two local hardware stores with a length of galvanized steel pipe and asked if the stores sold "fuses" has been arrested on suspicion of making pipe bombs. Cowboy State Daily's Greg Johnson reports that Tyler G. Roy told police he makes homemade "fireworks" and "smoke bombs." "When they searched his home, they did find a box under his bed that the police report says that they found. They found pipes, you know, cut in the length of what normally would be for a pipe bomb. They found, you know, the end caps. They found gunpowder. And even, kind of a diary, kind of a list of the steps he's taken in creating devices so far." If convicted, Roy could face up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000 for possessing an explosive, and up to a year behind bars and a fine of up to $750 for the reckless endangering charge. Read the full story HERE. – Hawaii native Debbie Pummel, a Casper resident for 33 years, won Wyoming's 2026 BigWYO tourism award. Cowboy State Daily's Renee Jean reports Pummel's was recognized for three decades of leadership in the state's hospitality industry and her dedication to mentoring future tourism professionals. "It's only given to people who have made outstanding contributions, a major impact for Wyoming's tourism and hospitality industry. Debbie Pummel has been here in Wyoming for more than 30 years now, and she's someone who's been working quietly, kind of behind the scenes. She has been a guiding force behind the state's pro Start Program, which, last night, handed out $2 million in scholarships to Wyoming students who are entering the hospitality industry." Pummel accepted the BigWYO award on Tuesday night during the Governor's Hospitality and Tourism Convention. Read the full story HERE. – And that's today's news. Get your free digital subscription to Wyoming's only statewide newspaper by hitting the Daily Newsletter button on Cowboy State Daily Dot Com - and you can watch this newscast every day by clicking Subscribe on our YouTube channel, or listen to us on your favorite podcast app.  Thanks for watching - I'm Mac Watson, for Cowboy State Daily.    

It's time to take a look at what's happening around Wyoming for Wednesday, February 25th.  I'm Mac Watson. – A Thermopolis couple who rent a vacation home in Puerto Vallarta is doing fine after violence rocked the city after the killing of a cartel leader. Cowboy State Daily's Mark Heinz reports that Matthew and Lindy Be Hughes even helped college kids who were stranded.  "They ended up doing a really cool thing is, kind of through the social network there, they found out that somebody, a Canadian citizen, had what she initially thought were, were two, she said, two teenage daughters stuck in an Airbnb there that was nearby. So they risked it. They went ahead and kind of drove to that location with some food. She said, 'We just turned off the headlights and drove to get there, and they got there, and there weren't two college kids – there were seven, all holed up in this Airbnb with, like, almost no food.'"  Despite the violence, the couple says they have no plans to come back to Wyoming anytime soon. Read the full story HERE. – The Wyoming House of Representatives on Monday handed the Senate a two-year budget draft totaling $9.96 billion, while the Senate sent the House a $10.13 billion draft budget of its own. Cowboy State Daily's Clair McFarland reports that even though that's a difference of $170 million, the governor remains upbeat.  "So, Governor Gordon had a roundtable style press conference on Tuesday with reporters.  He was actually cautiously optimistic. Because even though it was fraught and there were these bare-knuckle debates over the function of government and political philosophy, the House did come again within a narrow range of the Senate and the governor's draft budgets, each side adopted 37 amendments, the same exact amount, despite more than 200 being proposed on the House side. And so he was cautiously optimistic, saying, 'Yeah, it got wild and wooly, but we can see the light.'" Now the attention in the Capitol shifts to the two men tasked with appointing 10 negotiators to haggle over the differences: House Speaker Chip Neiman, of Hulett, and Senate President Bo Biteman, of Ranchester.  Read the full story HERE. – After a Senate bill to reform the Wyoming Business Council stalled on Tuesday, the agency continues to remain alive in both chambers. Cowboy State Daily's David Madison reports despite the bill's struggle, the business council itself remains alive in both chambers' draft budgets. "There's concern among some lawmakers that this is a venture capital firm that the state funds and then picks winners and losers out there in the Wyoming economy. And there was more debate on that today about the constitutionality of the Business Council itself. There was an amendment offered by Senator Steinmetz that actually got a lot of support. Her amendment failed by one vote, and it was an amendment to a bill Senate file 125, which is dead. but the debate over the Wyoming Business Council continues." On Feb. 9, only 10 senators voted to dismantle the Business Council outright, losing 21-10. Two weeks later on Tuesday morning, 15 senators voted for Steinmetz's amendment to Senate File 125 — falling just one vote short of passing. Read the full story HERE. – With less than a month left in the winter season, Wyoming is getting some much-needed snow in the mountains. Cowboy State Daily's Andrew Rossi reports that meteorologists believe there are encouraging signs for continued snowfall.  "This has been an unorthodoxly warm, dry winter by all accounts, in Wyoming. But as Cowboy State Daily meteorologist Don Day says repeatedly: December, January and February are the driest months of Wyoming's year, which means that March, April, May, and June are the wettest months of the year. That's when we get most of our precipitation, including snow. But there's no denying, even Don says that the next six to eight weeks are critical, because that's when Wyoming's supposed to get most of its moisture. You can recover from a bad December, January and February, and hopefully we will. You can't recover from a bad March, April, May and June." Many meteorologists across the western states will mark this winter season as one of "the worst" in recorded history. More snow has fallen in eastern cities like New York and Boston in a single week than Salt Lake City and Denver have gotten all season. Read the full story HERE. – I'll be back with more news from Cowboy State Daily right after this.   Cowboy State Daily news continues now… – A Fremont County man accused of helping ambush a man on the Wind River Reservation has been charged with first-degree murder and bound over for trial on Friday. Cowboy State Daily's Greg Johnson reports that according to affidavits, DNA evidence puts Jose A. Gonzalez in the victim's truck. "They found DNA, his DNA, on the steering wheel of the guy's truck. He even told agents that he was riding in the truck with the guy. And then also, there are allegations that the victim was robbed. They found his pants with the pockets out-turned, and this guy's DNA was also found on the pants. That's some concrete evidence putting him in the guy's truck, whether he actually killed him or not. That's the $64,000 question." If convicted of first-degree murder, Gonzalez faces life in prison. Read the full story HERE. – Things got heated at the Cheyenne city council meeting Monday over whether the city would annex a popular farm business. Cowboy State Daily's Kate Meadows reports that when the owner didn't accept being called out of order, the mayor reprimanded him. "So the councilman brought up a question about leashed barn cats that the owners of white fresh farms had brought to the council. And David Kniseley, who's one of the owners, took issue with that, saying that this council member seems to be suggesting that their questions were ridiculous, and he did, Kniseley, demanded an apology from this council member. Mayor Patrick Collins, called this demand for an apology out of order and unreasonable, and asked Kniseley to be done. Kniseley said he will not accept being called out of order, and that's when Mayor Collins said, basically, 'I don't care. You don't have to accept it, but please sit down.'" The council ultimately voted to pass this ordinance on the second reading. They will take up a third reading in two weeks, on March 9. Read the full story HERE. – It's commonly argued that wolves are worth millions to the economies of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho, because they're such tourist magnets. Outdoors Reporter Mark Heinz reports that Others, like outdoorsman Trinity Vandenacre, say wolves ultimately drain more from the states' economies than they bring in. "Wolf advocates will frequently cite that wolves bring in millions and millions of dollars through tourism. I talked to a guy. He's up in Montana. He kind of questions that. He says, do they really measure it against the loss they might cause, like the cattle industry or big game hunting, which is also in in, you know, not just in Montana, but Wyoming and Idaho, all the western states make a lot of money off of not only resident hunters, but people who will come from out of state and pay some pretty big bucks for elk hunting tax." Trinity tells Cowboy State Daily that the biggest hidden costs of wolves are the legal fees that states rack up, fighting lawsuits filed by animal welfare groups, and others wanting to maintain or expand Endangered Species Act protection for wolves and grizzly bears. Read the full story HERE. – Wyoming's new tourism chief Dominic Bravo on Monday said the very idea that tourism is a "soft industry" doesn't work for him. Cowboy State Daily's Renee Jean reports that Bravo wants to innovate, not do the same old things to attract people to the Cowboy State. "One of the things he says you always fight with is it's a fight for relevancy. though we have technologies changing at light speed. It's the AI elephant in the room. People are using this to plan their vacations, to plan their road trip itineraries. So I think we're going to see him take some risks and do some things that maybe we haven't seen before." Bravo says he's acutely aware that the Wyoming Office of Tourism is already performing at gold medal standards, thanks to his predecessor, Diane Shober, whom he described as a "legacy director." Read the full story HERE. – And that's today's news. Get your free digital subscription to Wyoming's only statewide newspaper by hitting the Daily Newsletter button on Cowboy State Daily Dot Com - and you can watch this newscast every day by clicking Subscribe on our YouTube channel, or listen to us on your favorite podcast app.  Thanks for watching - I'm Mac Watson, for Cowboy State Daily.  

It's time to take a look at what's happening around Wyoming for Tuesday, February 24rd.  I'm Mac Watson. – Wyoming troopers and their families say low pay, lost overtime, and short staffing are driving burnout and resignations. Cowboy State Daily's David Madison reports that the Wyoming Highway Patrol Association's first-ever social media blitz — run by a 25-year veteran who doesn't use Facebook — has gone viral. "There's one titled, 'Why I want my husband to quit the Highway Patrol,' because they've gotten down to the point where they can't pay overtime, and so patrolmen are called out in the middle of the night. They don't earn overtime, and so they are paid in Flex Time, which gives them more time off, which only aggravates the staffing shortages. And so there's a lot of issues facing the Highway Patrol."  Currently, the Wyoming Highway Patrol has experienced a 56% attrition rate among sworn officers over the past five years, with 178 troopers voluntarily resigning. Read the full story HERE. – The University of Wyoming on Monday said it disagrees with a House budget tweak that lawmakers framed as a negotiation. Cowboy State Daily's Clair McFarland reports that UW is adamant: No cuts are appropriate, period. "On Saturday, what happened was the House said, 'Okay, we'll only cut you 20 million, but then there's another 20 million that we will also cut if you don't find $5 million in savings.' And there was all sorts of debate on the House floor, like this is the result of negotiations. 'We had a really good meeting. Haven't you heard of 'Art of the Deal?' The University came out loud and clear Monday and said, 'We are not okay with any cuts, including this one.' So what happens next is the Senate, which has funded the university fully proposed to fund the university fully, will enter negotiations with the house which has proposed the cut." The Wyoming legislative Joint Appropriations Committee's majority in January advanced a proposed $40 million cut, or about 10%, to the state's portion of UW's two-year operating budget.  Read the full story HERE. – Breaking up a fight between two women at a Laramie bar led police to discover the 2-year-old child of one had been left home alone for hours. Cowboy State Daily's Greg Johnson reports that court documents say police found the child in a dark, 90-degree room wearing a soiled diaper. "So, in the bar fight revealed a potentially much worse situation that could be going on. They go to the place, and what they found was pretty disturbing. A two year old in the home by itself, shut in a room, and it was like 90 degrees in the room, there's a space heater turned up the max in there, which could be potentially dangerous as a fire hazard. She was charged with child endangerment, and she also got two charges of interference with the police officer, one for not being cooperative at the bar and another, when they arrested her and took her to jail, she backhanded one of the deputies at intake, apparently pretty hard. And so that actually was a felony." According to court documents, 25-year-old Kayla Marie Clark is still in jail in Laramie County on an $80,000 bond. Read the full story HERE. – The Wyoming House passed a bill Monday to kill Jackson and Teton County affordable housing policies. Cowboy State Daily's Clair McFarland reports it's the bill pushed by conservative activist Rebecca Bextel, who's at the center of legislative probes for handing out checks on the House floor. "That is House Bill 141, and what it does is it curbs housing mitigation, affordable housing mitigation policies like those that are just everywhere in Jackson and Teton County, and it, you know, it's been controversial in the past because Rebecca back still championed it. And you know, was witness handing out checks on the House floor, which garnered concerns about optics. But on Monday, when they advanced the bill to the Senate side, the house didn't really discuss that at all, but really focused on the merits of the bill's economic policy and how this fits together in an ultra wealthy region. It pretty easily, it cleared the House, and then it now heads to the Senate for consideration." At the time there was no rule against handing out campaign donations in the Capitol. The House, Senate and governor have since adopted rules banning the practice. The House has since launched an internal investigation for possible bribery or misconduct. Read the full story HERE. – I'll be back with more news from Cowboy State Daily right after this.   Cowboy State Daily news continues now… – Sec. Chuck Gray told a Senate committee that a 15-month pursuit of a county clerk proved the system was broken. Cowboy State Daily's David Madison reports that Sen. Cale Case said the bill was feeding a political dispute between the state's top officials and called the animosity "very disappointing." "It was House Bill 86. It went down in committee today…It would grant the Secretary of State's office more authority in filing complaints and moving against clerks at the county level who do things like the Weston county clerk is accused of doing. Opponents of the bill said, 'Hey, we don't need to give the Secretary of State more control to meddle with a locally elected official.' And from the point of view of the chairman of the committee today, it was really more about animus and the political rivalry that has developed between Governor Gordon and Secretary Gray that thought that, look, current state law fixed the problem."  The bill ultimately failed by one vote 2-3. Read the full story HERE. – Born with cancer, toddler Dorothy Pontillo suffered months of pain before an MRI found a massive tumor. Cowboy State Daily's Jackie Dorothy reports that her parents' persistence to get answers helped Dorothy survive.  "One of the lessons that you learned walking away from this story is that even the Denver specialists need a little nudge. And this is what happened in the case of Dorothy. She was born with cancer, but no one knew what was going on until her mother kept asking questions and asking for answers. When they finally got the answer, the tumor itself had grown into a grapefruit size mass, and this mass was cancerous. Fortunately for Dorothy, surgery, chemo, it has taken out the cancer. She's cancer free and enjoying the life of a toddler." Dorothy took her first steps in the midst of chemotherapy just after she turned a year old. Her dad, Riley Pontillo, would get the little push walker from the hospital toy room and encourage her every day to walk.  Read the full story HERE. – Uinta County rancher Jack Sims says there are new signs of life in Evanston thanks to the horse racing industry. Cowboy State Daily's Renee Jean reports that Sims says "There's over 300 brood mares in the Wyoming breeding program around Evanston." "So these are high dollar horses that we're talking about here.This is growing in that community so much. This is going to continue to grow in Evanston that is having ripple effects in other areas. New restaurants are opening, the feed store that are all busier than usual. People who sell hay, they have more customers now. It's kind of injecting some new life in the agricultural sector there in Evanston Wyoming." Wyoming Horse Racing owner Eugene Joyce tells Cowboy State Daily that economic studies project that the horseracing industry could top over $300 million dollars for 2026. Read the full story HERE. – An Idaho man allegedly shot a deer on an elementary school lawn after dark, left for about two hours, and then came back and loaded the deer's carcass into his pickup. Cowboy State Daily's Mark Heinz reports a wildlife officer described it as "a first for me." "They knew who the suspect was almost immediately, but it took a long time to put the case together. They actually had to do like the CSI DNA testing the guy ended up taking, going to a residence in Washington State and staying there and taking the carcass with him. So they went and they got DNA, blood samples of deer blood there in Washington State, gathered some at the scene where the deer had been killed to cross check the two and that's how they proved it was the same deer." Lars Nelson of Peck, Idaho, was sentenced on Feb. 18 on charges stemming from killing a white-tailed deer buck on the front lawn of the Orofino Elementary School in Orofino, a small town in northwest Idaho. According to Idaho Game and Fish, Nelson was sentenced to a $1,000 fine ($500 suspended). Read the full story HERE. – And that's today's news. Get your free digital subscription to Wyoming's only statewide newspaper by hitting the Daily Newsletter button on Cowboy State Daily Dot Com - and you can watch this newscast every day by clicking Subscribe on our YouTube channel, or listen to us on your favorite podcast app.  Thanks for watching - I'm Mac Watson, for Cowboy State Daily.

It's time to take a look at what's happening around Wyoming for Monday, February 23rd.  I'm Mac Watson. – The 2026 Budget Session has been interesting, to say the least. Cowboy State Daily's Clair McFarland reports on what has happened and what can be expected from lawmakers this week in Cheyenne. "We are coming up on Tuesday, crossover day, the day when bills that started in, let's say the House or the Senate should be crossing over. Should have crossed over into the other Chamber. For the other Chamber to that change, approve, reject them, and the budget negotiations are to start next week. Now recall last week the Senate decided we want the governor's recommendation for a starting point, so we're going to just wholesale revert back to the governor's recommendation and work our tweaks in from there. The House said, we do not want the governor's recommendation for the starting point. We want the much slimmer, much altered package out of the joint appropriations committee to be the starting point. And so all eyes are now on House Speaker Chip Neiman and Senate president Bo Biteman to see who they will appoint, what force of negotiator or ideologue, or statesman are they going to send into this fray to have so much power over Wyoming spending policy for the next two years." The 2026 Wyoming Budget Session is scheduled to wrap up and adjourn on Wednesday, March 11th. – Cloud 9 was Cheyenne's off-duty political clubhouse where former Gov. Ed Herschler, the only Wyoming governor to serve three terms, drank, smoked and mingled with everyone from hunters to Supreme Court justices. Cowboy State Daily's Zak Sonntag reports that its boozy camaraderie and unbuttoned attitude evoke a looser golden age of Wyoming politics. "What politicians love the most about this place is it was the place where they didn't have to be politicians. They could undo their top buttons, they could be themselves, tell stories cut loose a little bit, and sometimes they cut a little bit too loose. And an infamous story is when Gov Ed had so much he passed out right on the table. Capitol Police had to come and escort him out." The Cloud 9 bar was in the old Cheyenne Regional airport, which was close to the capital. This bar was just perched right over the tarmac, known locally as the 'Jetsons Memorial Airport' because of its unique parabolic architecture.  Read the full story HERE. – As 41 states open their doors to NIL deals for high school athletes, Wyoming lawmakers backed by Sen. Gary Crum, a former UW lineman, are moving against it. But Cowboy State Daily's David Madison reports that money is already available for teen sports stars — right next door in Colorado. "Gary Crum, a former University of Wyoming football star. he doesn't want that in high school sports. There's one pointed question I put to Gary Crum, and I said, 'Well, it could this set up a situation where a star athlete living in Cheyenne or Laramie suddenly moves across the border to Colorado, because they're able to cash in,' and he basically said, 'so be it. You know that I'm not saying you can't go pro as a high schooler, I'm just saying Wyoming should protect its amateurism at the high school level.'" Senator Crum introduced Senate File 53, titled "Keeping Amateurism in High School Athletics." The bill would write amateurism requirements into state statute for any student competing in a sport or activity sanctioned by the WHSAA. Read the full story HERE. – Cowboy State Daily is the only news organization that continues to follow the D.B. Cooper case. In the fourth installment of our series, Jen Kocher reports that a parachute found on D.B. Cooper suspect Richard McCoy's family property was seized and tested by the FBI, then quietly returned in December, 2025, without explanation. Kocher says that closed lips from the FBI is fueling new theories about the notorious skyjacking 53 years ago. "The parachute was found by a pilot and YouTuber named Dan Greider, who has been investigating this case for more than 20 years. He found the parachute on the family property belonging to Richard McCoy's mother in Cove City, North Carolina. So the FBI analyzed it for two years, and they told Richard they did soil test, DNA, as well as sending it out to an expert. They sent the parachute back in December 2025 and they told Richard McCoy, his son, that they're not ruling it out and they're not ruling it in. They couldn't conclusively tie it to the case, but they weren't ruling it out." Cooper's actual identity was never discovered, but initial reporting dubbed him "D.B. Cooper," erroneously based on a suspect who was quickly cleared."  When Cowboy State Daily reached out and asked the FBI Seattle office for a comment, they referred to their 2016 statement, where they essentially closed the case pending any new evidence, adding they said they had nothing more to add.  Read the full story HERE. – I'll be back with more news from Cowboy State Daily right after this.   Cowboy State Daily news continues now… – A Casper man traded his very successful tech career in Austin for a far different mission — helping women who were rescued from the sex trade in Uganda. Cowboy State Daily's Dale Killingbeck reports that Lucas Rowley and his wife are teaching these women to be self-sufficient by tying high-end fishing flies and selling them in the United States. "They've taught these abuses, women that were sexually abused,given them jobs, taught them how to tie flies, and now, through a website, they're marketing them to America from Uganda. So they're making them in Uganda, and they're marketing them to the Rocky Mountain region in the States. The ministry is also working with these women, you know, to teach them how to tie flies, but also to have financial understanding and to be able to, you know, live their own lives and develop skills that will help them in the future."  Rowley tells Cowboy State Daily that he is trying to figure out ways to "empower the Ugandans" in things such as managing suppliers, doing customs paperwork, shipping, and the financial side of the operation, so they'll be able to be more self-sustaining. The flies are sold online at rescueriver.com. Read the full story HERE. – The same milk sold in both Wyoming and Montana are sometimes tagged with different "sell by" and "best buy" dates, with Wyoming's being a week longer. Cowboy State Daily's Renee Jean reports that the Wyoming Department of Agriculture says it's all about the bureaucracy of milk. "There are a lot of people who are saying that it was a protectionist move. It made it more difficult for other states to sell their milk. In Montana, because you had a you know, you gotta sell it within 12 Days of pasteurization. That's pretty difficult to do if you're not in Montana. The dairy industry says, you know, they want to make sure that when customers get their milk, it's the freshest tasting. It does ensure that you are getting a very fresh glass of milk with no chance of spoilage." Department of Agriculture spokesman Derek Grant tells Cowboy State Daily that Montana's law requires all Grade A pasteurized milk to be sold within 12 days of its pasteurization. Whereas, Wyoming uses the typical 14- to 21-day industry standard.  Read the full story HERE. – It took over a year for celebrated Wyoming bronze artist Chris Navarro to create the 15-foot sculpture of Steamboat located on the University of Wyoming campus. Cowboy State Daily's Andrew Rossi reports that Narvarro says the iconic statue is more than just a symbol of UW. It's a symbol of Wyoming. "You really have to admire the artistry that went into this particular statue, because steamboat has existed as a silhouette…But it's only existed as a silhouette in two dimensions for so long, Chris Navarro had to take that silhouette and embody it in a larger than life, 3-D bronze sculpture as a it's a permanent placement of Steamboat where it's most iconic and where it's most appreciated. But to think that now that this silhouette that everybody recognized has been actualized in three dimensions in a spot where it can be most appreciated." "A Deep Seat and a Long Rein" is a 15-and-a-half-foot-tall monument that stands in the new roundabout at Ivinson Avenue and 15th Street on the University of Wyoming campus in Laramie.  Read the full story HERE. – Rick Edney is training mules to pull several wagons to recreate the freight train that hauled goods into Thermopolis in the late 1800s. Cowboy State Daily's Jackie Dorothy reports that Rick says it's time consuming but is exciting to reenact the feats of Henry "16-Mule Team" Johnson for 'Trailblazer Days.' "So this reenactment is to recreate 16-Mule Johnson. Henry Johnson was an immigrant who had 16 mules that he attached to his wagon train and would bring it through Thermopolis. The story goes that he wanted to be able to turn those 16 mules around easily, and so he talked to the store owner and town founder, Martin McGrath, who agreed that the streets needed to be wide enough to accommodate those 16 mules." To keep his team in order, Edney will use an old-fashioned jerk line and has been spending the last few months retraining his mules for this feat. Read the full story HERE. – And that's today's news. Get your free digital subscription to Wyoming's only statewide newspaper by hitting the Daily Newsletter button on Cowboy State Daily Dot Com - and you can watch this newscast every day by clicking Subscribe on our YouTube channel, or listen to us on your favorite podcast app.  Thanks for watching - I'm Mac Watson, for Cowboy State Daily.