Within a primary election season where President Donald Trump's GOP picks demolish their opponents, one of the 10 Republican hopefuls in Wyoming's hotly-contested U.S. House race received a gift on Tuesday — a letter from the White House thanking him for his work.
The White House on Tuesday sent Senate President Bo Biteman, R-Ranchester, and the Wyoming Senate an attaboy-style letter voicing appreciation for the chamber's “leadership and partnership throughout the 2026 legislative session.”
“As states continue to lead on issues ranging from economic opportunity and government accountability to education freedom public safety, energy independence and protecting tax payer dollars,” says the letter, “your efforts are helping move forward key policies aligned with President Trump’s priorities to restore prosperity, security, and opportunity for the American people.”
The letter emphasizes the Senate’s work on Senate File 123, the “Wyoming Energy Dominance Fund,” and Senate File 106, which tightened Wyoming’s ban on welfare fraud, especially involving illegal immigrants.
Alex Meyer, the president’s deputy assistant and director at the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, told Cowboy State Daily on Wednesday that 22 states received similar letters this year, but that these letters are “not something that’s ever really happened before.”
The Wyoming House of Representatives is slated to receive one as well, Meyer said.
House Speaker Chip Neiman, R-Hulett, confirmed the statement Wednesday to Cowboy State Daily, but said he hasn’t seen the House’s letter yet.
Meyer said Wyoming’s legislative chambers have been “just great partners with the administration. They’ve worked with us on a lot of issues, and passed a lot of America-first policy issues.”
President Donald Trump’s administration was more involved in the Wyoming legislative session this year than in years prior, Meyer said.
The Why
Biteman posted a copy of the letter to social media on Wednesday.
He wrote, "I’m honored to receive recognition from the @whitehouse for helping advance President Trump’s priorities during Wyoming’s legislative session."
"In Congress," added Biteman, "I look forward to continuing to work with President Trump to deliver results for Wyoming and America."
Biteman told Cowboy State Daily on Wednesday that his efforts to work with the Trump administration stemmed from a desire to help Wyoming, not to bolster the U.S. House campaign he declared in early March after the legislative session.
Neiman, who is running for a seat in the state Senate, also voiced a desire to help Wyoming and its energy sector.
“I was concerned for Wyoming. This was long before the campaign; this was during session and before session,” said Neiman.
He said his work with the White House didn’t concern his campaign at all.
“You don’t do that kind of crap just to curry favor,” Neiman said. "If that’s the only reason you’re doing this, you need to stay the heck out of this.
“I’m doing it for my grandkids. I’m trying to plant trees I know I’ll never sit in the shade of.”
Where Trump Wins
Still, recent history indicates that the president’s favor plays better than worse in red-state GOP campaigns.
Politico called it Trump’s “revenge tour.”
Trump-endorsed candidate and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton defeated the now-out-of-favor U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, in a primary runoff election Tuesday.
One week earlier, the libertarian-leaning Kentuckian and U.S. House Rep. Thomas Massie, who’s been a thorn in Trump’s side, lost to Trump-backed candidate and retired Navy SEAL Ed Gallrein.
And Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-Louisiana, lost his runoff bid earlier this month to Trump-endorsed Rep. Julia Letlow, R-Louisiana, and Louisiana Treasurer John Fleming.
Trump has not endorsed anyone in Biteman’s hotly-contested House race for the GOP nomination, where 10 Republican candidates have announced bids to run, and seven had filed as of Wednesday.
The seven who have filed are:
Biteman. Moran-based rancher Frank Chapman, former Superintendent of Public Instruction Jillian Balow, MAGA-style businessman Reid Rasner, Secretary of State Chuck Gray, Casper-based military veteran Kevin Christensen and Teton County philanthropist Steve Friess.
Friess and Rasner, and a group backing Gray, all have dispatched campaign mailers touting alignment with Trump.
Biteman told Cowboy State Daily that he has known Trump since 2021, when the latter was courting prospective candidates to challenge then-U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney,
Trump generally suits Wyoming generally because he's pro-energy and tends to back traditional social policies.
Still, he's not a perfect proxy for conservativism. For example, he banned firearm bump stocks, illegally, in his first term.
Though mighty in red states this month, Trump’s endorsement record also is not perfect in Wyoming.
In 2022, he endorsed Brian Schroeder over Megan Degenfelder for superintendent of Public Instruction.
Degenfelder won that challenge.
This year, however, Trump has endorsed Degenfelder, who vies for the GOP nomination for governor against retired Marine Col. Brent Bien and state Sen. Eric Barlow, R-Gillette.
The Wyoming primary election, which could reveal how much influence the president still has in the Cowboy State, is set for Aug. 18.
The Bud Light Treatment
Biteman told Cowboy State Daily that he and Wyoming Energy Authority Executive Director Rob Creager brainstormed the Energy Dominance Fund into a rough draft shortly after they both flew to Washington, D.C., in early 2025.
“We had a lot of support from the White House. They loved the idea,” Biteman said.
The Wyoming Energy Dominance Fund sends $105 million in state severance taxes into an investment account to give grants and loans to pilot, research, and commercial development projects in Wyoming’s energy sector.
Wind and solar projects can’t benefit from the program, state law says.
Throughout the bill’s formation and passage, which Biteman sponsored, the Senate president has cast it as a way to combat “ESG,” or investor pacts that lock traditional energy projects out of the lending industry in the name of net-zero carbon efforts.
Wyoming for nearly two years has been suing BlackRock and other investors on that same theory.
Earlier this year, investment giant Vanguard settled with Wyoming and the other states suing it, though the other investors continue to fight the lawsuit.
It remains unclear how much of the $29.5 million Vanguard settlement Wyoming is receiving.
The Wyoming Attorney General declined to comment on the pending litigation earlier this year.
What Biteman cast as the ESG chokehold is subsiding, he said.
“There was so much backlash and you know, pushback, rom a lot of the energy-producing states and the general public,” said Biteman. “It was kind of like the Bud Light treatment: go woke, go broke.”
But Biteman remains concerned that big investors will revive the effort to bottleneck energy projects, he said.
“You can’t take your eye off these types of people, because they’ll just rebrand, repackage it in their own sort of way,” he said.
Biteman and Creager flew to the nation’s Capitol in early 2025 because they wanted Wyoming to “be the first state out there to get in front of the new administration and talk energy” after Trump’s inauguration, said Biteman.
Creager did not immediately return a Wednesday voicemail request for comment.
Welfare Fraud
Biteman said he also wanted to visit with White House officials because he believed the states could implement Trump’s campaign promises faster than Congress.
As for Senate File 106, Biteman’s “Welfare Fraud Prevention Act,” it tightens investigative mandates on the Wyoming Department of Health and the Wyoming Department of Family Services regarding the welfare benefits they offer, and who can access those.
It calls for the state to verify welfare recipients immigration status, and for both agencies to report their own fraud findings and data publicly.
Former political commentator Joey Correnti, who is now helping to run Biteman’s campaign, galvanized that idea, Biteman said.
“He had pitched that to me right before session started,” said Biteman.
Also, about a week before the session White House officials invited state leaders — including Biteman and Neiman — to an event where, Biteman recalled, “the topic of welfare fraud kept coming up.”
That event would have happened a few days after independent investigator Nick Shirley’s YouTube video about welfare fraud involving day cares in Minnesota went viral.
A woman featured in the video has been charged with a crime.
Wyoming had already banned welfare fraud.
“Our law just needed a couple small, little tweaks to make sure that people who aren’t qualified, aren’t legal citizens of the United States can’t qualify to get Medicaid in Wyoming,” said Biteman. “That’s why my bill was pretty straightforward, pretty easy.”
Neiman in his own interview also recalled welfare fraud and energy being the White House officials’ favorite topics at that gathering.
Neiman said he voiced concerns about large energy projects struggling with the stop-and-start nature of presidential administrations switching party every four to eight years.
U.S. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum replied, according to Neiman, that they’re working on it.
Burgum floated the idea of a policy to “grandfather in” prior agency permitting approvals for major energy projects that have already started, the House speaker added.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
