Episode Details

It's time to take a look at what's happening around Wyoming for Tuesday, January 13th. I'm Mac Watson.

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Wyoming Superintendent of Public Instruction Megan Degenfelder on Monday announced she is running for governor. Cowboy State Daily's Clair McFarland reports that Degenfelder had been "strongly considering" the move and had received an endorsement from President Trump urging her to run last week.

"We have three years of political leadership by Degenfelder in this state, where she's led our public education system. And during that time, she has backed school choice, she has voted in favor of wind leasing, stating that that's a free market approach by Wyoming. She really ran in part on a campaign of blocking sexually explicit books in school libraries, or helping schools deal with that on their own, which she did end up doing. She did end up issuing guidance to school districts so that they could deal with that issue."

The Republican incumbent Gov. Mark Gordon is at the end of his two-term limit this year. The state has court history indicating he could get the limit overturned, but not without a legal challenge. Gordon has not announced his political intentions for the 2026 election.

Read the full story HERE.

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Wyoming's senior U.S. Senator announced Monday morning that he's endorsing U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman to serve alongside him in the upper chamber. Cowboy State Daily's Clair McFarland reports that Senator Barrasso said Hageman "is going to be terrific in the U.S. Senate," but why such an early endorsement?

"I asked him. I was like, this is early. We've not had on the state side – we've not had the legislative session yet. She doesn't really have an opponent yet. No one else has declared. Why are you so early? I asked him that point blank, and he said, Look, I want to get her out there as a front runner to get this race in the bag, so I can focus on trickier cases and hold the Republican majority in the Senate."

Sen. John Barrasso's current counterpart in the upper chamber of Congress is Sen. Cynthia Lummis, who announced Dec. 19 that she's not seeking to run for a second six-year term this year. Hageman, Wyoming's lone delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives, announced four days later that she will run to fill Lummis' seat.

Read the full story HERE.

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A snowmobiler in the Wyoming backcountry southeast of Afton died Sunday after he and another rider triggered an avalanche that buried him about 2 feet below the surface and under his snowmobile. Cowboy State Daily's Kate Meadows reports that despite having an airbag on his snowmobile, Nicholas Bringquist of Springville, Utah was still trapped beneath the avalanche.

"The air bag is not attached to the snowmobile. It's a piece of equipment that a rider carries, especially when in the back country. When it deploys, it is supposed to keep the rider above the surface to ride out the avalanche to keep them from getting buried. But in this case, it did not work that way…the snowmobiler was trapped under about two feet of snow underneath, and was underneath his snowmobile. So it's his, it's the snow, then his snowmobile, then he and his partner pulled him out and attempted to perform. Did perform CPR, but it was again, unsuccessful."

Frank Carus, director of the Bridger-Teton Avalanche Center, tells Cowboy State Daily that the two snowmobilers were on a steep, ungroomed slope when the avalanche was triggered at about 8,800 feet of elevation and extremely avalanche-prone.

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