Lawmakers grilled University of Wyoming (UW) leaders about environmental and gender studies course offerings in Cheyenne on Friday.

The Joint Appropriations Committee (JAC) is in the midst of hammering out the draft budget bill that the full Legislature will amend and approve during the upcoming budget session in February. The biennial budget will decide how much each state agency, including UW, receives for the next two years.

UW officials already testified before the committee in December, requesting additional funds for coal research, athletics and other projects. They were “called back” for further questions Friday.

Representatives John Bear (R-Gillette), Ken Pendergraft (R-Sheridan) and Jeremy Haroldson (R-Wheatland), all members of the Wyoming Freedom Caucus, launched immediately into a discussion of UW’s course offerings.

“It’s just come to my attention there’s quite a bit of stuff out there that may be in conflict with what the people of Wyoming think the university would be training our young people towards,” Bear said, before turning over to Pendergraft.

The Sheridan rep proceeded to list several elective courses offered through UW’s Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources.

“I thought perhaps I would seek an undergraduate minor in sustainability,” Pendergraft said. “And if I were to do so … I would have my choice of the following: ‘Social Justice in the 21st Century,’ ‘Environmental ethics,’ ‘Global Justice,’ ‘Environmental Justice,’ ‘Environmental Sociology,’ ‘Food, Health and Justice,’ ‘Diversity and Justice in Natural Resources,’ or perhaps my favorite: ‘Ecofeminism.’ After I got through with that, I would be treated to such other courses as ‘Global Climate Governance’ and ‘Diversity and Justice in Natural Resources.’”

“I’m just wondering why these courses aren’t offered in Gillette,” he said.

Haub School Associate Dean Temple Stoellinger said at least one of those courses had already been canceled — “Diversity and Justice in Natural Resources,” which Pendergraft listed twice in his comment. She added students seeking a degree through the Haub School often pursue a concurrent major in another college.

“The remainder of the courses [you listed] are actually not Haub School courses,” Stoellinger said. “Those are courses that we just give students the option to take to fulfill the elective components of the minor.”

Bear responded.

“Unfortunately, what you’ve just described is something that is metastasizing, it sounds like, across the university,” he said. “So, President [Ed] Seidel, if you could just help me understand, is this really a direction that the university should be going?”

Seidel pointed to the Haub School’s efforts to support Wyoming tourism and other industries as evidence that it seeks to serve the state.

“I believe that the Haub School is a very strong component of the university, and I believe it is also responding to the times,” Seidel said. “But they’re always looking to improve their curriculum and to figure out how to best serve the state, and I believe they do a good job of that.”

Bear returned to one of the courses Pendergraft had listed.

“How is ecofeminism helpful for a student who wants to stay in Wyoming and work in Wyoming?” he asked Seidel.

“I do not have an answer to that question,” the university president replied.

Stoellinger shared that the Haub School is largely funded by private donors, with about 20% or less of its funding, about $1.4 million, coming from the state.

Haroldson took aim at separate course offerings. Rather than listing specific courses, the Wheatland rep pointed to gender studies in general, saying his constituents “have kids that go to the university and then get degrees that don’t work” and “don’t have validity.”

“It’s hard to defend you guys when we see these things come up, because these are the things that we’ve been fighting over the last couple of years,” Haroldson said. “[We’ve been] saying this isn’t the direction that our publicly funded land-grant college should be pursuing, in my opinion and in the opinion of the people that have elected me, or a majority of them.”

He questioned how a graduate could make a career in Wyoming with a gender studies degree and asked Seidel why these courses were still being offered.

Seidel said the university was committed to keeping young people in Wyoming and that he viewed that mission as his primary job.

“And then we’ve also been restructuring programs,” he said. “Last year, the gender studies program was restructured. It’s no longer offered as a minor. There were not very many students in it at the time, and that was one of the reasons why … It’s been part of the reform of the curriculum to re-look at: What does the state need and how do we best serve the state?”

UW canceled its gender studies bachelor’s degree track in 2025, citing low enrollment as the trigger. Gender studies courses are still offered and students may apply them toward an American Studies degree.

Seidel said the webpage where Haroldson found the gender studies degree listed might need to be updated. Haroldson said the state “sends enough money” to UW that having an out-of-date webpage was “absolutely unacceptable.”

“I would recommend and challenge you, when I make this search on Monday, I don’t find it,” Haroldson said.

Interim Provost Anne Alexander clarified later in the hearing that the degree was still listed because, even though it’s been canceled, it is still being “taught out.” That means students who were already enrolled in the program when UW decided to ax it are being allowed to wrap up their degree.

“Once they are done, those will also no longer show up,” Alexander said. “But I’ve been chatting with my team on my phone, listening intently, and they are going to ensure that the program does not show up on the website as an option by Monday.”

In addition to the questions about course offerings, lawmakers also asked UW about its plans for an independent third-party financial audit of the work conducted at the High Bay Research Facility, the funding that passes through UW to Wyoming Public Media and how university leaders approach picking contractors for large construction projects, like the parking garage between Ivinson and Grand Avenues.

Mike Smith, the university’s lobbyist, told the committee UW prioritizes Wyoming contractors when possible.

“But there are those situations, and maybe the parking garage was one of them, where as the architects and builders are looking at: How do we set the criteria for that balance between using as many of those dollars here with Wyoming contractors, versus ensuring that the state gets its bang for the buck with the highest quality and lowest price,” Smith said. “Sometimes those things are balanced out.”

The JAC will begin work on the budget bill next week, deciding what funding to endorse or reject for every agency in the state government. The budget session starts Feb. 9.

Wyoming businessman Reid Rasner formally launched a bid for Congress this week. It’s his second bid for public office.

Rasner, a fourth-generation Wyoming native and Omnivest Financial CEO, previously wanted to buy TikTok when it was up for sale and to bring the headquarters to the Mountain West.

“I’m a Wyoming businessman. I’m not a career politician,” Rasner said in an interview with the Deseret News. “Why I’m running is because Washington wastes money, drives up costs for families and businesses, and Wyoming truly deserves representation that knows how to cut waste and grow an economy.”

Rasner is set to face off against Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray in the Republican primary.

Current Rep. Harriet Hageman announced she run for the Senate with hopes of replacing Sen. Cynthia Lummis, who is retiring.

President Donald Trump gave Hageman his “Complete and Total Endorsement,” something Rasner is also looking to earn, calling himself a “100% Trump Conservative Republican.”

Asked how he feels competing against someone already holding a statewide position like Gray, Rasner said the race isn’t about “politics or personality,” but rather about results. He highlighted his long history of being a successful businessman based out of Wyoming, beginning when he bought his first company at 18 years old.

Rasner put forward a hefty bid to buy TikTok when it was up for sale, as it was required by U.S. law for ByteDance to divest from the popular social media app. After months of delay, and Trump extending the deadline several times, Rasner said he knew the chances of being the app’s owner were dwindling.

“When we realized that TikTok was unwilling to sell the algorithm, we knew that we just couldn’t make a deal, because that’s what the bulk of our bid was … preserving the algorithm for American sovereignty,” he said.

With that tech opportunity for Wyoming gone, Rasner said he hopes to be elected to Congress as the state’s lone member of the House to bring a different kind of economic change to the state.

“Wyoming needs a do-er, not another politician, and someone that knows how to run and operate businesses and budgets and can actually get this done and make life more affordable for Wyoming, and deregulate industries, bringing in really good businesses and business opportunities in Wyoming, like TikTok, like our nuclear opportunities that we have recently lost in Wyoming,” he said. “I want to create a fourth legacy industry in the state revolving around finance and technology and I think this is so important to stabilize our economy.”

Rasner put $1 million of his own money toward his campaign, and now, he said, outside donations are coming in.

It’s his second political campaign, after previously challenging Sen. John Barrasso in the 2024 Republican primary. He said this time around, he’s hired FP1 Strategies and a “solid team.” He has a campaign that is “fully funded” and he is going to continue to fundraise, Rasner said.

Rasner shared that if elected he’d be enthusiastic about being on the energy, agriculture and finance committees in the House. They are some of the strongest committees for Wyoming, he said.

“I’m running to take Wyoming business sense to Washington, D.C., and make Wyoming affordable again, and make Wyoming wealthy,” he said. “It’s so important that we get business leadership and someone who knows what they’re doing outside of politics in the real world to deliver that message in Washington.”

As property tax cuts move forward in Wyoming, schools, hospitals, public safety agencies and road departments have all warned of potential funding shortfalls. Now, a new white paper from the Wyoming Weed & Pest Council says Weed & Pest Districts could also be significantly affected — a concern that many residents may not even realize is tied to property tax revenue.

Wyoming’s Weed & Pest Districts didn’t appear out of thin air. They were created decades ago to deal with a very real problem: invasive plants that were chewing up rangeland, hurting agricultural production and spreading faster than individual landowners could manage on their own.

Weeds like cheatgrass and leafy spurge don’t stop at fence lines, and over time they’ve been tied to everything from reduced grazing capacity to higher wildfire risk and the loss of native wildlife habitat.

That reality is what led lawmakers to create locally governed districts with countywide authority — a way to coordinate control efforts across both public and private land. But those districts now find themselves caught in a familiar Wyoming dilemma: how to pay for public services while cutting property taxes. Property taxes are among the most politically sensitive issues in the state, and lawmakers are under intense pressure to deliver relief to homeowners. At the same time, nearly every entity that relies on those dollars is warning that cuts come with consequences.

The Weed & Pest Council’s white paper lands squarely in that debate, at a moment when many residents are increasingly skeptical of property tax–funded programs and are asking a simple question — are they getting what they pay for?

That skepticism shows up in several ways. Critics of the Weed & Pest District funding model say the white paper spends more time warning about funding losses than clearly demonstrating results. While few dispute that invasive species are a problem, some landowners argue that weed control efforts vary widely from county to county and that it’s difficult to gauge success without consistent performance measures or statewide reporting standards.

Others question whether residential property taxes are the right tool to fund Weed & Pest Districts at all. For homeowners in towns or subdivisions, the work of weed and pest crews can feel far removed from daily life, even though those residents help foot the bill. That disconnect has fueled broader questions about whether funding should be tied more directly to land use or agricultural benefit rather than spread across all residential taxpayers.

There’s also concern that the white paper paints proposed tax cuts as universally “devastating” without seriously engaging with alternatives.

Some lawmakers and taxpayer advocates argue that Weed & Pest Districts should at least explore other options — whether that’s greater cost-sharing with state or federal partners, user-based fees, or more targeted assessments — before framing tax relief as an existential threat.

Ultimately, critics warn that leaning too heavily on worst-case scenarios could backfire. As Wyoming reexamines how it funds government, public entities are being asked to do more than explain why their mission matters. They’re also being asked to show how they can adapt, improve transparency and deliver services as efficiently and fairly as possible.

Weed & Pest Districts, like schools, hospitals and other tax-supported services, may have to make that case more clearly than ever before. The video below is the story of Wyoming’s Weed and Pest Districts.