Free Republic

According to an email sent May 13, 2025, by Department of Natural Resources Director Dan Gibbs, Nicole Rosmarino is the sole finalist for the director of the State Land Board, which is the state’s second largest landowner with 2.8 million surface acres and 4 million mineral estate acres. Gibbs said, per statute, the board provides public notice for 14 days prior to a formal appointment which will occur at the next regularly scheduled public board meeting, which is June 11 and 12 in Denver. An email sent to DNR confirmed the hire Friday. The mission of the State Land Board...

A top financial backer of left-wing causes in the US has been accused of sexually harassing a female employee, pushing for “threesomes” with her and her future husband while they worked at his California winery — and then retaliating against them for calling out his “lewd” conduct. Swiss billionaire Hansjorg Wyss exposed himself, “brazenly groped,” and made other unwanted sexual advances toward Madison Busby before forcing her to resign her job, according to a jaw-dropping lawsuit filed April 25 in San Luis Obispo County Superior Court. ... Wyss, a resident of Teton County, Wyo., purchased the property in 2000 and...

Billionaire Hansjörg Wyss, a Swiss national who lives in Wyoming, has become a “Democrat-aligned mega-donor,” according to the Associated Press (AP), thanks to his funneling hundreds of millions of dollars to left-wing groups. “Newly available tax documents show that his giving through the Berger Action Fund, which describes itself as advocating for ‘solutions to some of our world’s biggest problems,’ swelled in 2021 to $72 million, cementing Wyss’ status as a Democratic-aligned megadonor,” the AP reports. Wyss, who built his fortune creating the medical device company Synthes USA, which was sold in 2012 to Johnson & Johnson for $20 billion,...

A liberal redistricting group funded largely through secretive donations by a Swiss billionaire is hitting the airwaves with a well-funded ad campaign attacking the "billionaires buying our elections." The new ad from the National Redistricting Action Fund, a partisan lobbying group helmed by former attorney general Eric Holder, goes after the power billionaires wield through anonymous "dark money" contributions. Unmentioned is the at least $3 million funneled anonymously to the National Redistricting Action Fund in recent years by Hansjörg Wyss, a foreign billionaire who has quietly emerged as a liberal megadonor in the United States. Wyss's dark money contributions made...

Rep. Abe Hamadeh said ranked-choice voting is pushed by corporate interests and confuses voters.. Rep. Abe Hamadeh, R-Ariz., is joining forces with a fellow freshman lawmaker to renew efforts in Congress to outlaw ranked-choice voting nationwide. Hamadeh and Rep. Nick Begich, R-Alaska, recently introduced the Preventing Ranked Choice Corruption Act that would amend the Help America Vote Act to ban ranked-choice voting. The bill pairs Begich, whose state uses ranked-choice voting, with Hamadeh, whose state has chronically dealt with issues of election integrity, and voter trust in ballot counting. "Ranked-choice voting destroys 'one person, one vote' in our country and...

Wolves in California are costing ranchers millions of dollars far beyond just the price of cattle killed, .. A Wyoming rancher says the secondary costs of predation are well-known here. ... As California’s wolf population expands, the predators there are costing ranchers millions — not just in value of the cattle killed, but through collateral effects as well ... one wolf can cause $69,000 to $162,000 in “direct and indirect losses from lower pregnancy rates in cows and decreased weight gain in calves,” .. Those results should come as no surprise to Wyoming ranchers, Jim Magagna, executive vice president of...

If you watched Donald Trump's cabinet meeting on Wednesday, you may have seen Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins hold up a photo of the Maude family of South Dakota. I'd heard a little bit about the fifth-generation ranching family before that, but I decided to learn more because I couldn't believe the story Rollins told about how the Joe Biden administration treated them. It's unbelievable. Or maybe it's not, given all we're learning about the last four years. ... Trump Admin is reversing Biden-era failures in 100 days! The U.S. Gov has dropped charges against the Maude family, victims of...

PUC Public Comment Hearing Info re: Xcel Energy JTS.. ... The PUC invites community members to provide comments regarding Xcel Energy’s Just Transition Plan (JTS), Proceeding 24A-0442E. The JTS is Xcel Energy’s next Electric Resource Plan to address the acquisition of new utility resources to meet future electricity needs on its system. The primary objectives of the JTS include fulfilling resource adequacy and providing reliable service; continuing progress on emissions reductions; and, delivering a just transition in communities where generation assets are retiring. Xcel Energy’s Unit 3 coal-fired facility in Pueblo will retire no later than Jan. 1, 2031, and...

CHEYENNE — Already facing serious federal charges for allegedly carrying 18,000 rounds of ammunition through Wyoming, Ricardo Paez-Quinones, 35, dug himself into an even deeper hole on Friday. Paez-Quinones was a no-show for his bond hearing on Friday morning in U.S. District Court, leading Judge Alan Johnson to put out a bench warrant for his arrest. Johnson suspected that the topic of his bond was what led Paez-Quinones to avoid coming to court, leading him to engage “in some form of self-help.” “We can receive an explanation for that at a later time,” Johnson remarked. Paez-Quinones is an illegal immigrant...

A 25-year-old Gillette man who is already in prison for assaulting jail officers is now accused of attacking prison guards when they wouldn’t let him keep gingerbread-making supplies in his cell. He’s serving a five-to-10-year prison term in the Wyoming State Penitentiary in Rawlins. The Carbon County Attorney’s Office charged him with felony police interference Monday, on evidence that he kicked and thrashed at prison guards. If convicted, he could receive an additional prison term of up to 20 years — 10 years on each of the two counts of felony interference he now faces. The incident dates back to...

Wyoming has become the first state in the United States to require proof of citizenship for residents to register to vote. This measure, which will take effect in July 2025, will apply to all elections: local, state, and federal.Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon allowed the voter residency bill to become law without his signature.This afternoon, WY Governor Mark Gordon allowed HB 156 to become law without his signature, establishing requirements for Proof of 1 Residency and U.S. Citizenship in order to vote!This is a major win for Election Integrity in Wyoming! pic.twitter.com/0GhziPJ1l7— American Action Fund (@AmericanActFund) March 21, 2025While Gordon did...

Four Missouri hunters who stepped diagonally from one parcel of federal land in Wyoming to another did not illegally trespass on the airspace of adjacent private property, a federal appeals court has ruled. The decision, issued by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit in Denver, firmly protects public access to millions of acres of land in the court’s six-state jurisdiction and substantially strengthens the rights of “corner-crossers” throughout the West. The case is rooted in a quirk of the region, where vast swaths of terrain have been divided since the 19th century...

West Virginia and Wyoming took major steps toward securing their elections by passing prohibitions on the use of ranked-choice voting (RCV). On Tuesday, West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey signed into law SB 490, which stipulates that “[n]o state, county, or local elections office may use ranked choice voting or instant runoff voting to conduct an election or nomination of any candidate in this state for any local government, statewide, or federal elective office.” Any “existing or future ordinance” adopted by a local government promoting the use of such a system would be declared void under the measure.Often referred to as...

The electric buses in question were made by a company called Proterra, which went bankrupt two years ago.. A city in Washington is selling nearly half of its electric bus fleet following reliability issues and difficulty getting replacement parts. The Everett City Council voted earlier this week to sell nine of the electric buses, of which only four are in service right now, because of reliability issues, including critical sensors and components that have been failing since they went into service. The city is now looking to purchase retrofitted diesel buses so there are no gaps in service. According to...

On February 27, 2025, Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon allowed Wyoming Bill 172, the “Wyoming Repeal Gun Free Zones Act”, to become law without his signature. Governor Gordon objected to the bill but said it would become law. The Wyoming Repeal Gun Free Zones Act does essentially what the name implies. It repeals most of the areas where the legislature has allowed local political entities to infringe on rights protected by the Second Amendment. From a previous AmmoLand article:Section 1 W.S. 6-8-105 is created to read:6-8-105. Exceptions for state issued concealed carry permits; penalty. (a)This section shall be known as and...

Wyoming’s only surgical abortion center will stop killing babies after the governor signed a law that requires proper licensing for abortion businesses. Wellspring Health Access, Wyoming’s only abortion biz with both surgical abortions and the abortion pill, will quit killing babies for now while it files a lawsuit against the law. This decision followed the enactment of a state law mandating that facilities doing surgical abortions be licensed as outpatient surgical centers. Additionally, the law requires abortion businesses to have hospital admitting privileges within a 10-mile radius. Both requirements are necessary for when abortion clinics injure women in botched abortions...

Traffic crashes involving large commercial trucks have been on the rise since 2016, and some in the industry are pointing to a simultaneous rise in non-English-speaking truckers. Wyoming is no stranger to deadly large-truck crashes, and had the most per capita — at 5.1 per 100,000 people — in 2022, according to data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). That’s nearly three times the national average of 1.8 fatal truck crashes per 100,000 people. Data from the National Safety Council shows fatal crashes involving large trucks rising consistently starting in 2016, from about 4,500 in the nation that...

Canadian wolves were released into Yellowstone National Park in 1995 and central Idaho in 1996 — but within a few years their territory and numbers had greatly expanded, along with their negative impact on livestock and elk herds.

A ban on ballot drop boxes appears to still be slowly moving forward in the Wyoming Legislature. Although they didn’t take a vote on it on Friday, multiple members of the Senate Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivisions Committee told Cowboy State Daily they plan to support a ban on ballot drop boxes in Wyoming but plan to make significant changes to House Bill 131 as written. Specifically, two of the swing votes on the committee, state Sen. Brian Boner, R-Douglas, and Sen. Dan Dockstader, R-Afton, both told Cowboy State Daily they plan to support the bill when it’s heard again...

In the Wyoming Legislature, House Bill 172 passed House 50-10 on January 23, 2025. The bill eliminates most gun free zones and strengthens the Wyoming preemption bill for firearms. The bill would allow limited regulation by government entities of government employees’ ability to carry in government buildings and schools.Here are some relevant sections fom the wyoleg.gov:Section 1 W.S. 6-8-105 is created to read:6-8-105. Exceptions for state issued concealed carry permits; penalty. (a)This section shall be known as and may be cited as the “Wyoming Repeal Gun Free Zones Act.” (b) Persons lawfully carrying concealed weapons in Wyoming under W.S. 6‑8-104(a)(ii)...