Hello,

On Tue, May 8, 2018 at 5:56 PM Thomas S. Dye <tsd@tsdye.com> wrote:

These are from two differently colored TODO cookies, not DONE
cookies.

There are text properties here:
  face                 (:inherit hl-todo :foreground "#cc9393")
  fontified            t
  org-category         "research"
  org-stats            0

There are text properties here:
  face                 org-todo
  fontified            t
  org-category         "research"
  org-stats            0

I don't use the hl-todo package. But looks like you do, and it somehow highlights only some "TODO" keywords based on some regexp.

How about disabling hl-todo completely in Org files, and then see if you still get that difference in faces?
--

Kaushal Modi