![\"HOLLYWOOD,](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/457803098-GI.JPG\" "\\"A")
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A ceremony posthumously honoring John Denver with the 2,531st star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Oct. 24, 2014, in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n
Alberto E. Rodriguez<\/p>\n
Getty Images<\/p>\n
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\u2019s uneven impact on Arlington. Columnists and guest writers also weighed in on evangelical views of immigration, a singer-songwriter\u2019s Fort Worth roots, a new app-store law and Texas housing policy.<\/p>\n
Here are key takeaways:<\/p>\n
Ken Paxton refused to answer reporters\u2019 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<\/a>.Fort Worth police wrongly blocked street preachers David Grisham and Rich Penkoski from preaching at Trinity Pride on June 27, handing the \u201cclickbait-for-Christ crowd\u201d a viral video that racked up more than 13 million views on LibsOfTikTok, Bud Kennedy reports<\/a> \u2014 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<\/a> \u2014 the real issue is Paxton\u2019s 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<\/a>, warning that Trump\u2019s 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 \u201cstill looks like an old state highway through a dilapidated Texas small town,\u201d Bud Kennedy writes.<\/a> He notes that downtown small businesses reported slower sales during the tournament.The 1972 hit \u201cTake Me Home, Country Roads\u201d became a World Cup singalong anthem, yet many fans reacted with \u201cI didn\u2019t know he was from Fort Worth\u201d \u2014 Denver attended Arlington Heights High School from 1957 to 1961. As a teenager, he hated it here, Kennedy writes<\/a>.Texas\u2019s 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<\/a>, noting 80% of Texas parents support the rule.After Maine Democrats spent weeks defending U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner \u2014 a man with a Nazi tattoo and a history of misogyny \u2014 until a rape accusation surfaced, Rusak floats an \u201cAnti-Gaslighting Party\u201d<\/a> 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\u2019s single-family rental market, Tom Giovanetti argues<\/a> \u2014 pointing instead to permitting delays, zoning, property taxes and insurance as the real drivers of housing costs.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Related Stories from Fort Worth Star-Telegram<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A ceremony posthumously honoring John Denver with the 2,531st star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Oct.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":394689,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[116,118,117],"class_list":["post-394688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fort-worth","tag-fort-worth","tag-fort-worth-headlines","tag-fort-worth-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=394688"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394688\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/394689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=394688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=394688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=394688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}