WASHINGTON — This morning, at the weekly House GOP Leadership press conference, Speaker Johnson highlighted House Republicans’ legislation this week to continue cutting red tape and dismantling burdensome energy regulations. Speaker Johnson also discussed the path forward to bring an end the Democrat DHS Shutdown and to reauthorize FISA Sec. 702.
“The production of American energy is now directly related to national security. The need and the demand for energy is rising dramatically because of AI and all of these other necessities that we have in the economy. And we’ve got to provide for it,” Speaker Johnson said.
Watch Speaker Johnson’s full remarks here.
On House Republicans’ efforts to cut regulations and reestablish American energy dominance:
We’re going to pass two pieces of legislation that are going to build specifically on President Trump’s work to restore America’s energy dominance. The Reliable Federal Infrastructure Act rolls back an outdated and inefficient green energy mandate on federal buildings and military installations, which will allow agencies to pursue efficient, cost-effective energy solutions that meet their needs. What a concept. The second one, the HEATS Act, is going to help unlock American geothermal production. This is reliable renewable energy that has huge potential for diversifying America’s energy supply. This legislation will remove unnecessary permitting hurdles and help deliver on Republicans’ commitment to an all-the-above approach to affordable American energy. And we’ve got to provide for it. So, it’s an all-the-above and that’s what this legislation reflects. Finally, as Leader Scalise was noting the FIRE Act and the ESA Amendments Act will streamline and clarify environmental regulations, encouraging responsible fire management and the protection of America’s diverse wildlife, while removing costly and unclear mandates that unfairly penalize good faith actors. It’s common sense. That is the theme here. We’re going to cut red tape and do the right thing, and the Congress is leading on this.
On ending the Democrat DHS Shutdown:
And that’s why through a targeted and narrow reconciliation process, we will fully fund the agency, including ICE and CBP, for three years into the future. This is great news for every American who supports secure borders and safe communities and chaos free airports. In the coming days, the House will be working closely with the Senate as they commence on that reconciliation process. And it should not be forgotten that Democrats have shut down this, the third largest department of the federal government with all of its 10 agencies charged with keeping everybody safe. And they did that for political purposes.
They’ve kept it shut down for over two months. Now we’re on day 65. It’s the longest in history because they’d rather reopen the border than pay our hardworking men and women of our law enforcement. They would rather defund the police than pay our TSA workers at the airport. They would rather endanger the American homeland than fund basic immigration enforcement. I’ve said it before; I’ll say it again. You heard the theme here this morning. You’ll hear it all the way through the election cycle. Our politics have now entered a new era. It’s called common sense versus crazy. Republicans return to common sense versus Democrats just madness. This shutdown is a shameful episode in the history of the Democrat Party. This is not our father’s Democrat Party. Watch what happens. We administered the oath to a Member last night who has some, some pretty Far-Left positions. We expect more of that to come from that party, and it’s not where the American people are. And it’s yet another example of their preference for open borders and dangerous communities over the safety and security of American citizens.
On reauthorizing FISA Sec. 702:
The House will pick up where we left off on reauthorizing FISA, Section 702. It’s must-pass legislation. We’ve talked about it here before. It preserves the Trump Administration’s ability to kill terrorists and to prevent attacks on our homeland. This provision of law was created after 9/11. And frankly, one of the reasons we’ve not had another 9/11 on our shores is because we have this important tool. Congress was able to pass a short-term extension of Section 702 last week, and we’re going to continue to work out a longer-term extension. We’re confident that we’ll be able to find strong, bipartisan consensus that builds off of the really meaningful reforms that we included in the legislation the last time we authorized it. We did that in 2024. 56 reforms, and they’re working just as we planned.
Those were successful because that was a sensible set of changes. Countries like Russia and China are waging new forms of cyber and intelligence warfare. And of course, as Iran and its proxies threaten the US and our allies, it just bears repeating that this is no time to degrade in any way our ability to protect the homeland and our people. And this is an essential piece of that, an essential component, and failure on it is just simply not an option.
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