WHEATLAND – The 2025 legislature officially began Monday, and the new leadership has bold plans to steer Wyoming back to a more conservative standing overall. After the general election last …
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WHEATLAND – The 2025 legislature officially began Monday, and the new leadership has bold plans to steer Wyoming back to a more conservative standing overall.
After the general election last fall, the people of Wyoming voted to elect a number of more conservative republicans into office, which paved the way for the freedom caucus element of the republican party to gain control of the lawmaking body. Platte County’s representative Jeremy Haroldson was also elected to another term in house district 4 and, having demonstrated a strength in leadership since first elected in 2021, was elected speaker pro-tempore for the 2025-2026 legislative session. He is also on the management council, rules and procedures, and appropriations committees.
As explained by Haroldson in an interview last week, the Freedom Caucus leadership utilized U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman’s pollster (with funding by private donors) to conduct an extensive poll asking the people of Wyoming what they think are the most important issues that need to be addressed legislatively in Wyoming. As a direct result of the poll of voters two lists were put together to address the identified priorities.
In an effort to cut to the chase in a 37-day legislative session, the Wyoming House of Representatives plans to begin immediately after the session begins to mark off a checklist, dubbed “Five and Dime,” of the top five issues listed as priorities by Wyomingites.
Haroldson explained, there is a goal of passing bills addressing those five issues in the first ten days of the session: requiring proof of Wyoming residency and US citizenship when registering to vote, invalidate in the state any driver’s licenses issued by other jurisdictions to illegal immigrants, prohibit DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) in higher education, banning ESG (environmental and social governance) in investments by the State of Wyoming, and cutting property taxes.
“Those five bills in the first 10 days are guaranteed to address these issues,” Haroldson said.
The second list stemming from the poll of voters is what the leadership is calling “20/20 Vision.” They plan to pass another 20 bills in the first 20 days dealing with issues seen by Wyoming citizens as extremely important, specifically: repealing gun-free zones; banning sanctuary cities, ballot drop boxes, non-photo ID voting, and “Zuckerbucks” (banning nonprofits from directly contributing to elections); rid the state of obscenity statute exemptions which, Haroldson explained, allow librarians and teachers to show pornography to the state’s youth; eminent domain reform; put in a vote board in the house and senate chambers (to keep track of voting visually in addition to the current audio recording of yea or nay votes on the floor); address anti-SLAPP (strategic lawsuit against public participation) rules; medical conscience protections; parental rights in education; universal school choice; an amendment of the women’s sports bill to extend to college athletics; and age verification for online pornography websites. On a list of the house’s other priorities shared by Haroldson are the prohibition of DEI in all of state government, criminalizing ballot harvesting, identifying “what is a woman,” CDC/WHO jurisdiction limitations, limit governor’s authority to invoke public health emergency, administrative procedure act reforms, for the people act, religious freedom restoration act, and more.