Senate Panel Moves two Wyoming-Backed Bills Forward — One on Public-Lands Comments, Another on School Funds

Two bills with big Wyoming fingerprints just cleared an early hurdle in Washington.

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee voted to advance S. 2262, the American Voices in Federal Lands Act, a proposal led by Sen. John Barrasso, along with a group of Western Republicans. The bill is aimed at tightening up who gets to weigh in during federal land-management rulemaking — specifically trying to block foreign adversaries and artificial intelligence/bots from flooding public comment periods and potentially skewing decisions.

Barrasso said the idea grew out of what he described as a strange disconnect during a past hearing involving the Bureau of Land Management and a Wyoming public-lands issue. Locals were telling lawmakers one thing, he said, but the agency pointed to a wave of negative public comments — without being able to clearly say who was submitting them.

Barrasso raised the possibility that comments could be coming from outside the US, including China, or generated by AI. And, he said, he didn’t get satisfying answers about whether the agency was even checking.

His pitch: Americans should be heard in the process — but not “bots,” not AI, and not foreign governments trying to meddle in how the US manages land and resources.

The committee also advanced S. 2273, the Wyoming Education Trust Modernization Act, introduced by Sens. Cynthia Lummis and John Barrasso. That bill would update Wyoming’s statehood admission language to give the state’s permanent school land fund more flexibility in how it invests — with the goal of potentially boosting annual returns that support K-12 education.

In short: one bill is about protecting public-land decision-making from outside manipulation, and the other is about giving Wyoming more room to grow education dollars.