It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming for Tuesday, December 30th. I’m Mac Watson.
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Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray announced Monday that he’s running for the state’s lone U.S. House seat. Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports what Gray would do for Wyoming if elected to Congress.
“A lot of pointing to his backing of election reform, a lot of pointing to his alignment with Trump. There's, you know, references to Bannon crossover voting after a certain point…he said that Wyoming needs someone who's going to advance Trump's agenda, and he pointed to his long standing emphasis on election reform in Wyoming.”
The Republican incumbent, U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman, told Cowboy State Daily last week that she’s running rather for the soon-to-be vacated seat of U.S. Sen. Cynthia Lummis.
Read the full story HERE.
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December was dominated by record-highs, but Yellowstone's Old Faithful plunged to -27 Sunday, the coldest spot in the Lower 48. Cowboy State Daily’s Andrew Rossi reports that those temps won’t last, however, with the weather expected to rebound.
“As we get into the final days of December, we're looking at more of the same. It is going to get unseasonably warm again, but not up into the 60s, more into the high 40s, lower 50s, which is still warm for this time of year, unseasonably warm, but not as high as we were experiencing over the Christmas holiday. When will that change? It's hard to say the pattern that's been blocking winter weather from reaching Wyoming is breaking up…And talking to Cowboy State daily meteorologist Don day, he said that December 2010 was very analogous to December 2025 and what happened in 2011 after that warm December, there was a transition in January where things got cooler, and then winter hit us hard, going into February and March.”
Forecasters tell Cowboy State Daily this is destined to be one of the warmest, driest Decembers in Wyoming’s history as multiple high temperature records were broken across Wyoming just days before.
Read the full story HERE.
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The Industrial Siting Division said Monday during a hearing on the Chugwater wind and solar project that a critic filed fraudulent documents to contest it. Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that the critic, a news editor in southeast Wyoming, says it's the agency that violated the law.
“A wind critic in southeast Wyoming filed three fraudulent documents with it that when it was trying to confirm the authenticity of these documents, their two purported authors said, No, we didn't. We didn't make these…The person who filed, who offered those documents to the division is Marie Hamilton. She's a resident of southeast Wyoming, also the editor of a news publication in that corner of the state. And when I interviewed her, she was like, you know, they had information about my son in them, and it was wrong of the division to discuss them in public like they did today during this controversy.”
The proposed build by NextEra Energy Resources is a 300-megawatt wind energy, 150 megawatt solar and 150 megawatt battery storage system (BESS) facility slated for a Platte County parcel east of Chugwater and Interstate 25.
Read the full story HERE.
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Governor Gordon announced on Monday that years of sexual and physical abuse of multiple adopted children in Casper should be enough for a federal agency to rescind a Wyoming couple’s National Adoption Excellence Award. Cowboy State Daily’s Greg Johnson reports that Sharon Kassel wrote the Governor to intercede and petition the Administration for Children and Families to pull back the 2013 award given to Steven and Kristen Marler.
“This woman who was familiar with this case. Her niece was one of the main investigators on it. So she was very aware of it. She grew up in Casper, lives out of state now, but she she, she has huge ties to the state, and she just couldn't let it go…She couldn't get it out of her head that this guy who was convicted of these crimes is still on this list as being like one of the best foster parents in the nation, that it just was counterintuitive to that, that she just thought it was wrong. And so she thought, ‘How can we get that done? How can we get that taken off?’ So she wrote a letter to Governor Gordon.”
Steven Marler was sentenced in August to 128-178 years in prison for sexually and physically abusing two adopted daughters, as well as physical abuse of four other children in the couple’s care.
Read the full story HERE.
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I’ll be back with more news from Cowboy State Daily right after this.
Cowboy State Daily news returns now…
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With prices for silver hitting record highs as the year closes out, some in Wyoming are selling their silver. Cowboy State Daily’s Renee Jean reports that silver’s value is more than just making coins.
“For the last five years now, demand for silver has been greater than supply, so we've got a shortage going on. China just announced that they're going to put export restrictions on silver. Silver is needed for a lot of things. Industry uses it for a lot of things…one of the things they do with silver now, is they make these RFID chips that are replacing barcodes. Barcodes were great for tracking inventory, tracking prices in a computer system, but an RFID can do that, and it can be your theft prevention.”
As of Monday morning, silver hit an all-time high of $82.67 a troy ounce in early morning trading, triple what the precious metal was worth a year ago.
Read the full story HERE.
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The Wyoming Department of Transportation is updating its Statewide Rail Plan. Cowboy State Daily’s David Madison reports that the agency is considering the potential for a return of passenger rail.
“The younger generations don't have the patience for the stop-and-go traffic, and they're really calling for more rail service. And so that's an increasing constituency, the new generation of professionals commuting up and down the Rocky Mountain Front in Colorado, which kind of extends into Cheyenne. Folks commute out of Cheyenne down to Colorado. So maybe one day they'll be, instead of getting in their car…they'll be able to go to a passenger pickup spot.”
WYDOT has launched an online public meeting for the plan update, open for feedback through Jan. 31, 2026, at WY State Wide Rail Plan dot com.
Read the full story HERE.
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A former inmate at Wyoming’s boot camp for youthful offenders is suing the state Department of Corrections and agency officials. Cowboy State Daily’s Scott Schwebke reports that Logan Gosselin is claiming excessive exercise forced on inmates caused him to suffer permanent organ damage.
“He arrived sometime after October 2023, and underwent an initial intake process. And the problem was that, according to the lawsuit, he was screened by two peer inmates, not by medical staff…They put him in a serious exercise regimen that lasted like three hours. He collapsed four times on that first on that first exercise, and then after that, I mean, hours later, he was made to do another three hours. And this continued on, and he was complaining of blood in his urine, and he couldn't walk. He had muscle problems, yet they continued to push him, and eventually they did a urinalysis and found out that his kidneys and liver were failing, so he had to go to ICU at the medical center in Casper, and had to go under dialysis for 20 days.”
In the recent lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court in Cheyenne, the 23-year-old Gosselin of Colorado is accusing Wyoming Department of Corrections Director Daniel Shannon, former Wyoming State Penitentiary Warden Neicole Molden, and several prison employees and medical professionals of negligence and violating constitutional protections against cruel and unusual punishment. The lawsuit seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.
Read the full story HERE.
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The Dry Gulchers gang ran their own agenda around Sheridan in the 1960s, robbing banks, hanging outlaws and harassing tourists. Cowboy State Daily’s Jackie Dorothy reports that these local businessmen were part of a posse that staged fake Wild West adventures for tourists.
“The Dry Gulchers got their start in Sheridan because of the Silver Jubilee, they were celebrating the 75th anniversary of this great city, and they were just a bunch of businessmen that got together and said, ‘How can we celebrate in style?’ And so they brought the Wild West back and this eventually led to them kidnapping tourists, having shootouts in the middle of the street, jailing local businessmen, their competitors, and all sorts of shenanigans that would go on for years during the 1960s.”
Former Dry Gulcher, Mike Kuzara tells Cowboy State Daily that people were encouraged to go by and heckle whoever was in jail. Then their friends would have to bail them out, and that bail money went to the Sheraton Chamber of Commerce.
Read the full story HERE.
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.
