Wyoming
Lummis Joins Barrasso In Endorsing Trump For President
Wyoming U.S. Sen. Cynthia Lummis officially endorsed former President Donald Trump in his 2024 presidential bid Friday, clinching unanimous support for Trump among the state’s congressional delegation.
Lummis’ endorsement follows on the heels of the Trump endorsement fellow Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso gave on Tuesday. U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman endorsed Trump first in February 2023.
Like Barrasso, Lummis positioned her endorsement as an indictment of President Joe Biden’s handling of the economy and the southern border.
“Living in Joe Biden’s America is a disaster,” Lummis said in an announcement. “His open borders agenda has caused a crisis at the border and throughout the country like we’ve never seen before.”
Under Trump, the American economy was in a relatively strong position until the COVID pandemic hit. Biden took office shortly after, but hasn’t managed during his three years in office to make a sizable cut in inflation.
Lummis blames this on his administration’s spending.
“His out-of-control spending spree has caused inflation to skyrocket, costing the average family in Wyoming nearly $13,000 a year,” Lummis said. “It is clear we need to get our country back on track, and the person we need in the White House to fix our nation is Donald Trump.”
Is It A Flip?
Lummis has for the most part always supported Trump publicly, but has issued support for some of his leading competitors like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in the past and taken certain stances Trump would be unlikely to agree with.
In 2022, she was one of 11 Republican senators to support a bill codifying same-sex marriage into federal law.
She also drew attention that year when she said she views DeSantis as the leader of the Republican Party. Last May, she clarified her position a bit that although she still finds DeSantis to be the leader of the party and the designer of its platform, this does not take away from the fact she views Trump as the leading Republican candidate for president.
Trump is leading DeSantis and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley by a large margin with the Iowa Caucus, the kickoff to the 2024 primary election season, coming up Monday.
Lummis had previously indicated that she would be unlikely to endorse a candidate for the Republican primary.
Barrasso’s endorsement was significant as he became the first member of Republican Senate leadership to support Trump’s bid.
Although Trump’s support among Republicans in the Senate has been tepid at times, he now has 21 endorsements in the chamber, while DeSantis and Haley have none.
According to CNN, Trump’s advisers have quietly informed some Republicans that they are keeping track of who endorses him before and after the Iowa Caucus.
“During his presidency, our border was secure, basic goods and services were affordable and Wyoming energy was poised to power the world,” Lummis said. “I will once again cast my vote for Donald Trump in the upcoming primary and encourage the American people to do the same.”
Nuanced Support
Lummis was endorsed by Trump in her 2020 campaign, even after saying she would be “holding her nose” while voting for him in 2016.
But unlike Barrasso, Lummis refused to vote to certify the Pennsylvania results of the 2020 election. Lummis also voted to acquit Trump during his second impeachment trial following the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
Still, she told Cowboy State Daily in 2022 that former Vice President Mike Pence did the right thing by certifying the election results, despite not doing so herself.
She, like the former vice president, was rushed into the underground bunker when the certification of the Arizona election ballots was interrupted, an experience she described as frightening.
“His role that day was not to intervene, but to simply preside over the process of certifying electors,” Lummis said. “He performed his constitutional duties within the confines of his authority with complete grace and skill under very difficult circumstances.”
Both she and Barrasso have condemned the Jan. 6 riot, but have never accused Trump of playing a role in the event.
Leo Wolfson can be reached at Leo@CowboyStateDaily.com.
Wyoming
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Wyoming
Rivalries and Playoff Positioning Highlight Week 11 Wyoming Girls Basketball Slate
It’s Week 11 in the 2026 Wyoming prep girls’ basketball season. That means it’s the end of the regular season. 3A and 4A schools have their final game or games to determine seeding before the regional tournament, or if a team is locked into a position, one last chance to fine-tune before the postseason. Games are spread across four days.
WYOPREPS WEEK 11 GIRLS BASKETBALL SCHEDULE 2026
Every game on the slate is a conference matchup. Several rivalry contests are part of this week’s schedule, such as East against Central, Cody at Powell, Lyman hosting Mountain View, and Rock Springs at Green River, just to name a few. Here is the Week 11 schedule of varsity games WyoPreps has. All schedules are subject to change. If you see a game missing, please email david@wyopreps.com.
CLASS 4A
Final Score: Laramie 68 Cheyenne South 27 (conference game)
CLASS 3A
Final Score: Lyman 40 Mountain View 26 (conference game)
CLASS 4A
Final Score: Evanston 41 Riverton 39 (conference game)
Final Score: Natrona County 42 Kelly Walsh 38 (conference game) – Peach Basket Classic
Final Score: #4 Thunder Basin 64 Campbell County 32 (conference game)
CLASS 3A
Final Score: #1 Cody 77 Worland 33 (conference game) – 5 different Fillies with a 3, and Hays led the way with 34 points.
Final Score: #2 Lander 49 Lyman 34 (conference game)
Final Score: #4 Wheatland 51 Douglas 40 (conference game)
Final Score: #5 Powell 48 Lovell 42 (conference game)
Final Score: Burns 56 Torrington 43 (conference game)
Final Score: Glenrock 78 Newcastle 30 (conference game)
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CLASS 4A
Rock Springs at #2 Green River, 5:30 p.m. (conference game)
#4 Thunder Basin at #5 Sheridan, 5:30 p.m. (conference game)
#1 Cheyenne East at #3 Cheyenne Central, 6 p.m. (conference game)
Jackson at Star Valley, 6 p.m. (conference game)
CLASS 3A
#3 Pinedale at Mountain View, 4 p.m. (conference game)
#1 Cody at #5 Powell, 5:30 p.m. (conference game)
Buffalo at Glenrock, 5:30 p.m. (conference game)
CLASS 3A
Newcastle at Buffalo, 12:30 p.m. (conference game)
Glenrock at Rawlins, 3 p.m. (conference game)
Torrington at #4 Wheatland, 5:30 p.m. (conference game)
Wyoming Boys 4A Swimming & Diving State Championships 2026
4A Boys State Swim Meet for 2026 in Cheyenne
Gallery Credit: David Settle, WyoPreps.com
Wyoming
Political storm in Wyoming as far-right activist caught handing checks to lawmakers
Controversy has engulfed Wyoming’s state legislature after a conservative activist was photographed handing checks to Republican lawmakers on the state house floor, in an incident that has highlighted intra-conservative divisions and the role of money in the Cowboy state’s politics.
The political storm started on 9 February, when Karlee Provenza, a Democratic lawmaker, took a photo showing Rebecca Bextel, a conservative activist and committeewoman for the Teton county Republican party, handing a check to Darin McCann, a Republican representative, on the legislative floor. Marlene Brady, another Republican representative, stands in the photo’s background, a similar piece of paper pinched between her fingers.
“You have a person from the richest county in the country coming down to Cheyenne to hand out checks on the house floor,” Provenza said. “I have never seen something so egregious.”
Questions around the checks were soon swirling, and answers weren’t forthcoming. When asked what Bextel gave to her, Brady told a reporter for local outlet WyoFile: “I can’t remember.”
Then Bextel herself addressed the incident. “I raised $400,000 in the last election cycle for conservative candidates, and I will be doubling that amount this year,” Bextel wrote on Facebook on 11 February. “There’s nothing wrong with delivering lawful campaign checks from Teton county donors when I am in Cheyenne.”
Since then, it has emerged that the checks came from Don Grasso, a wealthy Teton county donor, who told the Jackson Hole News and Guide that he wrote the checks for Bextel to deliver to 10 Freedom caucus-aligned politicians. Grasso said the checks were intended as campaign contributions, and were not tied to specific legislation. It is unclear how many checks were ultimately delivered, but two of four confirmed recipients include the speaker of the house, Chip Neiman, and John Bear, the former head of the Wyoming Freedom Caucus.
The Wyoming house has formed a legislative investigative committee, and the Laramie county sheriff’s office said they’d open a criminal investigation.
Bextel declined to answer questions from the Guardian. Brady, McCann and Bear did not respond to requests for comment.
Neiman said he considered the criticism a “wraparound smear campaign”. He said: “It never once crossed my mind that this was bribery.
“These legislators, myself included, are now guilty until we can prove that we’re innocent. How is that right in this country? Isn’t that a little bit backwards?”
The scandal has highlighted long-standing divisions in Wyoming’s Republican party, which in recent years has seen a growing divide between old school, more moderate conservatives and a harder-right Freedom Caucus.
Several former Republican lawmakers forcefully condemned their colleagues for accepting the checks, and a local Republican party branch called for the lawmakers’ resignations.
Ogden Driskill, a Wyoming Republican senator, told the Guardian he does not consider Bextel’s actions to be illegal, but that “just because you can do it doesn’t mean you should”.
Bextel has spent years pushing against housing mitigation fees in Wyoming, and Driskill noted that she distributed the house floor checks just days before a bill she had publicly supported was set to be heard. Bextel was registered as a member of the press, not as a lobbyist when she delivered the checks.
“Ethically and morally, it’s bankrupt to a massive degree,” Driskill said.
Neiman said that he and other legislators who received checks have supported similar bills in the past: “Bribery is paying somebody to do something they would not otherwise do.”
Nationally, the 2024 election cycle saw record-spending from the mega-wealthy, as well as dark money groups. Wyoming followed the trend, in a tense red-on-red primary season.
For those gearing up to campaign this year, Teton county, the richest in the US, and Bextel’s picturesque home turf, is an essential stop. Its extreme wealth gives it a foothold on the national level as well. Palantir chief executive Alex Karp and Donald Trump attended an annual Republican leadership fundraiser at Jackson Hole in 2024, and JD Vance attended the same one in 2025.
Bextel pulls dollars from Teton county into the Freedom Caucus side of Wyoming’s conservative split. She hosted no-press-allowed meet and greets earlier this year benefitting leading candidates for Wyoming’s governor and open US House seat.
In an interview with the Open Range Record, a media network she co-founded, Bextel said controversy around the checks was solely because she was making “even playing field” in Wyoming against the state’s more moderate Republicans, who she calls “George Soros” candidates. She said that she will be sure to keep raising money – just away from the legislative floor.
“I guess I’m gonna ask all the gentlemen and gentleladies to step outside the Capitol while I hand them a check,” Bextel said. “Let me be clear: I’m doubling down.”
But it’s not just wealthy local donors putting their weight behind the factions. Last election cycle, out of state groups spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on anonymous and often inaccurate mailers.
“These actors, especially from the far right, they like to push the bounds of the norms,” said Rosa Reyna Pugh, an organizing and advocacy consultant at Western States Center, an Oregon-based non-profit focused on democracy in the western United States. “They like to see what policies they can kind of push, and see where they can play a piece,” Reyna Pugh said.
While Neiman and Driskill fight politically, they do agree on one thing: summer will bring an expensive and brutal campaign season.
“You’re going to see more dark money than you’ve ever seen. We’ve done absolutely nothing to enforce it. Our secretary of state has not even made a slight attempt to deal with it,” Driskill said. “You’re going to see lots and lots of outside money and I think you’re seeing it on both sides.”
As national questions swirl around pay-to-play politics and profiteering in the Trump administration, Provenza wants better for the Cowboy State.
“We should not be aligning ourselves with how the federal government is conducting itself or how federal elections conduct themselves,” Provenza said. “We owe something far better and more honest to the people of Wyoming than that.”
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