Rep. Veasey asks Rangers to remove statue

U.S. Rep. Mark Veasey is asking the Texas Rangers, the baseball team, to take down a statue of a Texas Ranger, the law enforcement kind.

State of play: The baseball team recently installed "One Riot, One Ranger," which was removed from Dallas Love Field in 2020 after backlash over it and other controversial statues.

• The statue is meant to generally represent the law enforcement agency for which the team is named, Rangers officials say. But, the 12-foot-tall cowboy may actually be based on a Rangers captain sent to block desegregation at Mansfield High School in 1956, reports the Dallas Morning News.

What they're saying: Veasey, a Fort Worth Democrat, sent a letter to the MLB commissioner and team executives asking them to remove the statue.

• "Honoring a figure tied to resisting school integration — and doing so with imagery that evokes racist violence — sends exactly the wrong message about who belongs in that space," Veasey wrote.
• The Rangers haven't commented publicly about Veasey's request.