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.”
A group of abortion access advocates are asking the Natrona County District Court to block the Human Heartbeat Act. The law went into effect on March 9 and bans most abortions at six weeks.
That’s because cardiac activity can be detected with a transvaginal ultrasound at about six weeks — a time when abortion advocates say many people don’t know they’re pregnant yet.
The motion to the court states that the new law involves the same “fundamental problem” as other abortion-related laws already being considered by the court.
They are asking to add the law to an ongoing case over separate laws, which would require building renovations at abortion clinics and require transvaginal ultrasounds 48 hours before an abortion. Both of those laws have been temporarily blocked.
“[The Human Heartbeat Act] transgresses the constitutional guarantee of Plaintiffs’ and individuals’ to make health care decisions without interference from the government,” says the document filed on the afternoon of March 10 by Robinson Bramlet LLC.
Wyoming Public Radio obtained the filing from Chelsea’s Fund, an abortion-rights nonprofit and one of the plaintiffs in the case — part of the same group that has been challenging the state for years to protect abortion access.
They recently won their case in the Wyoming Supreme Court, when the majority of justices decided to strike down two near-total abortion laws enacted in 2024, saying they violated residents’ right to make their own healthcare decisions, which is specifically protected in the Wyoming Constitution.
The Legislature quickly got to work on more anti-abortion legislation, such as the Human Heartbeat Act, which Gov. Mark Gordon signed on March 9. It carries an exception for cases where the health of the mother is in jeopardy, but not for rape or incest victims, which Gordon called an “unfortunate flaw.”
Chelsea’s Fund Executive Director Janean Forsyth said she was disappointed the state again restricted access to “vital care.”
“I’m thinking about everyone from the 15 year old that we supported, whose grandmother actually reached out, a victim of sexual assault,” Forsyth said. “I’m thinking about a family with a very wanted pregnancy that we supported in eventually seeking an abortion for a severe fetal anomaly.”
Forsyth added that abortion laws like this result in medical providers leaving the state.
“So it’s not only affecting access to abortion care, it’s affecting reproductive healthcare access generally for parents and children, which is really unfortunate,” she said.
Wellspring Health Access in Casper, the state’s only abortion clinic, is cancelling appointments with patients seeking to end their pregnancies later in their term, according to Executive Director Katie Knutter.
Speaker of the House Chip Neiman (R-Hulett) sponsored the law. He said he wasn’t surprised it was met with legal action, as that’s been the trend in recent years.
“I think we’re in a good spot,” Neiman said in a voicemail to Wyoming Public Radio after the lawsuit was filed. “And we’re going to move ahead and the people of the Legislature, Wyoming has spoken.”
Lawmakers decided against putting the issue directly before Wyoming voters as a constitutional amendment this fall. That’s after Gordon urged them to do so to end the legal cycle.
Neiman couldn’t be reached by publication time to comment on the decision to not pursue a constitutional amendment, but in a Jan. 26 town hall, he expressed worries that voters could codify the right to abortion.
In 2024, 64% of Nevada voters supported enshrining the right into the state constitution. A majority will have to vote in favor again later this year to recognize the right.
In his voicemail, Neiman added, “There’s folks out there that are completely good with killing kids, killing babies in the womb, and there’s other folks out here like the Legislature that are fighting desperately to preserve their lives.”
The abortion-rights group said it will ask the court to issue a temporary restraining order and block the new law while the legal challenge proceeds.
The top boys’ basketball players in Wyoming for Classes 1A and 2A were chosen for the 2026 high school season. The Wyoming Coaches Association has unveiled the all-state awards for this year, as voted on by the head coaches in the two classifications, respectively. The Wyoming Coaches Association only recognizes one team for all-state, and only these players receive an award certificate from the WCA. WyoPreps only lists all-state players as defined by the WCA.
WCA 1A-2A BOYS BASKETBALL ALL-STATE SELECTIONS IN 2026
Each class selected 14 players for all-state, reflecting a broad recognition of talent across Wyoming. Notably, congratulations go to Hulett’s Kyle Smith, Brady Cook from Lingle-Fort Laramie, and Carsten Freeburg from Pine Bluffs, who earned all-state honors for the third straight year. In addition, eight more players achieved all-state status for the second time in their prep careers.
Class 1A
Paul McNiven – Burlington
Bitner Philpott – Burlington
Ammon Hatch – Cokeville (All-State in 2025)
Hudson Himmerich – Cokeville
Kyle Smith – Hulett (All-State 2024 & 2025)
Anthony Arnusch – Lingle-Ft. Laramie
Brady Cook – Lingle-Ft. Laramie (All-State 2024 & 2025)
Tymber Cozzens – Little Snake River (All-State in 2025)
Corbin Matthews – Lusk
Max Potas – Meeteetse (All-State in 2024)
Jace Westring – Saratoga
Hazen Williams – Saratoga
TJ Moats – Southeast (All-State in 2024)
Nic Schiller – Upton
Read More Boys Basketball News from WyoPreps
WyoPreps 1A-2A State Basketball Scoreboard 2026
WyoPreps 3A-4A Regional Basketball Scoreboard 2026
WyoPreps Coaches and Media Final Basketball Poll 2026
1A-2A Boys Basketball Regional Scoreboard 2026
WyoPreps Boys Basketball Week 11 Scores 2026
WyoPreps Coaches and Media Basketball Polls 2-25-26
WyoPreps Boys Basketball Week 10 Scores 2026
WyoPreps Coaches and Media Basketball Polls 2-18-26
WyoPreps Boys Basketball Week 9 Scores 2026
WyoPreps Coaches and Media Basketball Polls 2-11-26
WyoPreps Boys Basketball Week 8 Scores 2026
WyoPreps Coaches and Media Basketball Polls 2-4-26
Class 2A
Caleb Adsit – Big Horn
Chase Garber – Big Horn
Carsten Freeburg – Pine Bluffs (All-State 2024 & 2025)
Mason Moss – Rocky Mountain
Oakley Hicks – Shoshoni
Kade Mills – Sundance
Cody Bomengen – Thermopolis (All-State in 2025)
Zak Hastie – Thermopolis
Ellis Webber – Thermopolis (All-State in 2025)
Joseph Kimbrell – Wright
Mitchell Strohschein – Wright (All-State in 2025)
Adriano Brown – Wyoming Indian
Heeyei’Niitou Monroe-Black – Wyoming Indian (All-State in 2025)
Cordell Spoonhunter – Wyoming Indian
The 2026 state champions were the Saratoga Panthers in Class 1A. They beat Lingle-Fort Laramie, 50-45, in the championship game. The 2A winners were the Thermopolis Bobcats, who repeated as champions, after a 45-38 victory over Wyoming Indian in the title game.
Lusk versus Rock River high school basketball 2026
Game action between the Tigers and Longhorns
Gallery Credit: Courtesy: Lisa Shaw
A pair of bills signed into law last week aim to build out a more comprehensive system of literacy education across Wyoming’s public schools.
One mandates evidence-based practices and requires regular screenings for dyslexia, while the other enables the Wyoming Department of Education (WDE) to hire a dedicated literacy professional to oversee statewide compliance.
Gov. Mark Gordon’s signing of both bills on Friday was the latest accomplishment of an ongoing push for improved literacy standards. That push has been spearheaded by State Superintendent of Public Instruction Megan Degenfelder.
“Wyoming is not going to let a single child fall through the cracks,” Degenfelder said during a public bill signing last week. “We are not going to fall behind when it comes to ensuring that our children can read at grade level.”
The primary bill, Senate File 59, establishes a statewide K-12 program for teaching students to read that is built on “evidence based language and literacy instruction, assessment, intervention and professional development that supports educators, engages families and promotes literacy proficiency for all Wyoming students.”
The bill defines evidence-based strategies as those that conform to the science of reading, a term that will be defined and updated by Degenfelder’s office. Nationwide, it generally means putting academic research into practice in classrooms. SF 59 specifically prohibits the exclusive use of “three-cueing” — a strategy once widely employed to teach reading but which education experts now say is outdated and less effective than other strategies.
It also requires annual dyslexia screeners for students below the third grade, and testing for reading difficulties for all students.
The screeners are used to identify the severity of reading difficulties in order to direct “tiered” support that offers the most intensive interventions to the students most in need, while still providing “evidence based” language instruction to all students.
Each school district must formulate an individualized reading plan “for each student identified as having reading difficulties or at risk for poor reading outcomes.”
Districts must now report to the state annually regarding their literacy-related work. Any district where 60% or more of the students are struggling will be required to implement “summer literacy camps or extended supports, including after school support and tutoring.”
The bill also requires literacy related professional development for teachers and specialists “appropriate to their role and level of responsibility” related to literacy education.
SF 59 was backed by dyslexia advocates and literacy specialists.
Senate File 14, the other literacy bill signed into law Friday, appropriates $120,000 annually for the next two years for a full-time position at WDE “to assist school districts in implementing a reading assessment and intervention program and language and literacy programs.”
Both bills go into effect July 1.
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