It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming for Tuesday, October 7th. I’m Mac Watson, bringing you headlines from the Cowboy State Daily news center… “Brought to you by the Wyoming Business Council. Wyoming youth are our future, but they're leaving the state at ALMOST TWICE the national average. What would bring them back home? Share your bold ideas with the Wyoming Business Council at wbc dot P U B backslash story."
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A shocking discovery out of the Capitol in Washington D.C. as nine Republicans in Congress were informed that they were being spied on by the FBI. Cowboy State Daily’s Sean Barry reports from DC that the bombshell revelation was announced Monday afternoon by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, and the junior senator from Wyoming was one of the nine.
“Senator Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming was in for a shock today, told by FBI personnel that her name was on a memo during the Biden era. FBI her name, along with those of eight other Republican lawmakers being spied on. She was one of nine federal lawmakers in all on this memo, all of them Republicans being spied on in connection with the January 6 Capitol riot probe known as Arctic frost that, of course, led by Special Counsel Jack Smith.”
Senator Lummis was informed of the document by FBI personnel at a Monday meeting just ahead of Grassley’s release of the document, a spokesman for Lummis, told Cowboy State Daily in a phone interview.
Read the full interview HERE.
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A Cody man accused of killing a Cheyenne woman he’d been stalking in 2019 was sentenced Monday to a term of between 13 years, two months in prison – and 14-and-a-half years in prison. But as Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports, Underwood wasn't being sentenced for murder.
“Wyoming has a law that you have to be well enough to be well enough to understand what's going in court participate in your defense, and he was not. And so they they basically let him go Park County was like, absolutely not. We've got some stuff we can charge him with here, and that was disposing of a dead body to conceal a felony, possessing a firearm despite a prior violent felony conviction, interfering with police and eluding. And so they charge him with all four of those, which was what they had. And then on Monday, Judge Bill Simpson did go ahead and give the max on every single one.”
Underwood received credit for the three years and three months he has spent in jail awaiting sentencing.
Read the full story HERE.
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President Donald Trump has focused efforts on sending the National Guard from numerous states, to control what he believes is unchecked crime in cities like Portland, Washington, D.C., and Chicago. Cowboy State Daily’s Steve Bohnel reports
one of Wyoming’s two Democratic state senators said this shows why the Wyoming legislature should pass a bill aiming to protect the state’s autonomy regarding those troops.
“It's just kind of a reminder that, there's been this law on the books, and it's important to note that there's a lot of Republicans that have signed on to this law in recent years. One of them is representative Daniel Singh but it's interesting him and some other legislatures have used kind of this argument that this bill should be on the books to prevent our national guard from being deployed in foreign wars, which is kind of a separate issue from what Senator Rothfuss had mentioned.”
Specifically, the “Defend the Guard Act” has never passed the legislature but if it became law, the act still would let the governor consent to use the guard as defense support in “civil authority missions” in the U.S. and its territories.
Read the full story HERE.
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Neda Herman started hunting at 15 and has been on countless elk hunts in Colorado and Wyoming. Cowboy State Daily’s Mark Heinz reports at age 83, she said this year’s opening day hunt was one of the best she’s ever had.
“She and her son Todd, went up opening day, October 1 in the big horns, and she had an elk down at first light, and they had it all packed up and packed out by noon. And I asked her, you know, are you going to go next year and she said, You know what? If I feel good, then as I do now, yeah, I'll probably go again next year.”
Neda learned how to hunt from her father growing up in the Steamboat Springs area of Colorado.
Read the full story HERE.
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There have been a few instances throughout Wyoming’s history of contention between state leaders and their local counterparts in Wyoming. Cowboy State Daily’s Jackson Walker reports leaders are saying they’re just doing their job.
“We've seen multiple hearings now where state representatives will come and testify on local issues and receive a lot of pushback from those involved…I spoke to local, county and state leaders to try to figure out what the solution is to this issue, and while nobody is exactly certain, we know that this is going to make for a very interesting coming state budget session.”
Now local and county board members are growing exasperated with what they call “undue influence” from state lawmakers. But lawmakers countered, saying they're giving their constituents a stronger voice.
Read the full story HERE.
I’ll be back with more news, right after this.
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A Casper woman and popular cashier at Walmart continues to recover from burns in a Denver Hospital following a house fire early Friday morning that claimed her family’s possessions and pets. Cowboy State Daily’s Dale Killingbeck reports Charity King, her husband and son were able to escape the fire with just the clothes on their backs.
“From what the fire department reported on Facebook they got there and there was flames coming out of the door, but the family had been able to escape by that point, but not before. This Walmart cashier was burned, and apparently her husband was also burned and suffered some smoke inhalation, and their son was also in the house.”
Charity told Cowboy State Daily her home is a total loss.
Read the full story HERE.
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When the Beartooth Highway closed at noon Friday, there wasn’t a single snowflake on the pavement. But Monday afternoon, U.S. 212 was still closed as nearly 1 foot of fresh snow was being plowed off the road. Cowboy State Daily’s Andrew Rossi says this snowstorm was a bit different.
“Getting snow in the first week of October isn't unexpected, because it's just the seasonal change in progress. So we got about eight to 10 inches in most of the mountains. Some places recorded up to a foot of snow, not as much as the 16 inches they were calling for. The more telling thing is that some of that snow was able to penetrate into lower elevations. We had spots as low as 5000 feet, reporting snowflakes in the air and maybe even a small accumulation on the ground.”
The National Park Service announced that several corridors through Yellowstone National Park were closed for most of the weekend due to "hazardous weather and road conditions."
Read the full story HERE.
– Carbon County Sheriff’s Office personnel have a “pretty good idea” who lit part of the state’s law book on fire and threw it from the window of a Cadillac SUV in front of the courthouse Monday. Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that if the person or persons wanted to send a message by burning certain pages, it was an odd selection.
“It was actually title 20, title 41 which pertains to water, and they threw the burning pages out of a moving vehicle right in front of the courthouse, which also happens to be the sheriff's office headquarters. Whether it was a protest or not, that's a misdemeanor in Wyoming, punishable by up to six months in jail. And Carbon County Sheriff Alex Bakken, who's often outspoken, did a cheeky post about it, basically saying you can come and get your charred law books here.”
The sheriff told Cowboy State Daily by phone that fortunately, it wasn’t windy in the morning, so the fire was easily put out. They are looking for a suspect.
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 watching - I’m Mac Watson, for Cowboy State Daily.
