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AUSTIN – The Austin American-Statesman reports Delta Airlines reaffirmed its commitment to the Lone Star State this week, announcing that the company would add five nonstop routes from Austin. According to a news release, Delta will add daily nonstop service to Panama City, Fla., beginning in March. Additionally, the airline said it will add nonstop service to Indianapolis; Memphis, Tenn.; San Francisco; and Tampa, Fla. Delta said that starting these routes will provide Austin customers “more options than ever before.” For Delta, which has seen its stock fluctuate recently, the additions symbolize stability as many airlines are trying anything to cultivate profits.

SAN ANTONIO – The San Antonio Express-News reports if state politicians get their way, when Texans set their clocks back Nov. 3, it could be the last time they must complete the chore — recently passed legislation aims to exempt the state from the biannual daylight saving time change. State Rep. Will Metcalf from Conroe presented House Bill 1422 during a meeting of the 88th Legislative Session on April 11, 2023. The bill that would keep Texas on daylight saving time year-round passed 136-5. Metcalf did not respond to a request for comment, but while explaining the bill he said he believes Texas should, “stick to a time without switching twice a year which allows for maximum amount of daylight in the evenings and I know countless others feel the same way.”

As of May 2023 the bill remained in the Senate, and Texas would need federal approval before it could shift to permanent daylight saving time. For now, states can opt-out daylight saving time but require federal approval to observe it year-round, which is the goal of Republican U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio’s Sunshine Protection Act. Daylight saving time was established in the U.S. during World War I to save electricity, according to the National Sleep Foundation. When Americans change their clocks every March and November altering the timing of light exposure, Candice A. Alfano, director of the Sleep and Anxiety Center of Houston, said it can stress a person’s biological and psychological health. Not only is falling asleep and waking up harder after a clock change, Alfano said a growing body of research suggests that the risk of heart attacks, traffic accidents, job-related injuries, suicides and even miscarriages in pregnant women also increase.

AUSTIN – KUT reports that Monday was the last day for Texans to register to vote in the November election, which means procrastinators will likely cause the state’s voter rolls to grow by the thousands as the clock ticks down toward midnight. At the same time, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is hoping the federal government will help him identify noncitizens so that he can stop them from voting. Paxton sent a letter on Monday to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services requesting the federal government confirm the citizenship status of more than 450,000 of Texas’ registered voters. That group is made up of people that did not use a state-issued driver’s license or ID card when they registered to vote (The state accepts several forms of identification when people register to vote beyond just state IDs).

Paxton’s move comes on the heels of a request to Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson that her office provide a list of these voters. The AG gave Nelson a deadline of last Friday to provide the list. What Paxton will do if the federal government is unable to confirm the citizenship status of some of the voters on that list is unclear. Under federal law, the state can no longer remove people from the voter rolls because it is less than 90 days before a federal election. This is Paxton’s latest attempt to find ineligible voters, with an emphasis on noncitizens — a common focus amongst Republican leaders across the country this year. Bethany Albertson, a political scientist at UT Austin, recently told The Texas Newsroom that “talk around voter fraud doesn’t match the reality.” “When politicians push messages suggesting that voter fraud is rampant,” she said, “it sows distrust in elections.” The Brennan Center for Justice researched claims of illegal voting from politicians during the 2012, 2016 and 2020 elections. That study found that most allegations of fraud were baseless or due to clerical errors and other forms of election misconduct.

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.