CSS color won’t change in internal link

I fear I’m about to learn something here.
Latest version wordpress,
Asteroid child theme
Everything works fine,

Then, I decide to change the color here, and it doesn’t work. This code is in a standard text widget in the sidebar.
<a ><b>Free Discovery Call</b></a><p>

CSS:
.widget-sidebar a {color: #ff47ed; font-size: 1em;}

All other css code I put in here works fine, except the text color.

Here’s the kicker: When I add “text-decoration: underline” here, the underline on the page shows up as whatever color I put in the “color” attribute, but the actual text color doesn’t change.

The same is true of the “hover” css for this code. “Text-decoration: underline” changes the underline to whatever color I set in the color attribute, but the text color itself doesn’t change when I change the color attribute.

Why will the color attribute not change the text color?

I’ve searched the site css for anything suspicious to no avail.
I haven’t been able to figure this out.
Can anyone help?
Thanks