It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming, for Tuesday, December 3rd. 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 and 10 other states are suing three massive investors, accusing them of colluding to downsize coal companies in the name of achieving net-zero carbon emissions, all while driving up energy prices for Americans and monopolizing the market in the process.
Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that Blackrock Inc., State Street Corp. and Vanguard Group Inc. all acquired large percentages of major coal companies, then used their influence to bully the companies into cutting production - that’s according to the lawsuit.
“The lawsuit alleges that these investors together own, like a third of the biggest coal companies, right? Which you know, you're not even over 50% at that point, even if even all three of them together. But they're alleging that Black Rock and Vanguard and State Street are kind of leveraging the influence that they do have through that 33% to, you know, to cast votes and rally supports and just replace the directors of the coal companies with those who are willing to downsize and to cut production.”
The document also points out that renewable energy sources like solar and wind can’t furnish the constant power supply that power companies are obligated to provide.
Read the full story HERE.
A company based in Turkey is making a big play in Wyoming’s trona patch.
Sisecam has decided to negotiate for Ciner Group’s indirect shares in Sisecam Wyoming and Pacific Soda, which is building out Wyoming’s largest new trona mine.
Cowboy State Daily’s Renee Jean reports that the move, if realized, positions Sisecam as the parent of Pacific Soda and the largest new trona mine in the largest trona patch in the world.
“Trona is used for all kinds of things… It's used to make glass. It's used for detergents. It's used for soaps. It also useful in just manufacturing processes… part of what's pushing up the demand right now for trona is lithium batteries. Those are used in a lot of electrical vehicles and other applications… And so, you know, having these companies come in and add millions more tons of trona to the supply line is really pretty cool, and it keeps America's edge on the trona supply chain.”
Trona is a limited resource, with only three known locations in the world - in Wyoming, China and Turkey - but Wyoming’s, at a 90% share, is the largest reserve by far. Trona is a common source of soda ash, which is used to make a variety of necessary products, ranging from detergents and soaps, to glass and lithium batteries.
Read the full story HERE.
There’s nothing like warm weather to start December. This week’s temperatures might not break heat records, but they will be significantly warmer than average for this time of year.
Cowboy State Daily’s Andrew Rossi reports that temperatures across western Wyoming have been above average for months and that trend will continue this week.
“It's not an unusual way to start December. So we're talking temperatures in the 50s and the 40s, which is high for this time of year. But that also means no wind, so it's not going to be as windy as usual, and then we're going to settle into a cold winter pattern as we get into the weekend and into next week.”
While the month will begin warm, that doesn’t mean Wyoming won’t have a white Christmas. Cowboy State Daily Meteorologist Don Day says that from what he’s seeing, it does look like the weather pattern is changing next week through the week of Christmas, so there might just be snow on the ground in time for the holiday.
Read the full story HERE.
President Joe Biden’s sweeping pardon of his son Hunter for ongoing federal gun and tax evasion charges has raised the ire of Wyoming’s congressional delegation.
U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman told Cowboy State Daily’s Leo Wolfson she expected Biden’s pardon to be an “inevitable” event, but said she doesn’t believe that makes the action right.
“In Biden's pardon, he exonerates his son on any and all charges that his son could be facing from the past 10 years. This dates back to January 1, 2014, which is a significant date, because just a few months after Hunter Biden started working for Burisma holdings, a Ukrainian company that he's received significant heat from Republicans for working for. Hageman said that no one is above the law, and this is another instance of where President Joe Biden thinks he's above the law.”
According to Politico, it’s the most expansive pardon issued by a president since 1974, when former President Richard Nixon was pardoned by former President Gerald Ford.
Read the full story HERE.
A homemade propane bomb planted in the tool shed of a northeast Wyoming oil field equipment company could have caused a lot of damage had it worked.
That’s what Weston County Sheriff Bryan Colvard told Cowboy State Daily’s Greg Johnson. But he said just how the agricultural-sized 100-pound propane tank was rigged to potentially explode or cause a fire overnight Friday was difficult to give details about while an investigation is active.
“It apparently had been left there sometime after folks went home from work on Friday and before someone came in Saturday morning, they went into this tool shed, found what appeared to be a propane bomb, called the sheriff's office. They confirmed, yes, it was a bomb. There was propane in the tank, but it wasn't full and it had not gone off.”
Possible fingerprints were found on the bomb, and investigators are following up other leads that make Colvard hopeful a suspect may be identified and possibly arrested in the near future.
Read the full story HERE.
A series of power outages hitting Cody Sunday and Monday weren’t caused by the construction of a new Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Temple - rather, a bird that got itself fried by a power line.
Many people took to social media to blame the ongoing construction of a controversial 101-foot-tall Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints temple for the power outages because of the church’s demands on the local energy grid. But Phillip Bowman, public works director for the city of Cody, told Cowboy State Daily’s Leo Wolfson that’s just not true.
“A dead bird was found at the scene of the crime, if you will. And there was kind of burn marks and scorches that appear to indicate that the avarian species, not the temple itself, is to be blamed for the outages. Some people had pointed to the fact that city of Cody electrical department workers were working on the site of the temple on a power box, apparently on a feverish pace on Monday morning, but Bowman said that's only because they were trying to restore power to the temple area itself, and they were also a victim of the outage.”
Animal-caused power outages are not an unheard of phenomenon in Wyoming. In 2022, an unknown animal caused a significant power outage in Laramie. Similar outages were also caused in Cody in 2022 and 2021 because of racoons.
Read the full story HERE.
A St. Stephens man accused of trying to kidnap a teenage girl from outside a movie theater in Riverton two years ago has agreed to plead guilty.
Terrence Paul Jenkins, 40, plans to plead guilty to two counts of aggravated robbery, one of attempted kidnapping, third-degree arson and aggravated assault, according to crime and courts reporter Clair McFarland.
“It was really shocking at the time, because Riverton, you know, despite having a lot of violent crime, is not known for stranger crime, where like a stranger might try to take you or hurt you, necessarily. And so that's what's being alleged here… And the court documents say that she fought him off really hard, that despite being held at knife point, she just fought and fought, and he got away with her car and her phone, but not with her.”
Jenkins will have to give a confession to each charge in court and admit to being a habitual criminal. If the judge accepts the plea agreement, the prosecutor will drop a sixth charge, of attempted rape.
Read the full story HERE.
Those who can’t keep themselves from getting too up close and personal while trying to take selfies with the Cowboy State’s famous bears, bison and other wild critters now have a little extra help from The Selfie Control Instagram app.
Cowboy State Daily’s Mark Heinz reports the app was launched this year by the Jackson Hole Travel & Tourism Board ahead of peak tourist season, in hopes of teaching tourists to back off to the recommended distances from wildlife.
“What this app does, if you, as a tourist, are walking up to an animal with your phone, and you get too close, it will set off an alert that basically tells you you're getting too close, you need to back off. Because, of course, we have this chronic problem of people wanting to crowd wildlife, especially around our national parks here in Wyoming… I guess you know, when they say there's an app for everything, literally, there's an app for everything, including keeping dummies away from wildlife.”
However, some Wyomingites said they wonder about the app’s effectiveness, because the people who most need to use it are also the least likely to use it.
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.
