A ceremony posthumously honoring John Denver with the 2,531st star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Oct. 24, 2014, in Los Angeles.
Alberto E. Rodriguez
Getty Images
July brought a run of Star-Telegram Opinion pieces on the U.S. Senate race between Ken Paxton and James Talarico, a First Amendment mess at a Fort Worth Pride event, and the World Cup’s uneven impact on Arlington. Columnists and guest writers also weighed in on evangelical views of immigration, a singer-songwriter’s Fort Worth roots, a new app-store law and Texas housing policy.
Here are key takeaways:
Ken Paxton refused to answer reporters’ questions about expensive Utah condo purchases and voter registration address discrepancies at a July 21 Fort Worth press conference, a sign his campaign may not be ready for the scrutiny of a top-of-the-ticket race, Ryan J. Rusak writes in his Texas Senate Rundown.Fort Worth police wrongly blocked street preachers David Grisham and Rich Penkoski from preaching at Trinity Pride on June 27, handing the “clickbait-for-Christ crowd” a viral video that racked up more than 13 million views on LibsOfTikTok, Bud Kennedy reports — noting that the city already paid Grisham $65,148.92 in 2016 over a similar incident.Democrats and the Lincoln Project piled on Paxton for taking an Iceland vacation with a woman reportedly tied to the collapse of his marriage, but Rusak argues that the attack is unlikely to move voters — the real issue is Paxton’s pattern of corruption, not the affair itself.The Southern Baptist Convention nearly unanimously rejected both amnesty and nativism on immigration, and more than three-quarters of evangelicals back letting unlawfully present immigrants earn legal status through fines and background checks, Pastor Tim Moore writes, warning that Trump’s mass deportation push risks separating up to 900,000 U.S. citizen children from a parent.AT&T Stadium is the most-praised World Cup venue worldwide, but Arlington is losing visitors to Fort Worth and Dallas because North Collins Street “still looks like an old state highway through a dilapidated Texas small town,” Bud Kennedy writes. He notes that downtown small businesses reported slower sales during the tournament.The 1972 hit “Take Me Home, Country Roads” became a World Cup singalong anthem, yet many fans reacted with “I didn’t know he was from Fort Worth” — Denver attended Arlington Heights High School from 1957 to 1961. As a teenager, he hated it here, Kennedy writes.Texas’s new App Store Accountability Act requires app stores to verify user ages and link minor accounts to parents for downloads and purchases, and the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld it as a commercial regulation rather than a speech restriction, Hannah Bruck writes, noting 80% of Texas parents support the rule.After Maine Democrats spent weeks defending U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner — a man with a Nazi tattoo and a history of misogyny — until a rape accusation surfaced, Rusak floats an “Anti-Gaslighting Party” to push back on leaders in both parties who deny what voters can see with their own eyes.Congress passed a federal law restricting institutional ownership of single-family homes on July 11, and Texas lawmakers should not duplicate it in January because such investors make up less than 1% of the state’s single-family rental market, Tom Giovanetti argues — pointing instead to permitting delays, zoning, property taxes and insurance as the real drivers of housing costs.
The summary points above were compiled with the help of AI tools and edited by journalists. The source reporting referenced above was written and edited entirely by journalists.
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