It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming, for Tuesday, November 19th. I’m Wendy Corr, bringing you headlines from the Cowboy State Daily newsroom - brought to you by the Cowboy State Daily Morning Show with Jake. From 6 a.m. to 10 a.m., Monday through Friday, Cowboy State Daily’s Jake Nichols takes you deeper into the stories that matter - and keeps up with the news, weather and sports in your part of Wyoming. Just tune into Cowboy State Daily Dot Com and join the conversation.
Wyoming’s two abortion bans are unconstitutional and will be blocked from being enforced. That’s what a Jackson-based judge ruled Monday.
Teton County District Court Judge Melissa Owens concluded a year-and-a-half lawsuit Monday with that summary judgment order, according to Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland.
“Judge Melissa Owens ruled Monday… that abortion is health care, that the state's laws and you know, stated purposes of these bans don't overcome an individual's right to that health care, and lastly, she said that she's blocking the bans from going into effect altogether. So they've been temporarily blocked during this litigation for a year and a half. Like we're going to pause these decide if they're constitutional. This is just an outright block. These are not constitutional. You cannot enforce them.”
Wyoming lawmakers and pro-lifers have a few different options going forward. The state can appeal Owens' ruling to the Wyoming Supreme Court. The Legislature can try to pass a different ban that shows a compelling government interest; or, the Wyoming Legislature and the voters can pass a new constitutional amendment.
Read the full story HERE.
Opinions were split over whether to allow concealed firearms on the University of Wyoming campus during a town hall meeting on campus Monday.
Outdoors reporter Mark Heinz attended the town hall, where panelists discussed a draft proposal to loosen UW’s firearms policy. He reported that most who spoke out seemed to be against the idea.
“There's a proposal that is going before the UW trustees later this week, and it would be just the Cliff Notes are, it would be only for people holding concealed carry permits, and they would have to be age 21 and up so, so no open carry, no long guns, no nothing like that… most of the people who attended this meeting do not want to see concealed carry guns on UW campus. You know, they cited, you know, concern about accidental shooting suicides, just, you know, the overall danger of the thing.”
If approved by UW Board of Trustees, the proposal would allow concealed carry permit holders to carry firearms in most UW facilities. It’s set to be considered by trustees during their next meeting, scheduled for later this week.
Read the full story HERE.
Tempers are not cooling in Laramie County between some local Republicans and their county clerk.
The Wyoming Republican Party censured Laramie County Clerk Debra Lee on Saturday for the second time this year over the way she conducted voting machine testing in this year’s elections, according to politics reporter Leo Wolfson.
“This stems from frustration that the state party has over election machine tests that Lee conducted for the primary and general elections. These tests, the party alleges, did not align with state law and were missing critical pieces of information in the tests that were performed… Tim Stubson, a casper attorney who's representing Lee in her official capacity in this lawsuit, said the party is making looking for controversy where none exists and that she did nothing to break the law.”
The resolution passed by the GOP on Saturday asks for Lee’s resignation by Dec. 1. If she does not resign, the party plans to petition Gov. Mark Gordon to remove her.
Read the full story HERE.
The Wyoming Department of Transportation and contractor Ames Construction have been working around the clock to rebuild the mountain beneath Teton Pass.
Cowboy State Daily’s Andrew Rossi reports that crews will continue working 24-hour shifts until winter decides they’re done for the season.
“They've analyzed what happened with the failure back in June and then applied that knowledge to the permanent solution for Teton pass. So the new Teton pass is going to be the old Teton pass. It can be the same road, same curvature, same footprint, but they've drilled steel pillars into the bedrock, and they're supporting that with a thick layer of concrete. They've put in new fill that's more structurally sound and reinforced. And they've also installed a drainage system, because the reason why the highway failed back in June was it was saturated with water very quickly, and that reduced all of its strength, or eliminated all of its strength.”
The permanent solution for Wyoming Highway 22 will be finished by the end of July 2025, just over a year after the catastrophic collapse of the highway.
Read the full story HERE.
Wyoming’s congressional delegation, and 10 more members of Congress, sent a letter Monday to the commissioner of the Mountain West Conference, urging her to keep males out of women’s sports.
Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that the letter follows a two-month controversy in which five Mountain West Conference women’s volleyball teams have forfeited games against San Jose State University, which has a transgender player in its roster.
“Wyoming's all Republican delegation in Congress joined with 10 other lawmakers in signing a letter to the Mountain West Commissioner saying, ‘You need To get males out of women's women's school sports,’ they basically said, ‘this is not fair, this is not safe.’”
The National Association of Intercollegiate Athletes voted unanimously in April to allow only females to compete in women’s sports. In a letter earlier this year, nearly two dozen U.S. senators urged the NCAA’s president and that organization to adopt that guidance.
Read the full story HERE.
In all states, milk must still be pasteurized to sell commercially in a store. In Wyoming, you can only buy raw milk directly from producers or through their agents.
Raw milk is still illegal in many states, although Cowboy State Daily’s Jackie Dorothy reports that this may change under the incoming presidential administration.
“So personally, if I were to drink raw milk, I would want to know where it's from, and know that I trust the dairy farmer that's giving it to me, and that's my responsibility as a consumer, and that's how the laws stand right now, is that it's consumer right from the farmer themselves. And so the question gets to be is, if this goes on the federal level, where will be that safety factor and where, how much do you have to regulate?”
With President-elect Donald Trump’s nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as head of the Department of Health and Human Services, raw milk may soon become legal to sell nationwide. One of Kennedy’s agenda items to “Make America Healthy Again” is to allow for the sale of the controversial agricultural product.
Read the full story HERE.
James Temple came into work in the Sheridan County elections office last Tuesday expecting a relatively normal day. It had been exactly one week since the completion of this year’s elections, an event Temple saw as very successful in his county.
But Sheridan County Clerk Eda Schunk Thompson fired him first thing that day without giving any explanation why. Temple told politics reporter Leo Wolfson that he is concerned that the firing was retribution for his support of Secretary of State Chuck Gray’s position on the issue of ballot drop boxes.
“Ballot drop boxes have been a controversial topic around America and in Wyoming in the last few years, Sheridan county actually got rid of its ballot drop box before this year's election, but Temple said he and the County Clerk disagreed about him expressing support for Gray's directive saying that county clerks should not use them in the election.”
Temple lived in a number of different states before moving to Wyoming in 2019. He said he believes Wyoming has the most secure elections in the nation.
Read the full story HERE.
When two of Wyoming’s most cantankerous species — coyotes and badgers — set aside their differences and team up to go after prairie dogs and ground squirrels, the rodents have nowhere to hide.
Outdoors reporter Mark Heinz spoke to wildlife photographers and biologists who all say the unlikely pairing isn’t uncommon.
“A badger will go in the hole and start digging, and the coyote will kind of bounce around the exits. And whoever gets the rodent first, gets lunch, and whoever misses it, I guess has to try again. But this biologist said he's never seen, regardless of which one gets it first, the other one doesn't get upset and try to fight him for it. So who knew?”
Between a badger’s relentless digging prowess and a coyote’s speed and agility, it’s a near-certainty that the burrowing varmints are going to end up being somebody’s lunch.
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! And don’t forget to drop in on the Cowboy State Daily morning show with Jake Nichols, Monday through Friday from 6 to 10 a.m.! Thanks for tuning in - I’m Wendy Corr, for Cowboy State Daily.
