It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming, for Tuesday, March 25th. I’m Wendy Corr, bringing you headlines from the Cowboy State Daily newsroom - Brought to you by the Cowboy State Daily Morning Show! From 6 to 10 a.m., Monday through Friday, we bring you news, weather, sports AND in-depth interviews with news-makers from across Wyoming - and this week we’ve got a fantastic guest host, Charene Herrera, who will keep the conversation lively! Just click on the Cowboy State Daily homepage to join in.
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A 15-year-old Glenrock girl’s sophomore year of high school was marked by anonymous and fraudulent texts by someone who was working to make others hate her.
Now almost 17, Gillian Holman didn’t get her natural good cheer back until last Wednesday, when 41-year-old Glenrock woman Marcie Smith was sentenced to probation on two stalking charges in Douglas Circuit Court.
Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that the stalking was more than just bombarding the girl with messages, or following her around.
“It's not just like I'm going to text you and annoy you, there's an impersonation element. You know, where loved ones of Gillian's were receiving what looked like screenshots or text conversations where a Gillian contact was saying horrible things or was insulting people… At one point, there's this anonymous text, and it claims to be from a parent with one of those flagging apps on her kid's phone. Like, oh, my son's app flagged these conversations involving your daughter performing sex acts on all sorts of people and being wildly promiscuous. And so the Holmans, they were like, You know what, we have to ask. We have to ask because if she's doing this, she needs help… So they asked their daughter, they went through her bank account, they investigated everything, and even though they confirmed her innocence, and in the end, they completely believed her, it did rattle their family.”
Holman and her family are hoping that legislation can be enacted that would enhance penalties when adults stalk minors.
Read the full story HERE.
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President Donald Trump’s jumbo jet remained parked at the Cheyenne Regional Airport on Monday. It’s hard to miss, with a dark blue, red and white body and “TRUMP” printed near the front and a large, waving American flag on the tail.
Cowboy State Daily’s Leo Wolfson reports that the Trump Organization’s Boeing 757-200 dubbed “Trump Force One” landed at the Cheyenne airport sometime around late afternoon to early evening Saturday, and has drawn considerable attention.
“This is the Trump family's personal private airplane. This is not to be confused with Air Force One, which is the Presidential airplane that now is at Trump's disposal that he's president again… It's unknown who exactly was taking the flight. However, we've pretty much verified it was not Trump himself, he's been pretty much located in DC, pretty much this whole time, and the East Coast. But his family, namely his daughter, Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner, have come to Wyoming before and taken a similar plane while frequenting the Brush Creek Ranch in Saratoga.”
The director of marketing for Brush Creek Ranch would neither confirm or deny that members of the Trump family are staying there.
Read the full story HERE.
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The Washakie County Sheriff’s Office is investigating human remains discovered by a Wyoming Game and Fish warden Sunday.
The unnamed warden had been tracking a deer collar in a remote area of the county when he came across the remains, according to a statement from the sheriff’s office. Cowboy State Daily’s Jen Kocher reached out to authorities about the find, but was told there isn’t much information to be released.
“All that has been released at this point by the Washakie county sheriff is that remains have been found somewhere in the county. They wouldn't provide a location, nor would they provide any other details… I also spoke to the coroner, and he was going to meet with the dentist to compare dental records. Again, he would not say whose dental records he was comparing to, if it was one person or 12. So it isn’t very much. Not much information is available at this time, but I will report anything as soon as I have it available.”
Currently, Breanna Mitchell is the only person reported missing in Washakie County.
The then-28-year-old Worland woman’s car was found abandoned and stuck on a rugged, two-track trail near Nowater Trail area near Worland in the summer of 2023.
Read the full story HERE.
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Sweetwater County officials remain hopeful that a controversial Bureau of Land Management land-use plan can be changed more to their liking, even as Wyoming Republican Congresswoman Harriet Hageman joined a push to revise BLM plans across the West.
Sweetwater County Commissioner Taylor Jones told outdoors reporter Mark Heinz that county officials recently met with Hageman, adding that from the county’s perspective, it would be best to revise the proposed Rock Springs area resource management plan, but not completely scrap it.
“The new Secretary of the Interior kind of put a hold on it for revision. And now there's also legislation that's been introduced to Congress to kind of halt, revise and possibly even reverse these resource management plans for the BLM all across the West, including out of the Rock Springs office and the Buffalo field office in Wyoming… I talked to the Sweetwater County Commissioner today, and he said... they don't want to just totally scrap it and start over, because it said that could take years. They'd rather revise what they got. And from their perspective, tip a little bit more toward multiple use, towards things like motorized access, energy exploration and those sorts of things.”
The BLM manages about 3.6 million acres of land from the Rock Springs office, the bulk of it in Sweetwater County. The BLM’s preferred would have designated 1.8 million acres, or about half, as “areas of critical environmental concern.”
Read the full story HERE.
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And now let’s take a look at today’s weather, with Cowboy State Daily meteorologist Don Day.
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You can get Don’s full forecast on the Cowboy State Daily website. I’ll be back in just 15 seconds with more news.
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A string of attacks on Tesla vehicles, chargers and dealerships nationwide has some Wyoming Tesla owners bristling.
People outraged at Elon Musk’s agenda to terminate some government employees and cut spending in other ways, or his affiliation with Trump, have taken Molotov cocktails and other destructive devices to Tesla products and properties this year.
Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland spoke to several Wyoming residents who own the electric vehicles.
“I talked to you one who does not like Elon Musk and one who's like, yeah, no, he's just trying to cut waste. He's trying to improve things. And so it was really interesting to me to hear them both say, What the heck is going on? Like I thought you could own property in this country, you know. And despite them both having different feelings towards the CEO of a company that they believe makes it an excellent product… neither have seen their cyber trucks attacked. But Karen told me that she has put on a bumper sticker that says something like, not a fan of Elon, you know. And she even though that that looks like a defensive maneuver, she said, in her case, it's also exactly how she feels.”
The controversy over Tesla vehicles reached Wyoming on Saturday, when an unknown suspect or suspects spray-painted swastikas on four Tesla chargers in Rock Springs. No one had been caught as of Monday, as the area surveillance video coverage was not ideal.
Read the full story HERE.
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A lawsuit filed against the campaign arm of the Wyoming Freedom Caucus is being allowed to continue in court.
On Friday, Third Judicial District Court Judge Richard Lavery rejected a request from the Freedom Caucus to dismiss a lawsuit filed against it for defamation. Cowboy State Daily’s Leo Wolfson reports that the lawsuit was filed by two state legislators over what they said were misleading political propaganda the Freedom Caucus political action committee put out against them last year.
“This lawsuit was filed over mailers and text messages that were put out by the campaign arm of the Freedom Caucus during the 2024 campaign season, accusing representatives JT Larson and Cody Wiley, two Republicans from Rock Springs of voting to keep Trump's name off the ballot in the 2024 election. Those claims were exaggerated at best in the fact that what the was referencing was a vote where Wiley and Larson voted in support of preventing Secretary of State Chuck Gray from spending state money on out of state lawsuits. That footnote came just several weeks after Gray filed an amicus brief on a Colorado Supreme Court case to keep Trump's name off the ballot. But at the end of the day, there was not a direct connection in that vote, and Wiley and Larson really felt like their names were defamed in these mailers and text messages.”
The case will now move into the discovery phase, which can involve the required release of communications and other documents pertaining to a case.
Read the full story HERE.
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An executive order by President Donald Trump has rare earth mining companies in Wyoming pitching to investors as mining and refining projects in the state move forward.
A recent marketing video for American Rare Earths Limited — which is developing the Halleck Creek rare earth project near Wheatland — referenced the importance the President is giving the topic. Cowboy State Daily’s David Madison reports that Wyoming is positioned to move into a marketplace that appears poised to expand given Trump’s push to accelerate production.
“Wyoming is particularly well poised to take advantage of that emphasis on activity, on federal lands, and really anywhere you can find concentrations of these metals and elements that have scientific that have science fiction like names and are found in everything in modern life, from your cell phones to a fighter jet to your computer. And so you need to find places where they're in high enough concentrations to mine, and then you need to be able to refine them and separate them out. And that's something that the United States has been really behind on… Wyoming could be the next place where rare earth minerals and elements are refined into a way that they can then be delivered to the high tech industries that need them.”
The executive director of the Wyoming Mining Association told Cowboy State Daily that those in the field are pleased to see the Trump administration embrace the priorities of the mining industry.
Read the full story HERE.
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March 21 was Black Friday for bingo in Cody. That’s the day the Wyoming Gaming Commission called three local bars to inform them that their popular bingo night promotions were a no-go.
Cowboy State Daily’s Andrew Rossi spoke to the owner of Cody Craft Brewing, one of the three establishments to get the call. He was told that the bingo games have been going on for several years, and no one knows why someone decided to tip off the gaming commission now.
“According to Wyoming statute, bingo is only permitted, you can only have bingo games if you're a 501-C-3, non profit that's doing it for charitable purposes. So there's a bunch of places in Cody that have been doing bingo, and at least one of them wasn't offering any kind of cash prizes. But then someone, one person, made an anonymous complaint to the Wyoming Gaming Commission and reported all three of these businesses and called them out for having illegal gambling because they were hosting bingo nights, and now they can't have bingo nights because someone complained.”
The complaint against Cody Craft Brewing, Brewgards and the Silver Dollar was submitted anonymously online. The owner of Cody Craft Brewing has submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to see if the complainant's identity can be divulged. He said he’s not looking for retribution but understanding.
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, or listen to us on your favorite podcast app. Thanks for tuning in - I’m Wendy Corr, for Cowboy State Daily.
