Media

Like many of my fellow Texans, I was shocked when Senator Ted Cruz was recently spotted not wearing a mask on a flight from Dallas to Houston as COVID-19 cases were spiking across the state. Pandemic petulance is pretty on brand for the junior senator, but his latest fit of obstinacy comes at a particularly dangerous time: hurricane season.

AUSTIN (KXAN) — Texas politicians are paying tribute Saturday to civil rights icon and longtime Congressman John Lewis, who has died aged 80.

Michael B. Williams spent nearly two years helping to run a trade group focused on expanding sales of firearm silencers by American manufacturers. But try as he might, he could not achieve one of the industry’s main goals: overturning a ban on sales to private foreign buyers enacted by the State Department to protect American troops in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Then Mr. Williams joined the Trump administration. As a White House lawyer, he pushed to overturn the prohibition, raising the issue with influential administration officials and creating pressure within the State Department, according to current and former government officials. On Friday, the State Department lifted the ban, and a longtime industry goal was realized. The change paved the way for as much as $250 million a year in possible new overseas sales for companies that Mr. Williams had championed as general counsel of the American Suppressor Association.

With our community confronting so many ongoing challenges, we must pull together to get to the other side of this crisis.

Regarding “Virus Drug to Cost $3,120 Per Patient” (U.S. News, June 30):

Some of the pharmaceutical companies developing Covid-19 vaccine candidates have pledged to not take a profit.

Fans of Gordon Gekko’s “greed is good” quote forget he was the villain in Oliver Stone’s 1987 film “Wall Street.”