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While Sommers was Wyoming Speaker of the House he sat on the board of the State Legislative Leadership Foundation--a group with longstanding ties to the Chinese Communist Party. Albert denied it and the Wyoming media tried to explain it away.   Now that Sommers is running for House District 20, it's important to bring it up again.

The Wyoming left continues to push the narrative that there were "cuts" to the budget in the 2026 Budget Session.  Really, there is almost a half a billion dollar increase.  Politicians like Chi-Comm Som are using the lie that there were as a campaign issue.  Was there money moved around?  Yes, but there wasn't a cut. Interestingly, after getting schooled on this point by Rep Pendergraft, Jake in the Cow Pie continues to insist that there were cuts. As is always the case, the truth is very different than the story the Redcoats are telling. Link to the Gov's budget book, Look at page 15 and 19: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CV-WakvtiWWolS2pI5VgKWGOK0JuiKb3/view 

Luke Reiner was the WYDOT Director.  Now he's running for the Wyoming House in District 8.  While at WYDOT, Reiner championed a plan to build EV charging stations every 50 miles of Wyoming's Interstate Highways.  He was told no.  A fawning puff piece in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle fails to bring up how Reiner spent months trying to convince Wyoming Citizens to go along with the EV push.

Legislators gathered for a town hall April 14 in Sheridan.  Most of the evening was a question and answer about what happened during the session.  There were, however, two exchanges in which senators were asked why a list of bills did not get heard.  The stories shifted the more the evening wore on.  First, they ran out of time; then, it was blamed on the Majority Floor Leader and finally, the bills wouldn't pass to begin with. Senators weren't the only people changing their stories.  Gail Symons is attempting to explain away her column that asked Democrats to cross over to the Republican party.

Before the filing period, no one really knows anything about the election--who's in, who's out or anything.  The only thing we can do is speculate.  However, there are a few candidates who do have voting records.  Those we can be critical of--and there's a stark difference.  In an election with a lot of candidates, they'll all be desperate for your attention.  The important part is to do your homework before you talk to them. Article on the Congressional Race: https://www.openrangerecord.com/news/227ae4e7-62be-4204-93f0-1c7f79800fef  Articles on Eric Barlow:     His environmentalism: https://www.openrangerecord.com/news/6726ce97-3f3b-472c-9220-318e56e2b605      His "Non-Profit:" https://www.openrangerecord.com/news/4edb1ff6-5f0b-47c7-a540-8963bbe48eaf  Article on Degenfelder: https://www.openrangerecord.com/news/992a97aa-447f-4085-9e4e-cab1df307676 

Sen Ed Cooper can't seem to keep his story straight.  Before the session, he told a newspaper the Freedom Caucus is given $30,000 donations if they vote right.  After I interviewed State Freedom Caucus President Andy Roth, he retracted it.  He then told our journalist that he made a mistake.  Now he's back claiming that what he said there's money spent on Freedom Caucus candidates.  During that same appearance, he couldn't keep his own voting record straight while accusing other people of lying.

Everything seems pretty normal even though there's technically a government shutdown.  I asked Rep Hageman if this is just evidence that the government is too big.  Harriet took a few minutes to address the criticism coming from the media about Iran.  We also briefly discussed her endorsement of Megan Degenfelder.

At a recent appearance in Cody, Eric Barlow said, "I was born Eric and I'll die Eric."  A truer thing could not be said.  Barlow is the same politician he has always been--one that votes with the Democrats over 80% of the time.  But he's also the same activist that he's always been. In a 2002 transcript from his testimony to Congress Barlow said that energy development is creating "destroyed soils, degraded water, and dried up aquifers."

Governor Gordon and Chuck Gray had another dust-up in the SLIB meeting.  This time The Gov told Secretary Gray to "Shut up!"  It was all over an amendment that would have mandated a citizenship check for taxpayer dollars--a reasonable proposal. The rest of the Republicans on the board tried to obfuscate the issue and kept bringing up reasons why the amendment wouldn't work.  What ensued was pretty predictable. 

The Freedom Caucus has unveiled a plan to bridge the political divide in Wyoming.  Unbeknownst to most political observers, it's been going on for a while.  They term it, "Radical Transparency."

Secretary of State Chuck Gray is running for the United States House of Representatives.  He's in a field with eight other candidates.  In a race like this, policy positions matter because that's about the only way a candidate can distinguish themselves from everyone else. We talked about what he's campaigning on and we had some time to talk some more Wyoming-centric issues.

Gubernatorial candidate Brent Bien sat down with me in the studio for the better part of an hour.  We dug into his lengthy military career.  Now, he's a retired "full-bird" colonel in the U.S. Marines.  We spoke at length about his plans should he be successful in his run.  Of course, we also discussed whether endorsements matter or not.  It's a great interview that gives you some rare insight into who he is.

David Giralt is one of the many candidates running for the U.S. House of Representatives.  He's an Army Ranger, used to work at the Pentagon and spent time in U.S. Senator Cynthia Lummis' office. Though it took us a few days to find a time to visit, he joined me on Tuesday's live program.  It's a great interview.

Sheridan County held its County Convention on Saturday.  WYGOP Chair Bryan Miller introduced a bylaw change that would bar any member of the press from holding any leadership position in the party.  As you can imagine, that didn't sit very well with me.  The measure was soundly defeated--so much so that the state version of it wasn't even brought up. Teton County tried a bylaw change that tried to limit what the press can do in one of their meetings.  The trend is clear, those in power don't want the public knowing what they are doing.  

Today, the Sheridan County Republican Party is holding its county convention.  There isn't anything too controversial being proposed (unlike some other counties).  But nonetheless it is a Republican event so you never know what's going to happen. Yesterday's live program ended up being a heck of a lot of fun.  Here's a replay of it.