Episode Details

It's time to take a look at what's happening around Wyoming, for Friday, May 9th. I'm Wendy Corr, bringing you headlines from the Cowboy State Daily newsroom - Brought to you by the Wyoming Community Foundation, who asks you to give back to the place you call home. "5 to thrive" is YOUR opportunity to leave a legacy for generations to come. Support the community nonprofits you care about with a gift through the Wyoming Community Foundation. Visit wycf.org to learn more.

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When meeting with state legislators on Thursday, Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray expressed strong support for nearly two dozen election-reform bills.

The legislative Corporations Elections and Political Subdivisions Committee chose to take up less than half of them for study. But Cowboy State Daily's Clair McFarland reports that that doesn't guarantee all of them will be carried into the 2026 legislative session that starts Feb 9.

"Chuck Gray proposed 22 bills for the corporations committee to look at through the coming months ahead of the 2026 legislative session, and they took up 11 to study. That doesn't mean they'll champion them all, but that means they're going to look at things like random hand counts and a photo ID only, and reforming the audits process and all of those things… they said that they that election reform is at the top of their interim priority list."

Individual legislators still can champion some of the bills that didn't reach the committee's threshold of interest.

Read the full story HERE.

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Catholics across Wyoming celebrated the appointment of the first American pope Thursday. Robert Francis Prevost, a Chicago-born cardinal, was chosen as the 267th pope by the College of Cardinals after several rounds of voting that took more than a day.

Cowboy State Daily's Justin George spoke to several members of the church, many of whom said they believed the selection of Prevost will bring greater attention to U.S. churches and potentially lure back lapsed members.

"There's not a huge population of Catholics in Wyoming, but there is a significant one, and and many of those are at universities, obviously student centers, and there are many Catholic schools that are out there… it was a huge day and a big day, like at Saint Anthony's tri parish Catholic school in Casper, the entire student body was in the commons watching this… They all watched as the announcement came. It was spoken in Latin. Luckily, they have a Latin teacher there who could decipher exactly who was chosen. And then there was the added excitement that an American is being named the first pope."

The selection of Prevost came as a surprise to many inside and outside the church, who believed the United States' already outsized global influence might disqualify an American from holding the most influential position within the church of 1.4 billion people - including an estimated 69,500 people in Wyoming.

Read the full story HERE.

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