It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming, for Friday, May 9th. I’m Wendy Corr, bringing you headlines from the Cowboy State Daily newsroom - Brought to you by the Wyoming Community Foundation, who asks you to give back to the place you call home. “5 to thrive” is YOUR opportunity to leave a legacy for generations to come. Support the community nonprofits you care about with a gift through the Wyoming Community Foundation. Visit wycf.org to learn more.
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When meeting with state legislators on Thursday, Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray expressed strong support for nearly two dozen election-reform bills.
The legislative Corporations Elections and Political Subdivisions Committee chose to take up less than half of them for study. But Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that that doesn’t guarantee all of them will be carried into the 2026 legislative session that starts Feb 9.
“Chuck Gray proposed 22 bills for the corporations committee to look at through the coming months ahead of the 2026 legislative session, and they took up 11 to study. That doesn't mean they'll champion them all, but that means they're going to look at things like random hand counts and a photo ID only, and reforming the audits process and all of those things… they said that they that election reform is at the top of their interim priority list.”
Individual legislators still can champion some of the bills that didn’t reach the committee’s threshold of interest.
Read the full story HERE.
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Catholics across Wyoming celebrated the appointment of the first American pope Thursday. Robert Francis Prevost, a Chicago-born cardinal, was chosen as the 267th pope by the College of Cardinals after several rounds of voting that took more than a day.
Cowboy State Daily’s Justin George spoke to several members of the church, many of whom said they believed the selection of Prevost will bring greater attention to U.S. churches and potentially lure back lapsed members.
“There's not a huge population of Catholics in Wyoming, but there is a significant one, and and many of those are at universities, obviously student centers, and there are many Catholic schools that are out there… it was a huge day and a big day, like at Saint Anthony's tri parish Catholic school in Casper, the entire student body was in the commons watching this… They all watched as the announcement came. It was spoken in Latin. Luckily, they have a Latin teacher there who could decipher exactly who was chosen. And then there was the added excitement that an American is being named the first pope.”
The selection of Prevost came as a surprise to many inside and outside the church, who believed the United States’ already outsized global influence might disqualify an American from holding the most influential position within the church of 1.4 billion people - including an estimated 69,500 people in Wyoming.
Read the full story HERE.
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Landmark cryptocurrency legislation, one of the signature efforts of U.S. Sen. Cynthia Lummis, collapsed Thursday on the Senate floor despite exhaustive, 11th-hour efforts by the Wyoming Republican and her GOP colleagues to rescue it.
Before the vote, Lummis, who leads the Senate Banking Committee's subpanel on digital assets, gave a floor speech thanking President Donald Trump for sharing her leadership on cryptocurrency regulation.
But Cowboy State Daily’s Sean Barry reports that some Democrats who originally supported the bill did an about-face, and Trump himself may have had a hand in the bill’s demise.
“This legislation championed so long by Senator Cynthia Lummis just crashes and burns on the Senate floor. And why? Well, there's a lot of finger pointing, but President Trump did not do Cynthia Lummis any favors on this by being so involved him and his family with with cryptocurrency. And so while this bill had bipartisan support in the beginning, it began to wane heavily and quickly, and this week, it unraveled, and I'm shocked, frankly, that Senate Majority Leader John Thune took this thing to the floor. They were nowhere near getting the number of votes needed to advance it… And in fact, John Thune had to change his vote to vote against the bill just so he could be in the majority to make a motion to bring the bill back up at a later time.”
It was not clear exactly Thursday how the latest version has changed since the committee vote in March. But in general, it calls for a massive framework to regulate stablecoins, a type of cryptocurrency pegged to the U.S. dollar.
Read the full story HERE.
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It started with a tip. Someone in the small town of Woodruff, Utah, became suspicious about a semitruck dumping what appeared to be wastewater into “a pond-like area.”
Now one Utah resident and one Wyomingite are being charged with four third-degree felonies for allegedly taking Wyoming oil field waste and unlawfully disposing of it in a bucolic corner of Utah just across the Wyoming state line.
Cowboy State Daily’s David Madison reports that 37-year-old Braden Corina and 47-year-old Jeremy Oliver are facing four counts of unlawful discharge of pollutants.
“A company based in Bear River hired a couple guys to… follow the law and haul a bunch of oil field waste, liquid waste, it sounds Like to a facility in LaBarge. But instead of making that 108 mile trip up to LaBarge, they just went 14 miles to the northwest and into the beautiful community of Woodruff… and over a period of time, in late 2023 and 2024 someone spotted them dumping something in a pond like area… someone called this tip in the sheriff gets on it. State investigator gets on it. They end up charging two individuals with four counts each of third degree felony, polluting essentially.”
Special Agent Brent Kasza from the Trust Lands Administration said the sheer quantity of the pollution was beyond anything he’s ever seen as an investigator.
Read the full story HERE.
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Wyoming’s U.S. House representative on Thursday announced her introduction of an act to keep student visas from being issued in “sanctuary,” or anti- immigration- enforcement jurisdictions.
Representative Harriet Hageman cited a Center for Immigration Studies statistic, estimating that around 10,000 serious foreign criminals, who were deportable, and among whom there were felons, have been, quote, “released back on the streets; many of them to the safety of sanctuary cities.” That’s according to Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland.
“She's introduced a bill to ban student visas in areas that are considered sanctuary jurisdictions, meaning they don't work well with immigration officials. They have practices that keep them from working well with immigration officials. And a immigration attorney was like, whoa, this definition she wants to use to put sanctuary jurisdiction in the law is vague, and it feels like maybe a sanctuary jurisdiction will be whatever the authorities say it is… she said this is a check on jurisdictions where law breakers can hide out.”
Hageman says that pulling student visas is an accountability measure to pressure leaders in those areas to rid their cities of, quote, “law breakers.”
Read the full story HERE.
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A Florida man who was gored by a bison in Yellowstone National Park on Sunday, but lived, is lucky compared to other Floridians this week.
Cowboy State Daily’s Mark Heinz reports that the 47-year-old from Cape Coral escaped from his encounter with the bison, but two others in their home state were not as fortunate. A man and his dog were killed by a bear in Collier County, and a woman from Davenport was attacked and killed by an alligator.
“A woman who was in her early 60s, was killed by an alligator on Tuesday, her and her husband were in a canoe, and it capsized and she was subsequently bitten and killed, fatally bitten by an alligator in the water there. And then I believe an 89 year old man in southwest rural Florida was killed by a black bear. Him and his dog were killed by a black bear or bears, they're not sure.”
The attack in Yellowstone was the first report of a human injured by wildlife in the Park this year.
Read the full story HERE.
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A federal prosecutor Wednesday voiced skepticism of a Wyoming woman’s claims that her son stole her guns, before fatally shooting a Sheridan police sergeant, then launching a two-day standoff that culminated in his own shooting death in February 2024.
Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that Eileen Hurley faces four felonies in the U.S. District Court for Wyoming, on allegations that she bought three guns for her son, 46-year-old William Lowery, who was a convicted felon and prohibited from having guns.
“This is a big argument about whether the prosecution has to hand over data on 10 more guns, you know, who owned them, where they came from, to the defense of Eileen Hurley, and basically the prosecutors saying, Whoa… so the government's theory is that she bought them for him, or gave them to him, her saying, Oh, he stole them. Well, the prosecutor is basically saying, this is this looks like a new theory to us, and also our evidence on these guns isn't material to use, since no one reported them stolen.”
Lowery went on to fatally shoot Sheridan Police Sgt. Nevada Krinkee on Feb. 13, 2024. He hid in a local woman’s house for nearly two days during a dramatic police standoff, and was ultimately shot by law enforcement while trying to flee.
Read the full story HERE.
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Rawlins residents are fed up with a colony of prairie dogs that’s become more than a nuisance.
Prairie dogs are disturbing the eternal peace of the dearly departed, digging into and around graves in the Rawlins Cemetery - and Cowboy State Daily’s Andrew Rossi reports that locals are getting frustrated.
“Wyoming is prairie dog habitat. There's just no denying that. So you're going to inevitably run into problems when you have human infrastructure in areas where prairie dogs like to live, and cemeteries are vast, flat areas that are ideal for Prairie dogs… Rawlins cemetery is filled with Prairie dogs, and they're digging into like they're digging right in front of headstones. So it's within reason that they could reach far enough down to disturb the eternal piece of the dearly departed. And a lot of people are concerned about the damage that prairie dogs are causing, and they can cause injury, because if you step in one of those holes, they can go up to 10 feet down, and you can break a leg in one of them.”
Ultimately, the best way to control the cemetery’s prairie dog problem is an automatic death sentence. In Campbell County, the burrowing problem was only solved by poisoning the prairie dogs. While poisoning isn’t the only solution, it is the most economical in terms of time and resources.
Read the full story HERE.
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And Cowboy State Daily this week is saying farewell to a longtime member of our reporting team - and one of our busiest. Politics reporter Leo Wolfson is leaving our staff to move on to a new adventure.
“I regretfully tell all you viewers out there, our loyal followers, that I will be moving into the PR communications space, taking at least a break for journalism. I'm going to be doing helping out with some of the PR communications for Charles Hoskinson, who runs a crypto currency company called Cardano. Hoskinson owns a ranch in Wheatland. He just recently opened a medical clinic in Gillette, and he's just trying to get a lot more involved with kind of Wyoming communities, so I'm going to be helping with those efforts. I'm also going to be joining a team that involves a former Deputy Secretary of State, Karen Wheeler, with that and, yeah, very excited. It's a whole new experience. We'll see how it goes. Just a really good opportunity to kind of spread my wings and see how I like it. And I'm going to miss it a lot. I'm going to miss talking to all you people out there and all my co workers at Cowboy State daily. It's a it's a hard decision. It's certainly not without some some sadness, but it's been a wonderful time, and I've loved working with you, Wendy.’
‘I agree, it has been such a gift to be able to have this because when we first met, of course, we were on various - we were doing different media in Cody… and so, so, so pleased that we've had these last three years to work together. It's been an absolute joy. Any final thoughts about your years here at Cowboy State Daily? ’
‘what I've really enjoyed, enjoyed most was kind of the Super Bowl of my beat is what kind of we described it as, covering the legislature was by far my favorite part. Look forward to it all year round. I was very excited what was going on. Certainly was about ready for it to be done by the time it was done every year, it was quite the grind. Just, you know, it's not a stop, just like it is for anybody with It Works there with and it, but it was, it was really, truly a lot of fun, lot enjoyable. Made a lot of friends there that wouldn't have made otherwise. I really became a lot closer with the Wyoming Press Corp, which was a fun experience to just kind of get to know a lot of those people from around the state as well. And I think our culture here is just so wonderful Wyoming, and it's so easy to meet and talk to people and go up to talk to people. Everyone's so reachable here, politicians included. And that's something that needs, you know, he's easy to take for granted. If you don't, you know, know, leave the state too often, or for whatever reason, it's just easy to take for granted. And I think we should all appreciate just how nice they and just polite and friendly. The average person is Wyoming. I think I was constantly reminded of that pretty much almost every day on the job. They're also blunt. People are blunt in Wyoming, and they'll take tell you when you screw up. And I think that's for the best, sometimes hard to take for sure, and you gotta have a thick skin, but that's kind of goes for anywhere in journalism. And I think just, I really feel like I developed a lot thanks to being given this opportunity at Cowboy State daily. And if I ever go back to journalism, I'll be, you know, I will always be thankful of the experience I had here.’ ‘Without a doubt, we'll take you back any day, Leo. Any day, Leo, thank you for your years, and we would just wish you the best.’”
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And that’s today’s news! For a deeper dive into the people and issues that affect Wyoming, check out The Roundup, conversations with the most interesting people in the Cowboy State. This week, my guest is Rebecca West, the executive director of the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody. You can find the link on our website, on our YouTube channel, and wherever you get your podcasts. And of course, you'll find it in our FREE daily email newsletter!
Thanks for tuning in - I’m Wendy Corr, for Cowboy State Daily.
