An Open Letter to Wyoming House Speaker Sommers

An Open Letter to Wyoming House Speaker Sommers, April 7, 2023

Dear Speaker Sommers,

Karlee Provenza presents a clear danger to the state of Wyoming. Regardless of decisions on any disciplinary actions which might be taken by you as Speaker of the House, or by the legislative leadership in the Management Council, she will continue to provoke and embolden violent groups to rise against our families and our legislators.

Before the threatening meme posted by the HD45 Representative on April 1, 2023, three significant events took place:

• March 27, 2023 school shooting of six people, including three children and three school staff, at a Nashville, Tennessee Christian school by a trans-identifying person (five days before Representative Provenza’s post)
• March 31, 2023 Laramie Police Step Up Presence at Laramie Middle School After Reports of Threat (one day before Representative Provenza’s post, in the city she resides)
• March 31, 2023 Colorado Springs 19 year old trans-identifying person arrested for allegedly planning school shootings (one day before Representative Provenza’s post). See Who Is William Whitworth? Trans Teen Arrested Over School Shooting Plot.

Any one of these events should discourage any intelligent, responsible adult from posting such a direct threatening message. More importantly, any WY legislator should refrain from making such a threatening post at all, particularly when that legislator’s neighbors were directly subjected to fear and subsequent lockdowns of students from active shooter threat reports.

After Provenza’s meme was published, numerous threat events of an active shooter occurred against a multitude of WY schools. Wyoming counties with schools that received these threats number no less than eleven, and include Big Horn, Campbell, Crook, Johnson, Laramie, Lincoln, Natrona, Park, Sheridan, Sweetwater and Weston Counties.

Ms. Provenza’s endorsing nod to Antifa (“Auntie Fa”) to incite violence is significant. She ignored that significance in her April 4, 2023 “apology”, and instead doubled-down to further inflame and divide supporters and opponents of trans ideology.

The significance stems from the nature and purpose of Antifa. This is a well-known revolutionary Marxist/anarchist militia movement notorious for their tactics of violence and intimidation, including the use of explosives. The group has been the focus of FBI investigations into domestic terrorism (United States Congressional Research Service, June 9, 2020), reinforcing the seriousness of their credible and well-known commitment to ‘shock and awe’ violence.

Antifa’s scheduled April 1, 2023 Trans Day of Vengeance Rally was postponed. However, radical copy-cat trans activists have been in the forefront of the primary threats against any state capitol (examples), state legislature, state legislators, district school boards, and school district’s families ensnared in the trans culture war assailing our nation today, state by state, county by county. Anyone who promotes actions protecting children from trans movement ideology and bullying is threatened by those locally advocating for adoption of trans thought, through forceful bullying and through demands for acceptance of trans women in school athletics.

First Amendment rights are protected by both our Federal and WY State Constitutions. However the United States Supreme Court has ruled that First Amendment rights are not all-encompassing, specifically when expressive speech is done with the intent to incite violence and done with the intent to intimidate. See True Threats and the Limits of First Amendment Protection, Heritage Foundation, Dec 8, 2014.

The meme posted by Ms. Provenza raises First Amendment concerns. Some of the elements in the meme are likely protected First Amendment speech, however others fall in the realm of unprotected speech. The hierarchy of some of these elements and factors are:

1. A meme of a person aiming a gun.
2. A meme of a person aiming a gun at an intended target of people (people who oppose trans ideology).
3. A meme of Antifa inciting a person to aim a gun at an intended target of people.
4. A meme of Antifa inciting a person to aim a gun at an intended target of people after a school shooting was carried out by a trans individual against an intended target of people.
5. A meme of Antifa inciting a person to aim a gun at an intended target of people after a school shooting was carried out by a trans individual against an intended target of people, and after schools received multiple threats of potential school shooters. The fact that these were later found to be false threats indicates intent to intimidate, and likely Antifa involvement.
6. A meme posted by a State Elected Official of Antifa inciting a person to aim a gun at an intended target of people after a school shooting was carried out by a trans individual against an intended target of people, and after schools received multiple threats of potential school shooters.

The meme was obviously created with the intent to incite violence and to intimidate the intended target group of people, i.e. those who oppose the forced indoctrination of trans ideology.

Ms. Provenza copied and posted that meme to her social media on April Fool’s Day – one day after Laramie Middle School students and staff in her county received multiple threats of gun violence, one day after the arrest of a trans-identifying person for planning multiple school shootings in Colorado Springs, and five days after a school shooting occurred in Nashville that claimed the lives of three children and three adults. That can’t be stressed enough.

Representative Provenza is a highly educated woman with both an M.A and Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology (WY House Representative Karlee Provenza Bio Page). On her page at the University of Wyoming website, Provenza stated that her doctoral work “focused on improving decision making of people in the criminal justice system and science communication”, and her “research has been primarily focused on jurors’ decisions regarding police shootings and other types of police misconduct”.

Ms. Provenza also works as a “field organizer and data analyst” for NEO Philanthropy (2023 WY State Elected Officials Financial Disclosure – Karlee Provenza), which is a ‘leftist dark-money financial clearing house that plays a key role in “incubating” dozens of new activist groups and coordinating left-wing efforts to alter the landscape of American politics’ (The Left’s “Dark Money” Coordinator, Capital Research Center, July 10, 2019).

Considering Ms. Provenza’s educational achievements and professional endeavors, it is improbable that Representative Provenza was ignorant to the psychological effect(s), public alarm, and disgust her post would cause to Wyoming citizens and law enforcement during this sensitive time period after a school shooting, and after a public school in her own city was receiving multiple threats of an active shooter.

As the Denver Field Office of the FBI pointed out:

“It is important to note that law enforcement will use all available resources to investigate a threat until we determine whether it is real or not. Investigating hoax threats drains law enforcement resources and diverts officers from responding to an actual crisis. More information about the consequences of posting hoax threats can be found on fbi.gov at https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/hoax-threats-awareness-100518. We urge the public to remain vigilant, and report any and all suspicious activity and/or individuals to law enforcement immediately.”

FBI Denver Field Office releases statement regarding swatting calls across the state, Wyo4News, April 3, 2025.

Wyoming’s executive leader, Governor Mark Gordon, expounded on these same concerns:

“…every false threat must be taken seriously to protect the safety of our children and teachers,” Gordon said in a statement. “These incidents are traumatic for students and staff and endanger entire communities by utilizing law enforcement resources that may be needed elsewhere.”

South High One of at Least a Dozen Schools Hit with False Shooting Reports, April 3, 2023

In your April 3, 2023 Statement regarding Minority Whip Rep. Karlee Provenza social media post, you state:

“The implication that violence is necessary to solve political differences has no place in the Wyoming Legislature. I strongly and unequivocally condemn this type of attitude on social media or otherwise. As Speaker of the House, I have held that civility towards each other is the mechanism to ensure we can work together. Civility is the basic expectation of how a member of the Wyoming House of Representatives should conduct themselves, both on and off the floor of the House.”

The Wyoming State Constitution, Article 3, Section 12 provides for punishment and protection of members of the legislature:

Each house shall have power to determine the rules of its proceedings, and [to] punish its members or other persons for contempt or disorderly behavior in its presence; to protect its members against violence or offers of bribes or private solicitation, and with the concurrence of two-thirds, to expel a member, and shall have all other powers necessary to the legislature of a free state. A member expelled for corruption shall not thereafter be eligible to either house of the legislature, and punishment for contempt or disorderly behavior shall not bar a criminal prosecution for the same offense.

Disciplinary actions are also addressed in the Leadership Handbook for the Wyoming Legislature (pgs 31-32)

How to discipline members:
• Realize that discipline is sometimes political and sometimes personal.
• Lead by setting the highest level of personal conduct.
• Understand the different levels of discipline available.
• Handle discipline issues swiftly and decisively.
• Realize that the worst thing is to leave problems unaddressed.

Wyoming citizens, including Wyoming students, Wyoming school staff, Wyoming parents, Wyoming law enforcement and Wyoming legislators, as well as the Wyoming State Legislature as an institution, deserve protection from violent domestic terroristic behavior provoked, incited or condoned by public officials.

Wyoming citizens also deserve protection of our hard-earned taxpayer dollars. Threats by public officials that cost county and local law enforcement agencies to investigate those threats are a scandalous drain of local resources that we provide from our own pockets.

Wyoming citizens whose emergency needs might be delayed due to officers being diverted to  fraudulent swatting incidences must also be considered.

At best, the highest level of swift, decisive and appropriate action by your leadership as Speaker of the Wyoming House of Representatives should be to implement expulsion or impeachment provisions against Representative Karlee Provenza. If successfully impeached, appointment proceedings for a new House Representative for WY House District 45 should commence quickly to assure ongoing representation of fellow Wyomingites who reside in Ms. Provenza’s district.

Considering recent disciplinary actions of other legislators, expulsion of Ms Provenza from the office of Representative is appropriate and necessary. However, under no circumstances can justification be made to allow Ms. Provenza to remain in a leadership position as Minority Whip or in any legislative committee. As the very least appropriate discipline, these positions must be stripped from her until the end of her term.

Sincerely,

A Concerned Citizen of Wyoming

Editor’s note:

Wyoming citizens are strongly encouraged to share this letter with other Wyomingites.  This is time-sensitive disciplinary issue that may be addressed very soon.  Citizens should send their own letters of opinion on this issue to:
WY House Speaker Albert Sommers
 Albert.Sommers@wyoleg.gov