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Is Harriet Hageman’s leadership actually helping Wyoming?
Dear Casper,
Many Wyoming residents value independence, fiscal responsibility and practical problem-solving. Those are the standards many use when evaluating our elected officials — including Rep. Harriet Hageman. After reviewing her voting record and her own words at public town halls, I believe it is fair to question whether her approach is strengthening Wyoming or leaving us more divided, uncertain and unheard.
Wyoming residents expect their representatives to focus on keeping essential services functioning while working through disagreements. Yet too often, Rep. Hageman’s approach emphasizes confrontation over continuity. Repeated opposition to temporary funding measures may appeal to national audiences, but it creates uncertainty for Wyoming workers, businesses and communities that depend on stable federal operations.
Practical governance requires compromise — even when it is politically inconvenient.
Public lands policy raises similar concerns. Wyoming’s federal lands are foundational to our economy and way of life, supporting ranching, energy development, hunting, fishing and tourism. Rep. Hageman has supported efforts aligned with transferring federal lands to state control, including backing legal arguments connected to Utah’s lawsuit seeking control over Bureau of Land Management lands. Critics warn that states lack the long-term funding to manage these lands, increasing the risk of land sales or reduced public access. For many Wyoming residents, that concern has been voiced directly at town halls where constituents asked whether “local control” could ultimately mean losing access to the lands we rely on.
Environmental policy has also sparked visible tension. At a public town hall, Rep. Hageman said the EPA’s greenhouse gas endangerment finding was “based upon false science,” adding that regulators had “cooked the books” and that carbon dioxide “is not a pollutant.” Those remarks drew boos from attendees. Regardless of where one stands politically, dismissing widely accepted science alarms many Wyoming residents whose livelihoods depend on clean air, clean water, and a healthy outdoor economy.
Equally concerning to some of us is Rep. Hageman’s tone when challenged. At a Laramie town hall, she responded to a frustrated audience by saying, “You guys are going to have a heart attack if you don’t calm down… you’re hysterical.” In Casper recently, a constituent asked a difficult question and Rep. Hageman turned and walked off the stage leaving the town hall early without closing the meeting. For voters seeking respectful dialogue and thoughtful engagement, these moments felt dismissive rather than representative.
Wyoming faces serious challenges: rural health care access, mental health services, workforce development, and the need to diversify an economy long dependent on boom-and-bust cycles. Imagine a leadership measured not by national sound bites or confrontational moments, but by steady, constructive work that brings people together to meet the needs of its citizens.
At a time when Wyoming needs calm leadership and practical solutions, many of us are left wondering whether our voices are being heard — or simply walked out on.
Writing in solidarity for a better Wyoming future,
Scotia Sutherland
Casper
Casper Police Department, do better
Dear Casper,
It is a wildly empowering feeling to watch law enforcement fail over, and over, and over again, and then act confused when the public stops believing the story they sell. Authority only functions when it carries legitimacy. Once that legitimacy rots, all that remains is a uniform backed by tax dollars and habit.
They then wonder why people like Olinza Headd are funneled into the very system that manufactured the conditions for collapse in the first place. A system that ignores early warning signs, refuses intervention, and responds with punishment once damage is irreversible.
This is cowboy justice operating exactly as designed.
Selective enforcement is not a minor flaw. I would argue that it is the moment the system voids itself.
Law exists only if it is universal. The instant those tasked with enforcing it decide that some laws matter and others do not, law is replaced by preference. When officers selectively protect some at the expense of the most vulnerable, every law becomes invalid in practice.
To know that public money is used to protect pedophiles is abhorrent. To know that laws are enforced aggressively against the exposed while ignored for the protected is worse. You cannot ignore crimes against children, the poor, or the inconvenient, and then demand compliance for traffic stops, fines, or minor offenses. That contradiction strips enforcement of its legitimacy.
At that point, no law enforcement officer retains the moral authority to enforce any law. Not because the public rejected the law, but because the system abandoned the obligation that gives law its force. Power without legitimacy is not authority. It is coercion with different branding.
This is not an argument for chaos; it is an indictment of it. Nothing produces disorder faster than a justice system that demands obedience while practicing exemption. When accountability is optional for some, it becomes meaningless for all.
Casper does not suffer from a crime problem. Casper suffers from an enforcement problem, a credibility problem and a moral courage problem. When silence replaces action and comfort replaces conscience, the law becomes a performance rather than a principle.
Law does not survive selective enforcement. It dies from it. And when it does, responsibility does not lie with the public that noticed. It lies with those entrusted with power who chose themselves over the people they swore to serve.
Luc Colgrove
Casper
A good guy with a gun
Dear Casper,
“He shouldn’t have been carrying a gun.”
That’s what President Donald Trump said a few days ago about Alex Pretti, who had a concealed carry permit, but was shot numerous times in the back, in so-called self-defense.
“You cannot bring a firearm, loaded, with multiple magazines, to any sort of protest that you want. It’s that simple.”
That’s Kash Patel, who was hired as a Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Department of Justice during Trump’s first term, and is now a featured talking head on right-wing talkshows and podcasts, defending Trump, what some would a call a spokesman for Trump speaking after Pretti was killed.
I didn’t live here yet, but didn’t a bunch of Casper carry long guns to Black Lives Matter protests in 2020? Something about protecting youthful protesters, or maybe about intimidating protesters. I only read about it. One group of about a dozen individuals was led by Dan Sabrosky, who stated that his AR-15 was carried to “protect the First Amendment rights” of protesters. Local law enforcement credited community cooperation for the calm outcome. Similar armed counterpresences appeared at BLM events in other Wyoming towns like Cody, Lander, Gillette and Laramie.
“I don’t know of any peaceful protester that shows up with a gun and ammunition rather than a sign.”
That’s Trump’s hand-picked Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, also speaking about Pretti. Noem is in charge of ICE, Border Patro, and more. Noem shot and killed her own dog, and seems equally unremorseful about Pretti. The implication being, they both got what Noem thinks they had coming.
I’m not of what Trump has called “my Second Amendment people” at rallies, but I can think of at least three good reasons why I might want “a good guy with a gun” at a protest:
There might be armed white supremacists members of Patriot Front, hiding in UHaul, trying to sneak-up on the protest and commit mayhem, like nearly happened in Idaho.
There might be a lone white supremacist behind the wheel of Dodge Challenger, intent on running over protesters, like the guy who killed Heather Heyer and injured 19 others, in Virginia.
Kyle Rittenhouse might be there.
Gina Douglas
Casper
