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HOUSTON – The Wall Street Journal reports that oil companies are conveying an unlikely message to the GOP and its presidential candidate: Spare President Biden’s signature climate law. At least the parts that benefit the oil industry. In discussions with former President Trump’s campaign and his allies in Congress, oil giants including Exxon Mobil, Phillips 66 and Occidental Petroleum have extolled the benefits of the Inflation Reduction Act. Many in the fossil-fuel industry opposed the law when it passed in 2022 but have come to love provisions that earmark billions of dollars for low-carbon energy projects they are betting on. Some executives in the largely pro-Trump oil industry are worried the former president, if re-elected, would side with conservative lawmakers who want to gut the IRA. They fear losing tax credits vital for their investments in renewable fuel, carbon capture and hydrogen, costly technologies requiring U.S. support to survive their early years.

At a Houston fundraiser for Trump in May, Occidental CEO Vicki Hollub took her case directly to the candidate, saying tax credits propping up the company’s huge investments in technology to collect carbon directly from the air should be preserved, people familiar with the matter said. The company is building its first $1.3 billion direct-air capture plant in West Texas and aims to erect dozens more in the coming years. Exxon has also told the Trump campaign it wants to preserve portions of the IRA. It and Chevron, the two largest U.S. oil companies, have promised to pump more than $30 billion combined into carbon capture, hydrogen, biofuels and other low-carbon technologies, virtually all of which rely on tax credits in the IRA to be viable. Meanwhile, company officials at Phillips 66, a $58 billion U.S. oil refiner, have told members of Congress the IRA’s tax credits are important for its business, people familiar with the matter said. Instead of crude oil, the company’s renewable fuels are made from used cooking oil, vegetable oil, fats and the like, which qualify it for large tax credits.

HOUSTON (AP) — Prosecutors asked a jury on Monday to sentence a former Houston police officer to life in prison for the murders of a couple during a drug raid that exposed systemic corruption.

Gerald Goines was convicted last month in the deaths of Dennis Tuttle, 59, and his wife Rhogena Nicholas, 58. The couple and their dog were fatally shot when officers burst into their home in January 2019 using a “no-knock” warrant that didn’t require them to announce themselves before entering. Authorities said Goines lied to get the search warrant and falsely portrayed the couple as dangerous drug dealers.

During closing arguments in the trial’s punishment phase, prosecutors told jurors that the deaths of Nicholas and Tuttle were the deadly result of a years-long pattern of corruption by Goines in which he lied about drug arrests and helped people get wrongly convicted. They asked for life in prison, saying he used his badge to prey on people he was supposed to protect.

“No community is cleansed by an officer that uses his badge as an instrument of oppression rather than a shield of protection,” said prosecutor Tanisha Manning.

The investigation that followed the deadly drug raid revealed systemic corruption problems within the police department’s narcotics unit and that officers had made hundreds of errors in cases.

Defense attorneys asked jurors to give Goines the minimum sentence of five years, saying he had dedicated his 34-year career in law enforcement to serving his community and keeping drugs off the streets.

“Our community is safer with someone like Gerald, with the heart to serve and the heart to care,” said Nicole DeBorde, one of Goines’ attorneys.

The jury’s sentencing deliberation was delayed a few days after Goines suffered a medical emergency in the courtroom on Thursday and was taken away in an ambulance.

During the monthlong trial, prosecutors said Goines falsely claimed an informant had bought heroin at the couple’s home from a man with a gun, setting up the violent confrontation in which the couple was killed and four officers, including Goines, were shot and wounded, and a fifth was injured.

Goines’ lawyers had acknowledged the ex-officer lied to get the search warrant but minimized the impact of his false statements. His lawyers had portrayed the couple as armed drug users and said they were responsible for their own deaths because they fired at officers.

Goines’ attorneys argued that the first to fire at another person was Tuttle and not police officers. But a Texas Ranger who investigated the raid testified that the officers fired first, killing the dog and likely provoking Tuttle’s gunfire. And an officer who took part, as well as the judge who approved the warrant, testified that the raid would never have happened had they known Goines lied.

Investigators later found only small amounts of marijuana and cocaine in the house, and while Houston’s police chief at the time, Art Acevedo, initially praised Goines as being “tough as nails,” he later suspended him when the lies emerged. Goines later retired as the probes continued.

During the trial’s punishment phase, jurors heard from family members of Nicholas and Tuttle, who described them as kind and generous. Tuttle’s son said his father was “pro-police.”

Several of Goines’ family members told jurors he was a good person and had dedicated his life to public service. Elyse Lanier, the widow of former Houston Mayor Bob Lanier, said she had known Goines for 20 years as a “gentle giant.”

One of the people wrongfully convicted based on Goines’ false testimony, Otis Mallet, told jurors that what Goines had done to him had “traumatically disturbed” his life.

Goines also made a drug arrest in 2004 in Houston of George Floyd, whose 2020 death at the hands of a Minnesota police officer sparked a nationwide reckoning on racism in policing. A Texas board in 2022 declined a request that Floyd be granted a posthumous pardon for that drug conviction.

Goines also faces federal criminal charges in connection with the raid, and federal civil rights lawsuits filed by the families of Tuttle and Nicholas against Goines, 12 other officers and the city of Houston are set to be tried in November.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Monday let stand a decision barring emergency abortions that violate the law in Texas, which has one of the country’s strictest abortion bans.

The justices did not detail their reasoning for keeping in place a lower court order that said hospitals cannot be required to provide pregnancy terminations if they would break Texas law. There were no publicly noted dissents.

The decision comes weeks before a presidential election where abortion has been a key issue after the high court’s 2022 decision overturning the nationwide right to abortion.

The justices rebuffed a Biden administration push to throw out the lower court order. The administration argues that under federal law hospitals must perform abortions if needed in cases where a pregnant patient’s health or life is at serious risk, even in states where it’s banned.

Complaints of pregnant women in medical distress being turned away from emergency rooms in Texas and elsewhere have spiked as hospitals grapple with whether standard care could violate strict state laws against abortion.

The administration pointed to the Supreme Court’s action in a similar case from Idaho earlier this year in which the justices narrowly allowed emergency abortions to resume while a lawsuit continues.

Texas, on the other hand, asked the justices to leave the order in place. Texas said its case is different from Idaho because Texas does have an exception for cases with serious risks to the health of a pregnant patient. At the time the Idaho case began, the state had an exception for the life of a woman but not her health.

Texas pointed to a state supreme court ruling that said doctors do not have to wait until a woman’s life is in immediate danger to provide an abortion legally.

Doctors, though, have said the Texas law is dangerously vague, and a medical board has refused to list all the conditions that qualify for an exception.

Pregnancy terminations have long been part of medical treatment for patients with serious complications, as way to to prevent sepsis, organ failure and other major problems. But in Texas and other states with strict abortion bans, doctors and hospitals have said it is not clear whether those terminations could run afoul of abortion bans that carry the possibility of prison time.

The Texas case started after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, leading to abortion restrictions in many Republican-controlled states. The Biden administration issued guidance saying hospitals still needed to provide abortions in emergency situations under a health care law that requires most hospitals to treat any patients in medical distress.

Texas sued over that guidance, arguing that hospitals cannot be required to provide abortions that would violate its ban. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the state, ruling in January that the administration had overstepped its authority.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court won’t hear an appeal from a former Texas police officer convicted in the death of a woman who was shot through a window of her home.

The justices did not detail their reasoning, as is typical, and none publicly dissented.

Aaron Dean was convicted of manslaughter in Atatiana Jefferson’s fatal shooting, and he was sentenced to nearly 12 years in prison. Dean was originally charged with murder. He argued on appeal that prosecutors should not have been allowed to ask the jury to consider the lesser charge at the end of the trial.

Dean, who is white, shot Jefferson, a 28-year-old Black woman, on Oct. 12, 2019, after a neighbor called a nonemergency police line to report that the front door to Jefferson’s home was open.

It later emerged that Jefferson and her nephew had left the doors open to vent smoke after he had burned hamburgers, and the two were up late playing video games.

Dean’s guilty verdict was a rare conviction of an officer for killing someone who was also armed with a gun.

During the trial, the primary dispute was whether Dean knew Jefferson was armed. Dean testified that he saw her weapon. Prosecutors said the evidence showed otherwise.

Body camera footage showed that Dean and a second officer who responded to the call did not identify themselves as police at the house. Dean and the other officer testified that they thought the house might have been burglarized and they quietly moved into the fenced-off backyard looking for signs of forced entry.

There, Dean, whose gun was drawn, fired a single shot through the window a moment after shouting at Jefferson, who was inside, to show her hands.

Jefferson’ nephew testified that she took out her gun because she believed there was an intruder in the backyard.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — For more than two decades, the low rent on Marina Maalouf’s apartment in a blocky affordable housing development in Los Angeles’ Chinatown was a saving grace for her family, including a granddaughter who has autism.

But that grace had an expiration date. For Maalouf and her family it arrived in 2020.

The landlord, no longer legally obligated to keep the building affordable, hiked rent from $1,100 to $2,660 in 2021 — out of reach for Maalouf and her family. Maalouf’s nights are haunted by fears her yearslong eviction battle will end in sleeping bags on a friend’s floor or worse.

While Americans continue to struggle under unrelentingly high rents, as many as 223,000 affordable housing units like Maalouf’s across the U.S. could be yanked out from under them in the next five years alone.

It leaves low-income tenants caught facing protracted eviction battles, scrambling to pay a two-fold rent increase or more, or shunted back into a housing market where costs can easily eat half a paycheck.

Those affordable housing units were built with the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, or LIHTC, a federal program established in 1986 that provides tax credits to developers in exchange for keeping rents low. It has pumped out 3.6 million units since then and boasts over half of all federally supported low-income housing nationwide.

“It’s the lifeblood of affordable housing development,” said Brian Rossbert, who runs Housing Colorado, an organization advocating for affordable homes.

That lifeblood isn’t strictly red or blue. By combining social benefits with tax breaks and private ownership, LIHTC has enjoyed bipartisan support. Its expansion is now central to Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris’ housing plan to build 3 million new homes.

The catch? The buildings typically only need to be kept affordable for a minimum of 30 years. For the wave of LIHTC construction in the 1990s, those deadlines are arriving now, threatening to hemorrhage affordable housing supply when Americans need it most.

“If we are losing the homes that are currently affordable and available to households, then we’re losing ground on the crisis,” said Sarah Saadian, vice president of public policy at the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

“It’s sort of like having a boat with a hole at the bottom,” she said.

Not all units that expire out of LIHTC become market rate. Some are kept affordable by other government subsidies, by merciful landlords or by states, including California, Colorado and New York, that have worked to keep them low-cost by relying on several levers.

Local governments and nonprofits can purchase expiring apartments, new tax credits can be applied that extend the affordability, or, as in Maalouf’s case, tenants can organize to try to force action from landlords and city officials.

Those options face challenges. While new tax credits can reup a lapsing LIHTC property, they are limited, doled out to states by the Internal Revenue Service based on population. It’s also a tall order for local governments and nonprofits to shell out enough money to purchase and keep expiring developments affordable. And there is little aggregated data on exactly when LIHTC units will lose their affordability, making it difficult for policymakers and activists to fully prepare.

There also is less of a political incentive to preserve the units.

“Politically, you’re rewarded for an announcement, a groundbreaking, a ribbon-cutting,” said Vicki Been, a New York University professor who previously was New York City’s deputy mayor for housing and economic development.

“You’re not rewarded for being a good manager of your assets and keeping track of everything and making sure that you’re not losing a single affordable housing unit,” she said.

Maalouf stood in her apartment courtyard on a recent warm day, chit-chatting and waving to neighbors, a bracelet with a photo of Che Guevarra dangling from her arm.

“Friendly,” is how Maalouf described her previous self, but not assertive. That is until the rent hikes pushed her in front of the Los Angeles City Council for the first time, sweat beading as she fought for her home.

Now an organizer with the LA Tenants’ Union, Maalouf isn’t afraid to speak up, but the angst over her home still keeps her up at night. Mornings she repeats a mantra: “We still here. We still here.” But fighting day after day to make it true is exhausting.

Maalouf’s apartment was built before California made LIHTC contracts last 55 years instead of 30 in 1996. About 5,700 LIHTC units built around the time of Maalouf’s are expiring in the next decade. In Texas, it’s 21,000 units.

When California Treasurer Fiona Ma assumed office in 2019, she steered the program toward developers committed to affordable housing and not what she called “churn and burn,” buying up LIHTC properties and flipping them onto the market as soon as possible.

In California, landlords must notify state and local governments and tenants before their building expires. Housing organizations, nonprofits, and state or local governments then have first shot at buying the property to keep it affordable. Expiring developments also are prioritized for new tax credits, and the state essentially requires that all LIHTC applicants have experience owning and managing affordable housing.

“It kind of weeded out people who weren’t interested in affordable housing long term,” said Marina Wiant, executive director of California’s tax credit allocation committee.

But unlike California, some states haven’t extended LIHTC agreements beyond 30 years, let alone taken other measures to keep expiring housing affordable.

Colorado, which has some 80,000 LIHTC units, passed a law this year giving local governments the right of first refusal in hopes of preserving 4,400 units set to lose affordability protections in the next six years. The law also requires landlords to give local and state governments a two-year heads-up before expiration.

Still, local governments or nonprofits scraping together the funds to buy sizeable apartment buildings is far from a guarantee.

Stories like Maalouf’s will keep playing out as LIHTC units turn over, threatening to send families with meager means back into the housing market. The median income of Americans living in these units was just $18,600 in 2021, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

“This is like a math problem,” said Rossbert of Housing Colorado. “As soon as one of these units expires and converts to market rate and a household is displaced, they become a part of the need that’s driving the need for new construction.”

“It’s hard to get out of that cycle,” he said.

Colorado’s housing agency works with groups across the state on preservation and has a fund to help. Still, it’s unclear how many LIHTC units can be saved, in Colorado or across the country.

It’s even hard to know how many units nationwide are expiring. An accurate accounting would require sorting through the constellation of municipal, state and federal subsidies, each with their own affordability requirements and end dates.

That can throw a wrench into policymakers’ and advocates’ ability to fully understand where and when many units will lose affordability, and then funnel resources to the right places, said Kelly McElwain, who manages and oversees the National Housing Preservation Database. It’s the most comprehensive aggregation of LIHTC data nationally, but with all the gaps, it remains a rough estimate.

There also are fears that if states publicize their expiring LIHTC units, for-profit buyers without an interest in keeping them affordable would pounce.

“It’s sort of this Catch-22 of trying to both understand the problem and not put out a big for-sale sign in front of a property right before its expiration,” Rossbert said.

Meanwhile, Maalouf’s tenant activism has helped move the needle in Los Angeles. The city has offered the landlord $15 million to keep her building affordable through 2034, but that deal wouldn’t get rid of over 30 eviction cases still proceeding, including Maalouf’s, or the $25,000 in back rent she owes.

In her courtyard, Maalouf’s granddaughter, Rubie Caceres, shuffled up with a glass of water. She is 5 years old, but with special needs, her speech is more disconnected words than sentences.

“That’s why I’ve been hoping everything becomes normal again, and she can be safe,” said Maalouf, her voice shaking with emotion. She has urged her son to start saving money for the worst.

“We’ll keep fighting,” she said, “but day by day it’s hard.”

“I’m tired already.”

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Bedayn reported from Denver.

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Bedayn is a corps member of The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

DETROIT (AP) — Some 45,000 dockworkers at East and Gulf coast ports are returning to work after their union reached a deal to suspend a strike that could have caused shortages and higher prices if it had dragged on.

The International Longshoremen’s Association is suspending its three-day strike until Jan. 15 to provide time to negotiate a new contract. The union and the U.S. Maritime Alliance, which represents ports and shipping companies, said in a joint statement that they have reached a tentative agreement on wages.

A person briefed on the agreement said the ports sweetened their wage offer from about 50% over six years to 62%. The person didn’t want to be identified because the agreement is tentative. Any wage increase would have to be approved by union members as part of the ratification of a final contract.

Talks now turn to the automation of ports, which the unions says will lead to fewer jobs, and other sticking points.

The settlement pushes the strike and any potential shortages past the November presidential election, eliminating a potential liability for Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee. It’s also a big plus for the Biden-Harris administration, which has billed itself as the most union-friendly in American history. Shortages could have driven up prices and reignited inflation.

It will take a day or two for the ports to restart machinery and for ships waiting at sea to get to a berth, but even so, consumers aren’t likely to see any shortages because the strike was relatively short, said William Brucher, an assistant professor of labor studies and employment relations at Rutgers University who follows ports.

“I think the disruptions are going to be rather minimal and consumers aren’t really going to feel them,” Brucher said.

Supply chain experts say that for every day of a port strike, it takes four to six days to recover. That means it will take probably about 20 days to recover, said Brucher. But during those 20 days, Longshoremen will be gradually increasing their capacity to handle freight until they hit normal levels.

The union went on strike early Tuesday after its contract expired in a dispute over pay and the automation of tasks at 36 ports stretching from Maine to Texas. The strike came at the peak of the holiday season at the ports, which handle about half the cargo from ships coming into and out of the United States.

Most retailers had stocked up or shipped items early in anticipation of the strike.

“With the grace of God, and the goodwill of neighbors, it’s gonna hold,” President Joe Biden told reporters Thursday night after the agreement.

In a statement later, Biden applauded both sides “for acting patriotically to reopen our ports and ensure the availability of critical supplies for Hurricane Helene recovery and rebuilding.”

Biden said that collective bargaining is “critical to building a stronger economy from the middle out and the bottom up.”

The union’s membership won’t need to vote on the temporary suspension of the strike. Until Jan. 15, the workers will be covered under the old contract, which expired on Sept. 30.

The union had been demanding a 77% raise over six years, plus a complete ban on the use of automation at the ports, which members see as a threat to their jobs. Both sides also have been apart on the issues of pension contributions and the distribution of royalties paid on containers that are moved by workers.

Thomas Kohler, who teaches labor and employment law at Boston College, said the agreement to halt the strike means that the two sides are close to a final deal.

“I’m sure that if they weren’t going anywhere they wouldn’t have suspended (the strike),” he said. “They’ve got wages. They’ll work out the language on automation, and I’m sure that what this really means is it gives the parties time to sit down and get exactly the language they can both live with.”

ILA President Harold Daggett has been seeking an outright ban on anything that would cost human jobs. But shipping companies want more flexibility to automate at a faster pace in order to compete against more efficient facilities that already use the technology, said Thomas Kochan, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Institute for Work and Employment Research.

Although automation does indeed eliminate some jobs, as workers legitimately fear, it also tends to create new ones, in part because equipment must be maintained and set up for different tasks, Kochan said. The companies could agree to include such jobs in the union membership.

“There are ways to address those fears both by providing job security for those people who are displaced and also the ability then to take on the new jobs that are created,” he said. “That’s the sweet spot that I suspect they are trying to find in these final negotiations over automation.”

Just before the strike had begun, the Maritime Alliance, which represents ports and shippers, said both sides had moved off their original wage offers, a tentative sign of progress.

Thursday’s deal came after Biden administration officials met with foreign-owned shipping companies before dawn on Zoom, according to a person briefed on the day’s events who asked not to be identified because the talks were private. The White House wanted to increase pressure to settle, emphasizing the responsibility to reopen the ports to help with recovery from Hurricane Helene, the person said.

Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su told them she could get the union to the bargaining table to extend the contract if the carriers made a higher wage offer. Chief of Staff Jeff Zients told the carriers they had to make an offer by the end of the day so a manmade strike wouldn’t worsen a natural disaster, the person said.

By midday the Maritime Alliance members agreed to a large increase, bringing about the agreement, according to the person.

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AP Writers Darlene Superville and Josh Boak in Washington and Annie Mulligan in Houston contributed to this report.

AUSTIIN – KVUE reports that a jury has found Austin Police Department officer Christopher Taylor guilty of deadly conduct in the 2019 shooting death of Mauris DeSilva, a man suffering mental illness and armed with a knife. Taylor was initially indicted for murder in connection DeSilva’s death, but the charge was downgraded to deadly conduct shortly before his trial began. Jury selection kicked off on Sept. 23, with closing statements delivered Oct. 2. The jury began deliberations on Wednesday before returning its verdict on Saturday morning. The conviction of Taylor marks the first time ever in Travis County a police officer has been found criminally liable in an on-duty fatal shooting. Taylor faces up to 10 years in prison.

The judge will decide the sentencing date for Taylor on Oct. 15. “We hope this outcome continues to help the DeSilva family with their healing process,” said Travis County District Attorney José Garza in a statement. “Our office is grateful to our dedicated staff who worked tirelessly to hold the defendant accountable and seek justice for the victim and their family. We further hope this verdict allows the community to heal and that we can move forward together.” APD also issued a statement after the guilty verdict on Saturday afternoon. “The Austin Police Department respects the criminal justice process and understands this is a difficult time for all who have been impacted,” the department said.