It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming for Friday, May 15th. I’m Mac Watson.
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The 460 miles of Highway 287 in Wyoming would be called the "Trump Interstate" if federal legislation passes renaming the entire highway stretching from Texas to Montana. Cowboy State Daily’s Greg Johnson reports that The “I-47 Future Interstate Act” would designate the stretch of US-287 in Wyoming as a future interstate.
“It kind of makes sense for Wyoming, because as a state, Wyoming, showed more support for Trump than any other in all three of his presidential elections, by percentage, the last one in 2024 that 71% of the Wyoming voters voted for Trump. It appears this is just a naming proposal to rename it. It doesn't call for widening the highway for spending millions or billions of dollars on infrastructure for it. Who knows what would happen in the future with it actually being an interstate. But the proposal that's on the bid now is it actually says for ‘future interstate.’”
The bill was introduced by Texas Republican U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, and co-sponsored by Wyoming Sen. Cynthia Lummis, and would rename the nearly 1,800 miles of U.S. 287 as I-47.
Read the full story HERE.
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The Wyoming Supreme Court on Thursday overturned a judge's block of the state’s $50 million school choice program. Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that state schools chief Megan Degenfelder says she’s “thrilled by the unanimous decision.”
“The Wyoming Supreme Court disagreed with that finding and said that there was abusive discretion, which means they believe that the judge read and applied the law wrongly, and they undid the block on the school choice program, and they sent the whole case back down for further proceedings in the lower court. Superintendent of public instruction, Megan Degenfelder, said that she is thrilled with the remand and that she's going to restart the program immediately.”
In 2024 and 2025, the Wyoming Legislature crafted and funded the Steamboat Legacy Scholarship program, which sought to give $7,000 per family in public money to state-contractor held accounts, which then would transfer the money to approved private and homeschool programs for qualifying families.
Read the full story HERE.
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When a Georgia data center quietly drew 30 million gallons of water during a drought, no one noticed until residents’ water pressure dropped. Cowboy State Daily’s Renee Jean reports that this controversy is causing concern in Cheyenne where 70-some data centers are in various stages of discussion.
“This story gained traction in Cheyenne with a lot of people who are questioning data centers, because, you know, 30 million gallons is a lot of water to suddenly slip out the door, especially when you're in a drought. All the water in Wyoming is allocated. Somebody owns it. And so you can't just, you know, willy-nilly, add people onto the system. They have to buy that from somebody, and then that person has to give up that use.”
One notable point about the situation is that the company, Quality Technology Services, had promised it would only be using four households’ worth of water once the 615-acre campus is fully operational.
Read the full story HERE.
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A pair of animal welfare groups say they paid $15,000 to a whistleblower who “contributed meaningfully” to the criminal case against now-convicted wolf abuser Cody Roberts. Cowboy State Daily’s Kolby Fedore reports that they say the informant came forward “at great personal risk.”
“He was ultimately sentenced in April to an 18 month period of probation and ordered to pay a hefty fine of $1,500. This reward money shines a light on how tight knit this community is. It's less than 200 people. Comments on social media range from this whistleblower did the right thing to they should leave town. They should move now.”
Long before the whistleblower revelation surfaced, the case had already strained relationships and divided residents over whether Roberts’ abuse of the wolf crossed a line or whether the national outrage spiraled beyond proportion.
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 continues now…
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Rocky Mountain Power is asking Wyoming regulators for another rate hike prompted by rising costs, this time for 8.8%, the company announced Wednesday. But Cowboy State Daily’s Kate Meadows reports that customers could see rates go down first.
“Rocky Mountain Power filed this pair of regulatory requests almost back to back. One, a couple months ago, one just earlier this week, one of the requests seeks a basically a 6% decrease for consumers, starting in July, and that's because Rocky Mountain power's cost of power and fuel went down. So they're passing that off to their customers, on the back end. The second request, they are asking for an 8.8%. rate increase to take effect next year to cover basically the cost of upgrading, maintaining the supplies that they have to keep up to date with in order to deliver the power to their customers.”
The company announced the pair of regulatory requests Wednesday, also saying this — and previous — rate increase requests have nothing to do with data centers.
Read the full story HERE.
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After a Sheridan county school board voted 3-2 on Wednesday to terminate its superintendent’s contracts, two board members quit on the spot. Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that the former schools chief says a “lack of decision-making” by the board made the termination not surprising.
“He just won a school Advocacy Award for his work for public schools. It remains a question why they terminated these contracts. The one remaining school board member that talked to me said she couldn't talk about personnel, a school board member that quit way back in February, so before all this, said he was not right, a good fit for our school.”
Chase Christensen was named the 2026 Advocacy Champion of the Year by the National Association of Secondary School Principals.
He also was Wyoming's Secondary Principal of the Year for 2025.
Read the full story HERE.
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Russia’s state-run nuclear company owned Wyoming uranium assets until 2021. Cowboy State Daily’s Renee Jean reports that how that happened remains murky, but one piece of paper is to blame.
“During the Cold War, we signed that treaty with Russia, and what they were going to do is to unwind their nuclear warheads, take that uranium out of it. Russia put our uranium industry out of business over that treaty. Our uranium assets, which had once produced like 12 million pounds of ore, suddenly dropped to, you know, nothing where we were for a while there. So when things started to kick back up again for nuclear power with these AI centers.”
Until recently, the fact that Russia owned uranium rights raised few eyebrows in the nation. But that’s changed since the United States has been racing to rebuild its nuclear fuel supply chain.
Read the full story HERE.
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It’s been a year since the last sighting of Raspberry, the “Grizzly 399 of Yellowstone.” Cowboy State Daily’s Mark Heinz reports that she’s usually highly visible from the road on the park’s east side, but so far, not this year.
“Raspberry was last seen on May 23 last year. She hasn't been seen since. And a lot of people are going, you know, if she hasn't shown it, because she was like a clockwork, reliable bear, and she wasn't seen all last summer, and she hasn't been seen yet this spring. She's probably gone. There was a bear carcass found in that area, but there's some debate over whether it was hers.”
The debate over Raspberry’s mortality continues because tissue samples taken from the carcass could take up to two years to confirm a possible match.
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.
