Free Republic

Mary Payne always liked the idea of a one-room schoolhouse. She grew up reading Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “Little House on the Prairie” series and appreciated the concept of various ages learning together and a more practical, hands-on approach to education. More so, she and her husband Michael weren’t thrilled with their experience with public schools back home in Illinois and had been looking for alternatives for their 5-year-old son after moving to Wyoming. When they heard about something called a microschool in Campbell County, Homestead Learning, they decided to check it out. The couple liked what they saw and decided...

Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that former Vice President Dick Cheney endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris because former President Donald Trump endorsed Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-WY), who beat an incumbent Liz Cheney. Host Dana Bash said, “I want to start with some of the endorsements that Kamala Harris got this week, particularly from former Congresswoman Liz Cheney and her father, the former Republican Vice President Dick Cheney.”

DOUGLAS — Former Vice President Dick Cheney and former congresswoman Liz Cheney escaped censure by the Wyoming Republican Party at its central committee meeting on Saturday because those in the state GOP don’t consider them “Wyoming Republicans” anymore. The Cheneys both said earlier in the week that they will vote for Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris in her bid for president because they oppose former President Donald Trump. At the Wyoming GOP’s Central Committee meeting on Saturday, the party declined to pass a resolution censuring the Cheneys because most of the membership does not view them as “Wyoming Republicans.” A...

Former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney, who has been a fierce critic of Donald Trump, says she will support Democratic candidate Kamala Harris for president.

A series of delays placed a Black Hawk pilot and a former athletic trainer in the right place and time to rescue a wrecked and hurt airplane pilot from a fire outside Meeteetse, Wyoming, on Sunday. When the pilot’s plane went down, it had sparked a fire in the trees around him. Steve Atencio and J.R. Larsen were out looking for big horn sheep Sunday morning so they could fill Larsen’s hunting tag, the pair told Cowboy State Daily in a Tuesday interview. Atencio is a Black Hawk pilot for the Wyoming Army Guard in Cheyenne and has a background...

At a recent town hall meeting in Jackson, Wyoming, Rep. Harriet Hageman, R-Wyo., offered a simple proposal. If Boulder, Colorado, truly believes that fossil fuels are so destructive, why not prove that life is better without them by giving them up? Anti-fossil fuel crusaders and renewable energy proponents have been unsuccessful in producing a demonstration project in which a small town powers its electricity grid entirely on wind, solar and batteries for at least one year. The idea of such a project was first proposed by Francis Menton, who publishes the “Manhattan Contrarian.” If we’re investing trillions of dollars on...

Not even the members of the farther right Wyoming Freedom Caucus expected to dominate Tuesday’s Republican primary the way it did. Barring an unlikely Democratic surge and/or storm of Independent candidates in the general election, the Freedom Caucus is likely to have a comfortable majority in the Wyoming House for the upcoming session. With that in mind, House Majority Floor Leader Rep. Chip Neiman, R-Hulett, could have a relatively easy path in getting elected Speaker of the House, a campaign Neiman confirmed to Cowboy State Daily on Friday he intends to pursue. “I’m going to offer my time and services,”...

In Sweetwater County, Republican voters split in electing representatives, sending two incumbents packing and putting incumbent Reps. J.T. Larson and Cody Wylie, both of Rock Springs, back in Cheyenne. Challengers Darin McCann and Marlene Brady will represent Sweetwater County after ousting incumbent Reps. Clark Stith of Rock Springs and Tony Niemiec of Green River, according to complete but unofficial results. snip “I’m kind of saddened, not just for me,” said Niemiec, one of two Sweetwater incumbents upset by the Freedom Caucus tide. “It looks like the Freedom Caucus will be in power in the House.” He predicted “cuts, cuts, cuts”...

CHEYENNE — Laramie County’s currently longest-serving state legislator, Rep. Dan Zwonitzer, and his father, Rep. David Zwonitzer, both lost their seats in Tuesday’s primary. The Cheyenne Republican lawmakers were ousted by their Wyoming Freedom Caucus-endorsed opponents, Ann Lucas in House District 44 and Steve Johnson in HD 8.

Rep. Albert Sommers (R-Pinedale) lost to a political newcomer in a close-fought contest for a state Senate seat Tuesday, an upset that ousts one of the most influential figures in Wyoming politics in recent years. Laura Taliaferro Pearson, a sheep rancher and school bus driver who lives north of Kemmerer, thanked the residents of her four-county district late on Tuesday as she held onto a small lead. The Associated Press called the race around 11 p.m., when Pearson topped Sommers by a 3.4% margin. “I’m thrilled to be a senator representing our great state,” she told WyoFile. “It means the...

Freedom Caucus contender Darin McCann, R-Rock Springs, beat State House District 48 Rep. Clark Stith in a stunning upset in the Republican primary race in Sweetwater County that turned heated over accusations of “crossover voting.” The loss for Stith, R- Rock Springs, the speaker pro tempore, was tough to swallow for the legislator who was seeking a full fourth term in office. "Serving in the Wyoming Legislature was the honor of a lifetime,” Stith told Cowboy State Daily. “Voters in my district want change and change they’ll get,” Stith added. “They will get anti-government change. I expect less support for...

The Wyoming Legislature will look distinctly different when it convenes for its 68th session in January. In Tuesday night’s Republican primary, longtime legislators went down left and right. Most notable was House Speaker Albert Sommers, R-Pinedale, who lost his bid for Senate District 14 to Kemmerer resident Laura Taliaferro Pearson by 156 votes. Sommers had served in the Legislature since 2013. The main beneficiary of the upheaval: The Wyoming Freedom Caucus, a conservative movement that has positioned itself farther right of more mainstream conservatives, including many incumbents its members have deemed to be part of the “establishment.” All together, Cowboy...

A new Wyoming pro-choice abortion group is raising some eyebrows for supporting three Republican state House candidates in Tuesday’s primary election. Wyoming United for Freedom is supporting the campaigns of House District 57 candidate Julie Jarvis in Casper, House District 50 candidate David Hill in Cody, and House District 43 candidate state Rep. Dan Zwonitzer, R-Cheyenne. The group has engaged personalized postcard writing for the candidates in response to a host of out-of-state mailers the candidates have been targeted with. Jarvis is taking on Rep. Jeanette Ward, R-Casper, and Hill is facing Rep. Rachel Rodriguez-Williams, R-Cody, two vocal pro-life legislators...

Ranchers across the U.S. have expressed outrage over the Forest Service prosecuting a South Dakota ranch couple for allegedly stealing public land. The feds, who showed up armed and in tactical gear, say a fence that’s been on the owners' land for 75 years crosses a boundary with federal grasslands. A South Dakota ranch couple is fighting federal indictments served to them by a U.S. Forest Service agent who allegedly showed up unannounced on their front steps — armed and in tactical gear. The agent was there to serve them with indictments in a modern-day range war between the ranchers...

At the close of the Supreme Court’s last term, Justice Neil Gorsuch concurred in the court’s 6-3 decision discarding the 40-year-old Chevron doctrine, which required Article III judges to defer to federal agencies when Congress’s statutory language is ambiguous. Gorsuch noted while “sophisticated entities” can hire lawyers and lobbyists to “keep pace” with ever-changing regulatory provisions, “ordinary people” cannot. It is they, wrote the associate justice from Colorado, who are the beneficiaries of Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo. In Over Ruled: The Human Toll of Too Much Law, Gorsuch and his co-author, former Supreme Court clerk Janie Nitze, write expansively...

U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman, R-Wyoming, was teary-eyed and fought back her emotions talking about her family’s loss this week of her childhood home, which went up in flames when Wyoming’s largest wildfire roared through the Haystack Range. The Hageman homestead, a rustic cabin-like structure with plastered walls and built into the side of a hill near McGinnis Pass, Wyoming, was destroyed by an uncontained wildfire in rough terrain littered with huge granite boulders and tinder fueled with juniper pinions woodland and sagebrush. “It’s been pretty devastating,” Hageman told Cowboy State Daily. Back in Washington, D.C., doing what she does there,...

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will spend $5 million to vaccinate livestock workers against the seasonal flu in an effort to prevent possible interaction with bird flu, officials said today, July 30. If someone gets both the H5N1 (highly pathogenic avian influenza) and seasonal flu, the result could be “an exchange of genetic material” that could do what scientists call “reassortment” and the development of a new influenza virus, said Nirav Shah, the principal deputy director at CDC. Shah spoke to reporters in a call organized by the Health and Human Services Department. The $5 million will go...

The ruling requires the administration to keep processing new applications to export LNG as the Texas-led lawsuit proceeds. Attorney General Ken Paxton obtained a temporary injunction in his lawsuit against the Biden administration over their decision to halt liquefied natural gas exports. Joined by 15 other state attorneys general, Paxton secured the win Monday after a federal district court judge in Western Louisiana ruled that the new administrative plan should be paused as the case proceeds. “This ruling means [President Joe] Biden’s illegal ban does not prevent Texas natural gas from reaching market while the lawsuit continues,” stated Paxton in...

On-again, off-again efforts to rename Devils Tower to Bear Lodge is on again with a federal naming committee pushing for the change. The federal Reconciliation in Place Names Committee, a subcommittee of the U.S. Board of Geographic Names, is recommending Secretery of the Interior Deb Haaland submit a request to the Biden administration to change the name of "the sacred geographic feature in Wyoming known as 'Devils Tower'" and the unincorporated community surrounding it to Bear Lodge, which is what it was called by American Indians before it was Devils Tower. The push comes after the committee’s last meeting June...

The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals has rejected a lawsuit filed by six members of a Wyoming sorority challenging the admission of a 6’2″, 260-pound trans-identified male, who the women have alleged has “watched” them undress with a visible erection. The University of Wyoming’s chapter of Kappa Kappa Gamma (KKG), the complainants argued, caused the women “emotional distress in a personalized and unique way” and circumvented voting bylaws in their 2022 decision to admit Dallin ‘Artemis’ Langford as a member of the sorority. The six women were appealing an August 2023 ruling from Judge Alan Johnson that declined their initial...