Episode Details

It's time to take a look at what's happening around Wyoming for Tuesday, June 24th. 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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After a torrent of criticism over his proposal to sell parcels of federal land, Utah Republican U.S. Sen. Mike Lee hinted at a compromise with hunters, but some Wyoming hunters told Cowboy State Daily's Mark Heinz they're having none of it.

They say the only option is for Lee to kill the proposal for land sales he's trying to roll into a federal budget reconciliation bill.

"What I'm hearing from hunters, not only in Wyoming, but Montana and Utah as well as like, we don't care. There's no compromise. There's no change. You can do that we're going to find acceptable. The only thing acceptable to us, kill the bill. Don't put our lands up for sale, end of story. And so, I did talk to one pretty prominent hunter in Utah. You know, he is represented by Mike Lee in the Senate… He said Mike Lee is a good, solid conservative Republican, which is what I like. But on this particular issue, he's just dead wrong."

Brian Call of Logan, Utah, who runs the popular Gritty Films YouTube hunting channels, said Lee has long supported selling off public lands, and he was probably aware that his latest bill wouldn't be popular. However, Call speculated that Lee probably underestimated how wide and severe the backlash would be.

Read the full story HERE.

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As debate intensifies over the sale of federal lands, detractors of the plan recall a 2024 court case challenging federal public land holdings, and how numerous Wyoming leaders supported it.

Back in October, Governor Gordon, Representative Harriet Hageman and 26 Wyoming lawmakers all signed on to three different briefs in a lawsuit that went directly to the US Supreme Court, in which Utah argued that it is unconstitutional for the federal government to control so much land within their borders.

Cowboy State Daily's Clair McFarland reports that, to the detractors of this current proposal, the Wyoming leaders' support signifies that they agree with the generally unpopular plan, or at least the spirit of it.

"Governor Gordon and some of those lawmakers are taking a more cautious approach toward the, you know, similar but different proposal now pending in the Senate to just sell off two to 3 million acres of public lands in the next five years. And so I asked, I asked some of them… why did you sign on to this brief? That's like, yeah, Feds give it up… versus, why now, are you more cautious about this, this sell off plan? And the answer that they said to me is, well, with the states getting them, it's more local control, right? It's state stewardship, instead of just immediately toward private companies or whoever."

State Rep. Karlee Provenza wrote a guest column on Monday in Cowboy State Daily in which she called the governor, Representative Harriet Hageman and several legislators, quote, "literally Lee's partners in the public land grab."

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Kraken, a nearly $3 billion cryptocurrency exchange, is moving its headquarters to Wyoming.

The $2.9 billion dollar company left California nearly three years ago. Former state representative Tyler Lindholm, who was among the architects of Wyoming's