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[{"type":"text","text":"Dog teaches a baby how to crawl..."}]

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Cowboy State Daily is Wyoming’s largest newspaper with Wyoming’s most experienced journalists. 

<title>Daily Smile: Friday, January 5, 2024 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Dog teaches a baby how to crawl...

Daily Smile: Friday, January 5, 2024

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's general assignment reporter, Clair McFarland.

Clair McFarland

Politics

Wyoming laws governing which state and local Republican Party officials can vote for  leaders are constitutional, and the state Republican Party’s rights to dictate its own membership don’t trump those laws, a judge ruled Friday. 

Uinta County District Court Judge James Kaste’s Friday ruling gives a concrete, though appealable, answer to the state GOP’s yearslong agenda to shrug off the restrictions Wyoming law places on it and behave as a private group.

The dispute in this case started in March of 2025 when Joe Martinez and Phillip Scheel won election to the seats of Hot Springs County Republican Party Chair and state committeeman, respectively. 

But the state party’s Dispute Resolution Committee, after a controversial mediation process, then arbitration process, ruled that two “provisional” ballots of former Vice-Chair Brayden Harvey and former Secretary Mary Ann Jager should have counted in that election.

The ballots tipped the scale and made Harvey chair, and Russell Lewis state committeeman instead. 

But Harvey and Jager weren’t precinct committee people, meaning, they weren’t elected to the county central committee by their Republican neighbors as of the most recent primary election. 

State law says only people elected in that fashion can vote for the county party leaders. 

The Wyoming and Hot Springs County GOP bylaws, conversely, say the officers can vote even if they’re not precinct committee people. 

The state party asserted that because the First Amendment confers to private groups a right to dictate their own membership, the party’s bylaw should defeat state law. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Kaste disagreed. "}]

The state GOP’s most-referenced case in this matter, Eu v. San Francisco County Democratic Party Central Committee doesn’t fit this case, the judge ruled. 

That case, which the U.S. Supreme Court decided in 1989, conferred broad associational rights on political parties. 

But it stems from a situation in which the state of California laid much heavier restrictions on the Democratic Party, Kaste noted. 

He ruled that Harvey and Jager’s provisional ballots don’t count. 

“Martinez and Scheel won the election and should have been installed in those offices,” wrote Kaste. “The Dispute Resolution Committee made a manifest mistake of law in concluding otherwise.”

Kaste ordered that Martinez and Scheel should be installed “immediately” into the offices of Hot Springs County Republican Party Chair and state committeeman, and the case dismissed. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Case Autopsy"}]

Former state Rep. Clark Stith, who’s now a judge, filed this case last April on the Martinez group’s behalf. 

Kate Mead, the mother of U.S. Senate candidate Sam Mead, took it over when Stith became a judge earlier this year. 

“I think the judge made the right decision,” said Kate Mead in a Saturday phone interview. “He was super well-prepared, had gone through all the briefs with a fine-toothed comb, had researched the heck out of it.” 

Mead noted that the party can still appeal, and that this time, it has raised its constitutional concerns and the attorney general has had a chance to defend those. 

So the Wyoming Supreme Court can address those concerns. 

The party can also file separate action asking a judge to declare that it’s above the state laws that restrict it. 

“It was obvious that the Republican Party had screwed up by suggesting to the Hot Springs people that my clients weren’t elected, when they were validly elected,” said Mead. 

This case cost people a lot of time, she said, adding, “I’m always kind of offended by that.” 

Mead said that she had to read a lot of documents to enter this case in its final phase, but Stith had done 90% of the work - and the attorney general also defended the state law well. 

Wyoming GOP Chair Bryan Miller did not immediately return a Saturday voicemail request for comment. 

He had announced to a bylaws committee at the party’s April convention that the party is planning to challenge state laws in federal court. 

Mead emphasized in her interview that this case only addressed the state laws that came to bear on this conflict. The party can’t address some of its other angst with state laws, such as a ban on financially backing one Republican candidate over another before the primary election, through an appeal in this case should it choose to file one. 

“I was very pleased with the amount of research (Kaste) put into this matter,” said Martinez in a Saturday phone interview. “I certainly appreciate his diligence in trying to ensure that he’s making the best decision possible based on all the information.” 

Martinez said he looks forward to filling the county party role to which he won election, and performing party work at the state level as well. 

“And just moving forward,” he added. “I think that’s the big thing, is it’s time to move forward and not look back.” 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"A Little More About That Spring"}]

While the dispute over who won the chair and state committeeman position for Hot Springs County was still ongoing last spring, the state party had its Dispute Resolution Committee convene to address the question, April 8, 2025. 

Vince Vanata, committee chairman, presided over the meeting. 

The attorney representing Martinez, Scheel, Meri Ann Dorman and Clay van Antwerp at that meeting was excluded from the call because he wasn’t a member of the state central committee. 

Van Antwerp was excluded too because he didn’t sign a confidentiality agreement within the timeframe the committee required. 

After about two hours, says Kaste’s order, Vanata declared the committee’s mediation efforts unsuccessful and said the committee would switch to arbitration. 

Martinez, Scheel, and Dorman were “terminated from the call” and excluded from that process, the judge wrote. 

The Dispute Resolution Committee issued its arbitration order the next day, proclaiming the provisional ballots valid. 

Meaning, the committee chose to go by the party bylaws rather than state law. 

The Wyoming Supreme Court in 2023 had upheld that same state law over that bylaw. But the high court didn’t address the political group’s associational rights debate at that time because no one had invited the state Attorney General, then Bridget Hill, into the case to defend the state law

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Wyoming Law"}]

Wyoming election law imposes numerous tasks and restrictions on major parties - as well as benefits, like letting them help fill vacancies when their incumbent leaves an elected office. 

County central committees consist of men and women, in this case registered Republicans, elected at the biennial primary election by their neighbors, or precincts. 

The law tells the county central committee to elect its officers and state leadership delegates, called state committeeman and state committeewoman, during odd-numbered years. 

The state central committee in turn calls conventions in even-numbered years. 

County central committees help fill vacancies in county elected offices, and the state central committee or local portions of it in state-level elected offices. 

The state party convention also nominates presidential candidates, elects the party’s national committeeman and committeewoman, and adopts the party platform, among other duties.  

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"The Judge’s Analysis"}]

Kaste found that the election code doesn’t dictate the party’s membership directly. 

Freedom of association is a right, and does give political parties some protection from state infringement, noted Kaste, from a 1986 case called Tashjian v. Republican Party of Connecticut. 

But courts also use a balancing test called the Anderson-Burdick test when parties assert this right, and they consider how burdensome the state’s laws are on that right. 

If the burden is severe, the court judges the state’s infringement under a rigorous constitutional standard that most laws do not survive, called strict scrutiny.

But if the state is only imposing a “lesser burden” on the party, then the state’s important regulatory interests are usually enough to justify “reasonable, nondiscriminatory restrictions,” Kaste noted from an earlier case. 

State party leaders sued in this case claimed Wyoming violated the party’s rights. 

“Defendants are incorrect,” wrote Kaste.

The state laws impose minimal burdens on the party’s associational rights, and the state’s important regulatory interests justify them “amply,” said the judge. 

He added that the party relied on oblique cases while ignoring cases “that are more squarely on point.”

Wyoming law lays some tasks and formational requirements on the party, but the party’s role in filling vacancies is a privilege in which the state has an imnportant interest, he added. 

Kaste rebutted a point the Wyoming Republican Party has made not just in this case, but repeatedly in public - especially while rewriting its bylaws in April to conflict with state law on purpose. 

“Defendants assert that this case is more like Eu,” Kaste wrote, referencing the 1989 case. “The Court disagrees.” 

In that case, the California election code dictated the party’s composition, terms, and leaders’ residence, among other restrictions. 

The laws unduly burdened the party’s rights. 

They’re not comparable to Wyoming’s major party laws, the judge wrote. He added:

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"“Eu is inapplicable.”"}]

The Wyoming laws challenged in this case impose only a minimal burden on the party, says Kaste’s order. 

The state has a legitimate interest in how office vacancies are filled, he wrote. 

“It would be a real problem if a vacancy occurred in a public office and the State had no one to call,” Kaste said. He said the biennial election also ensures orderly election tasks, like nominating presidential electors before general elections. 

Gop courthouse 5 30 26

<title>Judge Orders Wyoming Republican Party To Follow State Law | Cowboy State Daily</title>

In a setback to the Wyoming Republican Party’s long mission to gain independence from state law, a Uinta County judge Friday upheld multiple Wyoming election laws, dismissing the state Party’s claims that its rights trump them.

Judge Orders Wyoming Republican Party To Follow State Law

Julie Mankin

Wyoming Life

Sports

Halle Crozier isn’t able to throw a saddle on her horse, or even climb on without help. She also doesn’t have the strength to ride faster than a lope.

But the cheers for her will be deafening from fans lining the fence at this coming week’s Wyoming High School State Finals Rodeo watching the sophomore compete.

They understand her performance is not about points or paychecks. Every run is a victory for a girl healing her own heart despite a decade of physical impairment.

Like most Wyoming kids raised with ranching or rodeo roots, Halle was on horseback as a toddler.

Even in preschool she had big dreams. She wanted to compete at the National Finals Rodeo and win gold buckles someday.

“I remember my first rodeo, and I was on top of the world in my own little head,” recalled Halle. “Eventually one day, it was all gone.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Vaccines Destroyed Her Body"}]

Vaccines required by a preschool when Crozier was 5 years old set off an adverse reaction that damaged her nerves.

That was in 2015, when her parents J.R. and Jonee (Phillips) Crozier, along with her older brother Heston, lived in Casper.

[{"type":"text","text":"Within a month, the little girl was no longer talking or eating."}]

“She was gray in color,” said Jonee. “She lost half her body weight and just basically stopped living.”

They immediately took her to Children’s Hospital Colorado in Denver, where doctors were stumped by her condition.

On the assumption Halle had a strange virus or bacterial infection, she was put on antibiotics. When that didn’t work, they tried stronger prescriptions.

She was ultimately on high-powered antibiotics for about six months with no improvement.

Within a few months, Halle was also experiencing muscle loss and weakness.

Next, the family tried a children’s hospital in Salt Lake City, where they were told Halle had muscular dystrophy.

“I said, ‘muscular dystrophy progresses slowly; it doesn’t show up all at once!’” recalled Jonee. “It didn’t make sense.”

They went to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, where more doctors said she had muscular dystrophy and would likely end up in a wheelchair by the time she was 12.

“I just knew that wasn’t it,” said Jonee. “She didn’t check any particular box, so they’d push us out the door, not knowing how to help us.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Halle’s Choice"}]

By 2016, the Croziers were looking outside Western medicine for answers when a Utah newspaper published a story about a bedridden boy with similar symptoms who’d been able to go back to school after treatment by a wholistic doctor in Mexico.

[{"type":"text","text":"The Croziers booked a trip to Tijuana."}]

“Doctors there said the vaccines had damaged her nerve endings, which could no longer communicate with her muscles,” Jonee said. “And the antibiotics had totally wrecked her guts.”

They visited every six weeks, ultimately spending about two years detoxifying her little body.

Halle’s health improved tremendously, Jonee said. But nerve damage heals very, very slowly.

Traditional medical doctors had told the family it couldn’t be treated or healed.

[{"type":"text","text":"“I wasn’t going to settle for that,” said Jonee."}]

With detoxification, replenishment and a clean diet, Halle had improved enough by about age 8 that her ability to show emotion came back.

[{"type":"text","text":"That’s when the frustration hit, she said."}]

“It kind of felt like no way out,” Halle told Cowboy State Daily. “My family helped me a lot with that by giving me a choice — I could choose to not get better, or choose to be positive and work hard to get better.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"‘She Is Not A Victim’"}]

The family always retained hope. Jonee is convinced that healing is 90% mindset, believing it will happen.

“I told her teachers when she was young that she’s not a victim,” said Jonee. “I told them they could modify things to help her, but that she’s not ever a victim.”

When she began high school, with her slow movements and poor balance, Halle often tripped and fell in the hallways.

The highly intelligent teen is now homeschooled and taking college-credit classes as a sophomore.

She stayed on track academically despite trips far and wide to receive intravenous nutrient replenishment and myriad therapies, including brain stimulation and electronic muscle stimulation.

Over the years, Halle has also spent two months at a time annually in Denver for daily hyperbaric oxygen treatments.

And last year, they saw tremendous results from umbilical stem cell treatments.

“She slowly gained back so much of what she lost,” said Jonee. “She had been like a little zombie.

“She didn’t communicate or eat. She’s 100% back in that regard. She’s much stronger than when she was 13. It’s amazing.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Cowgirling Up"}]

While “any vaccine can cause side effects,” according to U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, serious injury is rare.

Still, an autoimmune response called Guillain-Barré syndrome has been reported post-vaccine whereby the immune system mistakenly attacks nerve fibers, causing muscle weakness that can lead to paralysis.

The Croziers, when asked about the safety of vaccinations, respond with a ranching analogy.

“Every spring, a rancher can vaccinate 1,000 calves, and may have one calf die and another get very sick and never recover,” said Jonee. “I think it’s the same with humans.”

Instead of wallowing in why it happened or what if it hadn’t, the family (which moved to Buffalo) decided to put their energy into getting Halle better.

And for Halle, throughout all the weekslong cross-country trips to doctors and time-consuming therapies, there were horses.

“She continued to ride,” said Jonee. “But after 10 minutes, she’d be too exhausted to stay in the saddle. That lasted about five years. She was just so weak.”

But now thanks to two “unicorn” horses that take great care of Halle, she competes at high school rodeos.

She enters barrel racing and pole bending on a small palomino mare named Sue, who once stood motionless while Halle dangled from the saddle by one spur until help arrived.

“I’ve hit the dirt a lot,” said Halle, who also heels on a 24-year-old horse named Dually. “But I never let myself quit doing it. I know my limits, so I’m not afraid. I know what I can and can’t do.”

Her mom, however, is very afraid, because the girl has no strength to save herself from a fall.

“My heart is in my throat every time she goes through the gate,” said Jonee. “I want her to slow down and she just goes faster.

[{"type":"text","text":"“But it’s her passion. It heals Halle every time she does it.”"}]

Despite limitations with lifting her arms and lingering balance and coordination problems, things are looking up for Halle.

[{"type":"text","text":"The 16-year-old got her driver’s license last year."}]

She feeds livestock in the winter as long as someone can help her get into the tractor.

And she hardly misses two feet in the branding pen. But rodeo is the light in her life.

“It’s been one of the few things I can do,” said Halle. "I might not be winning, but I can do it and I love it more than anything.

“The rodeos are a big part of my life. The rodeo kids are the best — they treat me so well and want me to do well just as much as I want to do well.”

Last fall, senior timed-event star Carter Hutchison of Rozet saw his heeler sidelined due to a thumb injury.

While Tate Leno healed up, Hutchison asked Halle to be his heeler. This is a boy who won nearly $10,000 team roping as an eighth-grader.

“I was just glad she wanted to rope with 

, honestly,” said Hutchison, on track to compete in four events at this year’s NHSFR and then attend University of Wyoming this fall. “She’s going through a lot, and it’s tough to be doing what she’s doing.

“She just loves it so much, and everyone sees that. They see how hard she works at it. I try to slow our steers down so she and Dually can get up there and get a good shot.”

When Leno healed up, it was time for Hutchison to switch back to his real partner.

But the board of more than a dozen WHSRA directors voted to change the rules and allow Hutchison to continue to enter with Halle, too.

“When the board called to tell us what they did, they told us that the impact Halle has at the rodeos is just too important,” said Jonee. “She has changed the whole energy of every rodeo. It’s incredible what it’s done to the culture.”

As much as rodeo inspires Halle to recover and live life on her terms, she inspires the rodeo community.

“People love to watch her, because they know it’s pure determination and grit for her to get through every run,” her mother added. “She’s not the fastest. Usually, she’s the slowest. But people love it.

[{"type":"text","text":"“She has no idea what she’s doing for those people.”"}]

Halle Crozier Halle and Sue 5 30 26

<title>How Rodeo Is Healing A Wyoming Teen After Vaccine Reaction Destroyed Her Body | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Halle Crozier of Buffalo is inspiring Wyoming’s high school rodeo community as she fights to recover from a vaccine reaction that destroyed her body. “I could choose to not get better, or choose to be positive and work hard to get better,” she said.

How Rodeo Is Healing A Wyoming Teen After Vaccine Reaction Destroyed Her Body

Heinz mark

Mark Heinz

Outdoors

Wildlife

Less than a month after a man was apparently killed by a grizzly in Glacier National Park in Montana, there were reports of another possible bear attack on a hiker on Thursday.

A “surprise encounter involving a hiker and a bear occurred on the Grinnell Glacier Trail in Glacier National Park,” park spokeswoman Autumn Sifuentes stated in an email to Cowboy State Daily on Friday.

“National Park Service personnel and emergency services responded to the incident. The Grinnell Glacier Trail is temporarily closed and will reopen when deemed appropriate by park staff,” she added.

There was no further information available about the species or size of the bear, or whether the hiker suffered any injuries.

Hiker Devin Dufrene described encountering a distraught man who was screaming about a “bear attack” 

Although he and his sister attempted to get the man to calm down, “he continued running and screaming,” according to SFGate. “Knowing there was an attack up-trail and now a bear approaching from the opposite direction, we decided to ascend up the cliffside and wait for the bear to pass.”

A little later, Dufrene told SFGate that they saw park rangers going in the direction of the reported attack.

In early May, Glacier Park reported its first fatal bear attack since 1998.

Florida resident Anthony Pollio, 33 was reported missing May 4. On May 6, his body was found in a densely wooded area roughly 50 feet from the trail he’d apparently been hiking on.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Busy Year Already"}]

May is usually the first month of widespread grizzly and black bear activity. This year, it’s been a busy month for bear attacks.

On May 4, two brothers were severely injured when they were attacked by a female grizzly with cubs near Old Faithful in Yellowstone National Park.

Also this month, a black bear hunter in Idaho shot and killed a grizzly when it charged him and his son. Wildlife agents deemed the shooting a legitimate case of self-defense.

And on Monday near Squamish, British Columbia, Canada, a man running on a forested trail was attacked and injured by a female black bear with two cubs, 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"‘The Men Mocked Me’"}]

Outdoor adventurer Michael Hodges was photographing grizzlies in the Glacier Park backcountry on the day that Pollio’s body was discovered about 15 miles away.

Later, he was on the same trail where Thursday’s alleged bear attack was reported.

“I was up on the trail the week of May 6 and saw many grizzlies,” he stated in a text message to Cowboy State Daily.

“I warned hikers from California and Texas at the trailhead that there was an unusual number of griz, and to be extra alert,” stated Hodges, a novelist and internet personality.

“The men mocked me, the women in the group listened,” he added.

Contrary to popular perceptions, grizzlies in Glacier Park aren’t meaner than those elsewhere, bear experts told Cowboy State Daily.

Rather, the area’s thick vegetation and rugged landscape increase the chances of hikers and bears surprising each other at close range.

“For the most part, if bears hear you, see you or smell you, they don’t want to have anything to do with you,” Canadian human-bear conflict prevention expert Kim Titchener said.

She’s hiked in Glacier Park and said she can attest to how conditions there can make it more difficult for bears to sense people approaching.

She added that the landscape around Squamish, where the runner was attacked by a black bear is similar.

“It’s got lots of thick vegetation,” said Titchener, the founder of the Bear Safety and More organization.

And people shouldn’t take for granted that black bears can also be dangerous if they’re surprised at close range, she added.

Retired ecologist Chuck Neal of Cody, who frequently hikes solo in grizzly country, agreed that hiking in Glacier Park demands extra alertness.

“Encounters can happen at just a few yards away” if hikers aren’t paying keen attention, Neal said.

“It’s a high-quality habitat for bears. It’s better habitat for bears than Yellowstone is” and tends to attract a younger crowd, he said.

“Those younger hikers go barreling up those trails without paying that much attention,” Neal said.

Big bear 5 29 26

<title>Glacier Park Reports Second Bear Attack Less Than A Month After Man Killed | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Less than a month after a man was apparently killed by a grizzly in Glacier National Park, there were reports of another possible bear attack on a hiker on Thursday. It was a “surprise encounter involving a hiker and a bear,” said a park official.

Daily Smile: Friday, January 5, 2024

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