It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming, for Thursday, December 19. 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.
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President-elect Donald Trump has said that he won’t direct the Department of Justice to go after former Wyoming Congresswoman Liz Cheney, but that doesn’t mean he can’t weigh in on or give a hint to what he thinks could happen to her once he takes office.
Trump said on his social media platform Truth Social on Wednesday that Cheney “could be in a lot of trouble” over alleged witness tampering, after a U.S. House subcommittee report released Tuesday called for a criminal investigation into her actions on the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol. Politics reporter Leo Wolfson has the story.
“He's going to be appointing a new head, Attorney General and new Director of the FBI. Gives just more indication, one more step of indication, that a criminal investigation into former Congresswoman Liz Cheney will occur. Trump saying she could be in a lot of trouble, kind of gives you a clue there.”
Cheney has been one of Trump’s most vocal Republican critics since he attempted to overturn the results of the 2020 election. She lost her 2022 reelection bid to U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman by a landslide margin.
Read the full story HERE.
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A project that seeks to create an entirely new kind of wind tower- one that’s not only cheaper and more efficient, but also a lot shorter and much less visible on the landscape - will be reaching for the skies in January.
As with most ventures that happen outside in the Cowboy State, one of the first questions Airloom Energy has to answer is will it hold up to Wyoming’s harsh, cold and windy winters? Cowboy State Daily’s Renee Jean reports that Airloom will find that out next winter, 2025, thanks to an ambitious timeline that puts its building phase this spring and summer.
“This invention is leveraging wind in a slightly different way, to bring wind power in a smaller footprint with a, you know, less costly, more efficient.… All it takes to set them up is like a forklift… It's a Wyoming born and raised idea. This some a guy from Laramie thought this up… Their ambitious timeline is going to mean they have to test this idea during the winter. But I think it's perfect because, you know, it has to stand up to Wyoming weather, 365 days a year, and it's got to withstand all of them, even winter.”
Airloom does have a lot of grassroots support as a Cowboy State-born company that intends to ultimately set up its home base and manufacturing in Wyoming,
Read the full story HERE.
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A Gillette man accused of trying to kill his wife by stabbing her repeatedly says he wasn’t mentally well enough to rationalize his conduct at the time.
31-year-old John Bosh pleaded not guilty to one count of attempted second-degree murder and another of aggravated assault, according to Crime and Courts reporter Clair McFarland.
“So Bosh pleaded not guilty by reason of mental illness, which under Wyoming law means I either could not rationalize my conduct or Conform it to the law because of my mental state at the time of the crime… it has huge implications for the outcome of the case, because if it's found that he couldn't rationalize his conduct when the stabbing happened, then he can be released… I couldn't get a hold of his wife this time around, but when I talked to her back in October, she was struggling with nightmares. You know, she was in pain. She was just trying to piece things back together with her kids.”
The attempted murder charge carries a potential penalty of between 20 years and life in prison; the aggravated assault charge is punishable by up to 10 years in prison. Each charge also could result in $10,000 in fines.
Read the full story HERE.
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Cowboy State Daily’s chief videographer, Reilly Strand, has our next story.
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On April 26, 2018, some say a curse was born. That’s when the Denver Broncos could have drafted-- but didn’t-- University of Wyoming football star Josh Allen. It broke the hearts of Wyoming Cowboy football fans when the Buffalo Bills drafted Allen - but it also paved the way for a new set of fans: Wyomingites rooting for the Bills.
But this year, for the first time since Allen was drafted, both franchises appear to be headed for the playoffs. Cowboy State Daily’s Justin George reports that the potential collision could test the loyalties of Wyomingites.
“For the last several years now, the Broncos have just been so bad, and Wyoming is full of Bronco fans… in the meantime, you've got Josh Allen, who's playing for the Buffalo Bills…. that team is just every year after year, perennially winning…. And this year, Josh Allen's played better than he ever was, and is the front runner now for the NFL MVP. …So the question is, if these two teams meet in the playoffs, who's Wyoming going to root for? And I was actually surprised where multiple people said, Well, probably the bills, but we don't want that to happen.”
Only time will tell who Wyoming pro football fans will cheer for, if the teams meet in the playoffs.
Read the full story HERE.
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A nonprofit group that researches the impacts of climate change is claiming that winter has become several days shorter in Wyoming and around the Rocky Mountain Region because of climate change.
For longtime Wyoming meteorologist Don Day, reports like those are misleading and what he calls, quote, “climate porn.” He told Cowboy State Daily’s Andrew Rossi that it’s part of his frustration with the discussion and mainstream media coverage of climate change, and how accurate data can be used to draw misleading conclusions.
“His rebuttal is that Wyoming has a cyclical weather pattern, that there are periods where it's warmer and periods where it's colder. And while he acknowledges that there has been a warming over the last 10 years, he can attribute that to other sources… the data suggests that it's been a warmer decade. Next decade could be cooler, and we could gain years. He referenced the time between 1970 1980 that there were more winter days in Wyoming and people had the opposite reaction to that climate change as we have now.”
For his Wyoming forecasts, Day said he draws from numerous sources, including computer-generated weather models and historical climate data. In his experience, any of that data can be easily misinterpreted or, in some cases, manipulated to draw a desired conclusion.
Read the full story HERE.
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A Minnesota man voiced both remorse and a deep appreciation for Wyoming’s outdoors and conservation after he was convicted of shooting a moose he mistook for an elk in the Bighorn National Forest this autumn.
45-year-old Jason van der Hagen told Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland on Wednesday that he wanted to apologize to the state of Wyoming.
“It was about 6pm October 3, so early evening, and he saw he had a cow elk tag there in the Bighorns. He saw a moose with no antlers, and shot it thinking it was a cow elk… All he really wanted to say with me, to me at the start of his interview was, I'm so sorry. This was so stupid. So he was just, he was just very accountable, very remorseful.”
Van der Hagen was fined $1,000 and sentenced to one year of unsupervised probation. Once he pays the fine and completes a hunter safety course, his Wyoming hunting privileges will be restored.
Read the full story HERE.
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After getting an earful from angry local residents, the Laramie City Council gave longtime city manager Janine Jordan a $43,000 a year raise Tuesday night.
The council voted by a 6-2 vote to approve raising City Manager Janine Jordan’s salary to $216,000 a year.
Cowboy State Daily’s Leo Wolfson reports that Jordan’s new salary will put her more in line with what city managers make in some of Wyoming’s larger communities, although Laramie is one of Wyoming’s poorest towns.
“In the government, there's really a competition aspect of like, like salaries and like size towns. And at the end of the day, I think the Laramie City Council is feeling a little bit of the pressure to be able to keep Janine Jordan, the city manager, there. They feel like they need to keep up with some of these similar sized towns around Wyoming.”
This raise gives Jordan a higher salary than the governor, any of the other statewide elected officials and the Cheyenne mayor, and only slightly less than the U.S. vice president.
Read the full story HERE.
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And in the fourth installment of the Rocky movie franchise, when Rocky Balboa opts for the isolation and desolation of frigid Siberia while training for his revenge fight with the Soviet’s indestructible prizefighter Ivan Drago, it’s actually Wyoming that plays the part of the Russian wasteland.
Rocky chopping trees, Rocky sawing wood, Rocky climbing a mountain in knee-deep snow. It’s all in Jackson Hole. Cowboy State Daily’s Jake Nichols took a look back at the iconic scenes that were filmed in Wyoming back in 1985.
“Rocky IV is probably not one of the best, but every Rocky movie has a montage. And this rocky montage, I think, was the longest. And everybody loved it. It just had all the ingredients, the motivation to win, the symbolic workout that was like ranch work. It was basically what a Wyoming ranch kid does every day, you know. And Rocky did it because that's how USA beats USSR.”
The western classic “Shane” was also filmed in Jackson Hole. The homestead cabin was actually built very near where Rocky’s Siberian village was constructed.
Read the full story HERE.
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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.
