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Cowboy State Daily is Wyoming’s largest newspaper with Wyoming’s most experienced journalists. 

<title>You Still Here? Saturday, August 16, 2025 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

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You Still Here? Saturday, August 16, 2025

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Dale Killingbeck

Dale Killingbeck

Crime & Courts

Courts

CASPER — A 19-year-old Casper man faces felonycharges for allegedly firing into a car that was trying to take his girlfriend out of what she characterized as a “bad situation.”

Camden Martinez faces a preliminary hearing on three counts of aggravated assault and battery and one count of theft. He appeared in Casper Circuit Court for his initial appearance on Tuesday.

Court records show that Casper police officers were called to an area in the Paradise Valley subdivision just after midnight on Monday for a report of shots fired. 

At the scene they found two women and a man with a Volkswagen Jetta. 

One of the women was identified as Martinez’s girlfriend, the other was her friend who drove to the location with the male.

A police affidavit states that Martinez’s girlfriend declined to speak with officers but her friend identified as “KS” said that she had been contacted by Martinez’s girlfriend on social media with a message that she “was in a bad situation” and wanted to be picked up.

At Martinez’s home, the girlfriend came out of the door, got into the back seat behind her, and she started to pull away, KS told police. As she began driving she told officers that she heard shots fired.

“KS quickly drove away and pulled over a short time later and observed her vehicle had been shot in the rear bumper and rear window area,” the affidavit states. 

She told officers she did not have any weapons in her car, and Officers searched the vehicle and found no weapons.

The male in the car with KS told police he was in the front passenger seat and saw Martinez stand shirtless in the doorway of his home as his girlfriend approached the Jetta. 

Martinez yelled something at her, and the girlfriend told them to take off without shutting the car door, he said.

The male told police he heard three shots and the rear window of the car was shot.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Bullet Marks"}]

Police found two “bullet defects” in the back of the Jetta, one to the rear window and one to the bumper. A bullet fragment was also recovered from the car, the affidavit states.

The affidavit states that officers contacted Martinez and he had a “moderate odor” of alcohol and when asked where the firearm was, he replied that “it wasn’t my gun.”

Officers recovered three 10 mm shell casings: one outside the front door of his residence, one in the grass, and one in the street in front of the residence. 

Martinez also said that he was shot at by someone in the vehicle, the affidavit states.

A search warrant obtained for Martinez’s home resulted in officers recovering a black Glock 20 10mm in the propane tank area of a grill in the back yard of the residence. 

It had two rounds in the magazine, the affidavit states. They also recovered a Glock 19 from a gun safe in Martinez’s bedroom. The gun was determined to be stolen from South Dakota.

Martinez’s mother told police that he and his girlfriend had an argument in his bedroom and that when his girlfriend left his room with her backpack, Martinez followed with his hand in his pocket, “giving her the feeling that something was wrong,” the affidavit states.

“(The mother) reported then seeing Martinez standing in the middle of the street, draw a handgun, then fire three rounds in the same direction of travel for the vehicle that (his girlfriend) had left in,” the affidavit states.

The mother told police she did not know that Martinez had the Glock 20 and that he had placed the gun on the grill to “hide it because he had shot it.”

The three aggravated assault charges and the theft charge all are punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

Bond was set at $75,000 cash. Martinez remains in the Natrona County Jail.

A preliminary examination date has not yet been set.

Camden Martinez 6 11 26

<title>Casper Man Accused of Shooting Into Vehicle As Girlfriend Tried To Leave | Cowboy State Daily</title>

A 19-year-old Casper man faces four felony charges and the potential for 40 years in prison after firing three times at a vehicle that was taking his girlfriend away from his home. She was trying to get out of a “bad situation."

Casper Man Accused of Shooting Into Vehicle As Girlfriend Tried To Leave

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's general assignment reporter, Clair McFarland.

Clair McFarland

Government & Politics

Politics

“This is not a purity test,” says a letter to Republican candidates for Park County partisan offices, warning 

 that if they don’t commit to back at least 80% of the state Republican Party platform, they won’t receive an endorsement or support from the party.

The state GOP passed a set of new bylaws in April which requires county and state committee iterations of the party to vet candidates for office 

 commitment to the platform and “demonstrated loyalty to the Party’s principles.”

The Park County GOP’s vetting committee chair Richard Jones dispatched his vetting letter and survey to multiple candidates this week. Responses are due next Wednesday.

“We ask you to complete the questionnaire, and that you complete it honestly,” says Jones’ letter. “This is not a purity test. It is a questionnaire to see where you align with our Platform. 

"Also, this Platform is a reflection of the majority of Wyoming Republicans.”

The letter urges candidates against opting out of prompts they deem irrelevant to the offices they’re seeking.

“We wish to know where you stand regarding the Platform, not the role of the position you are seeking,” it says.

Candidates are split on whether the test is necessary, appropriate, and whether it is or isn’t a “purity test.”

“I support this,” said Karin Richard, a candidate for Park County Commission. “The Wyoming Republican Party, it stands for something. It stands for timeless truths — these truths are to maintain and protect and defend life, liberty, property, the pursuit of happiness.”

Richard added, “The Wyoming Republican Party isn’t demanding a purity test … it’s protecting the integrity of those foundational principles.”

Jones, who is also running for a Park County GOP precinct committee position, did not return a voicemail request for comment by publication. 

[{"type":"text","text":"Then Why Do It?"}]

Former state representative and current Park County GOP precinct committeewoman candidate Sandy Newsome questioned why the party would bother dispatching a test at all if it’s not a “purity test.”

Newsome said she didn’t receive the questionnaire at all — and she checked her spam folder. Other candidates have also said they didn’t receive it, she added.

“They want to say (it’s not a purity test) but that’s not true in my mind,” said Newsome. “Then why do they care? Why would they send that out … if it’s not to pigeonhole someone because of their responses into some group?”

Newsome defined herself as a Ronald Reagan Republican, and said the current GOP platform, while it tries to tackle vital issues, is poorly written and confusing in some areas.

 are endowed with the rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness “from the moment of conception to the moment of natural death.”

That language is a problem for Republicans who support the death penalty, noted Newsome.

The last two times Wyoming lawmakers proposed bills to abolish Wyoming’s death penalty — to the Senate in 2021 and the House in 2020 — the legislators who killed the bills on their introductory votes were all Republicans.

Newsome said that at a candidate forum in late May, current Republican state Sen. Dan Laursen, who’s now running for a seat on the Park County Commission, voiced discomfort with a plank strongly in favor of property rights.

“He spent his career doing water projects for the state, and sometimes you need an easement; sometimes you need to condemn some land to do an irrigation project,” Newsome related from what she recalled of Laursen’s answer.

Laursen did not respond by publication to a voicemail request for confirmation and comment.

Newsome emphasized that while the party seeks to threaten withholding its endorsement or financial backing, it can’t keep people off the ballot.

To her, she added, the people of her precinct — not the party — are the judge of whether she’s worthy to serve.

[{"type":"text","text":"‘Buncha RINOs’"}]

Jimmy Rush is campaigning to become Park County Clerk. He told Cowboy State Daily in a Thursday phone interview that he agrees 100% with the party platform and has no problem with the questionnaire.

He countered Newsome’s point about how the platform’s “natural death” wording, in its plank touting the right to life for every individual, is inconsistent with support for the death penalty.

“Well, I think that (plank) covers abortion,” said Rush, adding that he supports the death penalty and wishes the state were tougher on crime.

“I think that (language issue) falls more into a legal area,” Rush said. “Once you break the law, you lose your rights. Once you get convicted as a criminal you lose your rights.”

Convicted criminals retain many rights such as the due-process right of appeal and rights against cruel and unusual punishment within their prison sentence or other punishment. Convicted felons lose civic, voting and gun rights.

U.S. Supreme Court precedent allows states to enforce the death penalty and thereby remove a convict’s right to life, but only after a rigorous legal process and under limited circumstances.

Rush pointed to Park County candidates who have re-posted a Facebook post Newsome published deriding the test. He called the re-posters unoriginal.

“I think it’s a bunch of RINOs making a bunch of noise, because they’re scared to death that some absolutely true, patriot conservative Republicans are finally running for office,” he said, adding that he’s campaigning on transparency promises.

“RINO” is a pejorative acronym that means “Republican in name only.” It’s become prevalent in recent years as the divide between at least two factions of Wyoming Republicans deepens.

On the one hand, Democrats do switch to Republican voter registration so they can vote in the state’s GOP primary elections.

On the other hand, many Republicans who’ve been hit with the “RINO” 

 accuse their attackers of glossing over nuanced and grey-area issues, especially pertaining to hyper-local governance.

[{"type":"text","text":"More About The Platform"}]

The platform has remained substantially the same for the past eight years, Richard told Cowboy State Daily.

[{"type":"text","text":"The party touts the platform as a collection of “timeless truths.”"}]

Cowboy State Daily covered a platform committee at this year’s state GOP convention in April, where party delegates rejected new planks rooted in more transient issues, like the advancement of artificial intelligence, and rejected a plank calling Wyoming a Christian state — after a heated debate about biblical principles and free will.

[{"type":"text","text":"The principle behind the platform’s plank No. 23 is a hot topic now."}]

“The Wyoming Republican Party opposes any federal takeover or interference of federal, state, or local elections,” the plank says.

Numerous federal courts are now contemplating whether the U.S. Department of Justice can, under federal law, 

[{"type":"text","text":"And More About The Party"}]

The state GOP is suing the Wyoming Secretary of State's Office over a law barring the party from financially backing one Republican candidate over another ahead of the primary election, which is Aug. 18. 

That law has been interpreted over time to mean the party can't endorse candidates during the primary election cycle either, state GOP Chair Bryan Miller told delegates in April. 

The party says it has a First Amendment right to endorse and publicly vet Republican candidates. 

[{"type":"text","text":"That case is ongoing. "}]

Jones' letter says that, "Failure to achieve, or commit to, a minimum 80% support negates any candidate from receiving an endorsement at the primary election and party support, financial or otherwise, during any general election."

GOP convention 5 4 25 26

<title>Park County Republican Party Sends Platform Loyalty Tests To GOP Candidates | Cowboy State Daily</title>

“This is not a purity test,” says a letter to GOP candidates in Park County, which says they need to back at least 80% of the state platform to get support from the party. "Why would they send that out if it’s not to pigeonhole someone?” said a candidate.

Park County Republican Party Sends Platform Loyalty Tests To GOP Candidates

Heinz mark

Mark Heinz

The Clinton-era Roadless Rule on U.S. Forest Service lands, already under threat of being rescinded by the Trump administration, will be erased completely if Wyoming Republicans U.S. Sen. John Barrasso and Rep. Harriet Hageman get their way.

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, has attached an amendment to Barrasso’s Wildfire Prevention Act of 2026, calling for the Roadless Rule to be nullified.

The Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources on Wednesday passed Lee's amendment and forwarded the bill.

On the U.S. House side in May, Hageman introduced her Roadless Rule Nullification Bill.

Both Hageman’s bill and Lee’s amendment call for the 2001 U.S. Forest Service Roadless Rule to be nullified, with no possibility of it ever being reintroduced.

The Roadless Rule has forbidden new road construction on national forests across Wyoming’s high country. It’s also similarly prevented new road construction on 45 million acres of national forest lands across the West, and up to 60 million acres nationwide.

In August 2025, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins and U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz announced the first step toward rescinding the rule, as directed by the Trump administration.

A decision is still pending on Trump’s call to repeal the rule.

Hageman and others who support eliminating the Roadless Rule argue that the rule has hampered sound forest management and wildfire prevention.

Environmentalists and sportsmen’s groups balk at the idea of erasing the Roadless Rule. They claim it protects some of Wyoming’s most pristine areas, with top-notch hunting and angling opportunities.

Congressional moves against the Roadless Rule complement and bolster the Trump administration’s efforts to rescind it, according to Hageman and Barrasso.

“I have been fighting the Roadless Rule since the day it was handed down in the final 10 days of the Clinton administration,” Hageman said in a Thursday statement to Cowboy State Daily.

“The 25 years since have demonstrated how the prohibitions on roads across nearly 60 million acres of federal lands has been an environmental catastrophe as predicted,” she said. "I am glad to see the Senate take positive steps towards this devastating rule’s permanent repeal.”

Barrasso shares Hageman’s concerns about the impact the rule has had over the past 25 years.

“Senator Barrasso has been publicly opposed to the Clinton Roadless Rule for decades. He applauded Secretary Rollins and the Trump administration for rescinding this rule last year,” according to a statement from Barrasso’s office Thursday to Cowboy State Daily.

“This amendment would codify the administration’s efforts to rescind this outdated rule, while also respecting states’ rights to create their own rules,” the statement says.

The Roadless Rule has long been controversial. In June 2025, Hageman blasted it, saying it leaves Wyoming more 

Vast roadless areas prevent the removal of swaths of dead timber and other wildfire fuel, Hageman said. And a lack of roads makes it difficult for firefighting crews to reach remote areas when blazes break out.

However, some sportsmen’s and outdoor groups claim the Roadless Rule protects some of Wyoming’s greatest outdoor treasures.

"Repealing the Roadless Rule would affect 45 million acres of our country’s National Forests,” said the Outdoor Alliance. "These are the places we ride, hike, bike, ski, and climb, and they help protect clean air and water across the country.”

The Outdoor Alliance disagrees with Hageman and Barrasso, saying that “roadless areas also allow for active management of wildfire.”

The Wilderness Society goes further, calling the legislation “bad news” in a Wednesday statement.

“A new bill introduced by Senator John Barrasso (WY) and backed by Senator Mike Lee (UT) would strike down protections for 45 million acres of national forests by nullifying the Roadless Area Conservation Rule,” the group says in a statement. 

The bill “masquerades as a solution to the wildfire crisis, but would make matters worse by overthinning naturally resilient forests and increasing the risk of human ignitions when wildland firefighting forces are already stretched thin by the administration’s reckless cuts,” the Wilderness Society says.

Roadless areas are vital to Western hunting and angling, Devin O’Dea, the Western policy and conservation manager for Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, previously told Cowboy State Daily. 

“These are places we know are really valuable from a hunting and fishing perspective,” he said. 

Retired U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service grizzly bear biologist Chris Servheen is a vocal supporter of the Roadless Rule.

Speaking during a May rally Washington, D.C., Servheen said that rescinding the rule is bound to 

That, in turn could derail efforts to delist grizzlies from federal Endangered Species protection in the Lower 48, he said.

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<title>Amended Barrasso Bill Would Erase Clinton-Era Roadless Rule | Cowboy State Daily</title>

The Clinton-era Roadless Rule on U.S. Forest Service lands will be erased if Wyoming Republicans U.S. Sen. John Barrasso and Rep. Harriet Hageman get their way. “I have been fighting the Roadless Rule since the day it was handed down,” said Hageman.

Amended Barrasso Bill Would Erase Clinton-Era Roadless Rule

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's business and tourism reporter, Renée Jean

Renée Jean

Business & Tourism

Business

CHEYENNE — There was a seismic shift months ago behind the scenes with Wyoming’s largest data center development, Project Jade. 

Crusoe, the company that was constructing the buildings for the massive 2.7-gigawatt data center, packed up its stuff and left.

The exit happened quickly and quietly, without the fanfare of press releases and company statements that had preceded the project, which at buildout would use nearly triple the power consumption of the entire state of Wyoming. 

Crusoe’s about face was so quiet, in fact, that few people outside the project even realized anything had happened at all.

That was until Tuesday, when the company was quoted in passing in a Bloomberg article saying that its data center client had asked Crusoe to pause construction of Project Jade, even as the company announced another 5 gigawatts worth of data center infrastructure for Crusoe Cloud. 

Crusoe’s statement made it seem as though Project Jade itself might be on hold or looking for a new partner, but nothing could be further from reality, officials for partner Tallgrass Energy told Cowboy State Daily on background. 

Work on Project Jade never stopped — not even for a minute — following Crusoe’s exit roughly two months ago, Cowboy State Daily was told Wednesday morning. 

Tallgrass officials are now working directly with the data center client and have been “full steam ahead” since Crusoe’s exit.

Black Hills Corp., the parent company of Black Hills Energy, meanwhile released a statement to the same effect, saying that the data center project has not been on pause.

“We remain committed to supporting the project’s data center customer and delivering the infrastructure necessary to meet their long-term energy needs,” President and CEO Linn Evans said. “The project has not been paused and continues to represent a significant opportunity for the company. Our efforts remain fully directed toward successfully delivering the project.”

Black Hills Corp’s statement added that its Wyoming subsidiary, Black Hills Energy, agreed in April to procure long lead-time generation equipment with the prospective customer to support the project, which will be served under Wyoming’s large-load tariff. 

“The customer has provided over $200 million in refundable contributions in aid of construction to date in support of milestone payments to secure generation equipment,” the statement says. “Additionally, the company executed a substation agreement with the large-load customer, and filed a CPCN (Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity) for a substation to support the project in January 2026.”

Project Jade, located in the Switchgrass Industrial Park along Highway 85 south of Cheyenne, is the largest data center yet announced in Wyoming and has received widespread attention because of that. 

Initially, the data center was announced as a 1.8-gigawatt facility. Later, during a Laramie County Commission meeting, company officials said the 

 — almost three times what the entire state of Wyoming uses when it comes to power. 

The facility can ultimately scale to 10 gigawatts of capacity.

Project Jade has always planned to build its own power, which company officials said avoids burdening the local power grid. It will also use a closed-loop system to cool its servers to minimize water use.

The closed-loop system will take an initial 20 households worth of water to fill, company officials have told Laramie County commissioners, and will come from aquifers far below those that supply water to residents of Laramie County and Cheyenne. 

Annual water use will be around three households, once the closed-loop system is filled.

Project plans show five buildings of up to 800,000 square feet. These will have their own onsite wastewater treatment and septic systems.

The company’s efforts to mitigate impact to the community do not stop at water and power. It also included building new roads into its facility to relieve pressure on existing routes, as well as a $2.9 million commitment to help the city of Cheyenne build affordable housing.

The company doesn’t plan to use man camps to house construction workers. Instead, it plans to use a range of local housing, including long- and short-term rentals, hotels and motels, RV accommodations, and other solutions. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Three Projects In One"}]

What the public has been calling Project Jade has actually always been three distinct but intertwined projects, Tallgrass officials said.

There was the power plant itself, a natural-gas-fired facility that includes large turbine generators and fuel-cell systems, which is what Tallgrass is developing. 

That is now being referred to by the company as the Cheyenne Power Hub. 

There are the data center buildings, which are essentially warehouse-like shells that will one day hold the racks of computing power for the unnamed data center client. 

That was in Crusoe’s court as the data center client who will eventually use all the computing capacity that’s built out in the data center.

Crusoe’s exit, which happened early this year, changes just one thing in all of that, Tallgrass officials said — the eventual sign on the buildings.

Everything else has stayed functionally the same, including the client. 

Dirt work at the site has already begun, Tallgrass officials say, leading up to construction of the power plant itself, which is the longest lead-time item. 

Work on the power generators is expected to ramp up this summer and will be brought on in phases. The first available phase is expected to begin operating sometime in 2027.

Service to the data center client is targeted for early 2028, after which the project is expected to create more than 100 permanent jobs.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Who Is Tallgrass"}]

Tallgrass has long operated large-scale, multi-commodity infrastructure, including more than 10,000 miles of pipeline and energy-related assets across 14 states.

The company has been in Wyoming for the past 10 years, where it has its third largest employee base at more than 200 existing employees. It operates more than 3,000 miles of natural gas, crude oil, water, and carbon dioxide pipelines.

Some of its infrastructure includes carbon dioxide wells for carbon capture, including some assets that are in the vicinity of Project Jade. The carbon capture capabilities have been touted as a vital element of building out the data center.

In the last three years, Tallgrass has invested almost a billion dollars into Wyoming’s economy. Its investment on Project Jade dwarfs that at $7 billion.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Crusoe Still Busy"}]

No one is saying publicly why Crusoe left the project, or whether the data center client is the one who asked them to leave.

Crusoe did not respond to Cowboy State Daily inquiries about its exit, and Tallgrass officials said they learned of Crusoe’s public statements the same way everyone else did — by reading about it in Bloomberg’s article.

While the reasons Crusoe exited the project remain unclear, one thing that isn’t unclear is just how busy Crusoe is right now.

Even after stepping away from Project Jade, Crusoe has more than 40 gigawatts worth of projects either in its total development pipeline or under active negotiation, according to its website. 

Its Bloomberg comments, meanwhile, came with an announcement of 5 more gigawatts for the Crusoe Cloud.

The company is widely expected by industry experts to go public and has been actively working on a pre-IPO funding round north of $10 billion.

Carson Kearl, a data center analyst for energy data analyst Enverus, said more dance steps are ahead for the data center space.

“There are a bunch of these Crusoe-like developers across the Lower 48 with announced projects of significant scale and capacity,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “I would say a majority of them do not have a publicly disclosed tenant or an off taker. 

"Our view is the reason they don’t have those disclosed is because they don’t have them, period.”

Kearl has been tracking data center capacity in various stages of discussion across the nation and said he expects as much as 80% to 85% of the projects to get canceled purely as a function of "supply chain constraints on the data center side of things, like how many chips are actually available between now and about 2030.”

Wyoming, as a state with lots of wide-open space and abundant energy, meanwhile, is well-positioned, to capture the real projects, Kearl added. 

In the race to build out data centers and capture market share first, Wyoming offers exactly what these companies want. 

“The ability to do behind-the-meter projects in an area where you would have faster interconnection times or power timelines … is super attractive,” Kearl said. “Everyone’s kind of working to try and make that faster, to level the playing field.”

Building your own power is not an inexpensive tactic, however.

“You’ll be well into the $100-plus-a-megawatt-hour range,” he said. “And then if you layer in the CCS (carbon capture and sequestration), it would probably be even higher, into the mid-$100 range.”

Crusoe and cheyenne sign 6 11 26

<title>Partner Pulling Out Doesn’t Slow Huge 2.7GW Cheyenne Project Jade Data Center | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Crusoe, a founding partner in the huge 2.7-gigawatt Project Jade data center near Cheyenne, quietly pulled out months ago. That hasn’t slowed the project, which is going “full steam ahead,” remaining partner Tallgrass Energy told Cowboy State Daily.

Partner Pulling Out Doesn’t Slow Huge 2.7GW Cheyenne Project Jade Data Center

CHEYENNE — Seven of the 10 Republican candidates running to become Wyoming’s next U.S. House candidate courted a largely Christian audience Tuesday in Cheyenne, with statements on their faith, and their different approaches to education, family rights, and abortion policy. 

The Wyoming Family Alliance is an advocacy group that strives to advance biblical, generally faith-based policy objectives. The group’s president posed a series of questions at a packed event Tuesday evening in The Metropolitan Downtown, to these seven GOP candidates:

State Senate President Bo Biteman, former Superintendent of Public Instruction Jillian Balow, philanthropist and conservative thought leader Steve Friess, Casper-based combat veteran Kevin Christensen, Army Ranger David Giralt, Secretary of State Chuck Gray, and Moran rancher Frank Chapman. 

Casper businessman Reid Rasner, former Democratic lawmaker Keith Goodenough, and Richard Dodson – a second former Democrat in the GOP race – did not attend the event. 

Seven of the 10 Republican candidates running to become Wyoming’s next U.S. House candidate courted a largely Christian audience Tuesday with statements on their faith, and their different approaches to education, family rights, and abortion policy. 

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