House Passes Major Bill, Giving Trump Another Key Victory
House Speaker Mike Johnson gave a big update after the Unlocking Our Domestic LNG Potential Act of 2025 passed the GOP-controlled U.S. House of Representatives. This bill undoes former President Joe Biden’s “catastrophic natural gas ban.”
In a press release, Johnson said, “President Trump and Congressional Republicans are working together to unleash reliable American energy to lower costs for families, support American workers and energy producers, and make sure that America is never again held hostage by radical climate bureaucrats and activists.”
“The Unlocking Our Domestic LNG Potential Act passed by the House helps make sure that American LNG exports are never banned again, takes politics out of the permitting process, and frees American energy producers from the Biden-era subversive bureaucratic overreach.” “This law makes more of President Trump’s executive orders official, pushes Republicans’ agenda to make them the leaders in energy, and returns LNG exports to normal, so America can be a leader in the global market again,” the Speaker said.
Chairman Guthrie said, “House Republicans are leading the way to support our nation’s energy security, strengthen our grid, and lower prices for hard-working families by unleashing American energy.”
Guthrie went on to say, “The REFINER Act will help make sure that our refineries are being used properly to make the oil, gas, and other important feedstocks we need. The Unlocking Our Domestic LNG Potential Act will also increase American energy production and infrastructure by getting rid of U.S. LNG export limits that the Biden-Harris Administration politicized and abused.”
“Today, the House passed my Unlocking Our Domestic LNG Potential Act, which is another big step toward making the United States the world’s leading energy producer.” “Once and for all, my bill fixes the broken, politically weaponized approval process so we can speed up the process of getting permission to export LNG,” said Congressman Pfluger.
“It’s easy: exporting American LNG helps our economy, keeps prices stable, brings in much-needed investment in energy infrastructure, and makes our global partners’ energy security stronger.” “I thank my coworkers for backing this important bill, and I urge the Senate to pass it quickly under Senator Scott’s strong leadership,” Pfluger said.
Johnson’s office released a “quick facts” sheet about the bill:
–During President Biden’s four years in office, not one new LNG export authorization was issued because of a politically motivated and wrong-headed ban on natural gas exports.
Since President Trump took office in January 2025, his administration has given the go-ahead for at least three LNG exports, and U.S. developers have made final investment decisions on six LNG export projects worth more than $70 billion.
–H.R. 1949 takes the politics out of exporting American liquefied natural gas (LNG) by taking away the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) power to approve its export and giving the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) full control over the process.
Johnson also said earlier this week that the House will hold hearings to look into the rise in violence against police officers across the country.
The meeting comes less than a week after two National Guard members who were sent to Washington, D.C. as part of President Trump’s anti-crime program were shot near the White House.
Army Specialist Sarah Beckstrom died from her injuries, but the second Guard member, 24-year-old U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, is still in serious condition but is showing “positive” signs of recovery.
The hearing also comes after other recent events, such as a deadly shooting at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in the Dallas area earlier this year that killed at least one person.
According to an FBI report, attacks on police officers reached a 10-year high in 2023, with more than 79,000 attacks reported across the country. Still, Democrats have often criticized the Trump administration’s use of Guard troops and federal officers to try to control crime.
That being said, officials in the Trump administration are getting more aggressive about stopping both legal and illegal immigration to the United States. This is because an Afghan national who was let into the country under President Joe Biden killed Guard troops late last month.
Top DHS Special Agent And His Wife Found Dead
A Department of Homeland Security special agent and his wife were found dead in their New Jersey home in what appears to be a murder-suicide, prosecutors said.
Police in Sayreville responded to the couple’s home on Glynn Court around 8 p.m. July 3 and found Kelly Latauro, 46, dead inside the residence, the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office said.
Her husband, 52-year-old Christopher Latauro, was discovered dead in the backyard.
Both appear to have been shot.
Authorities said Christopher is believed to be the shooter and the case is being investigated as a murder-suicide.
Police told residents to keep away from Glynn Court, from Deerfield Road to Scarlet Drive, briefly because of police activity.
The area was reopened about 40 minutes later, but police remained on scene.
According to NJ101.5, citing DHS records from 2019 and 2020, Christopher was a special agent for the Department of Homeland Security.
Authorities have not said what may have sparked the violence.
Kelly’s sister-in-law Robyn Perlman-Spencer confirmed her death in a Facebook post on July 7, remembering her in a heartbreaking tribute.
“As many of you may now know, my beautiful sister in law Kelly Iatauro was senselessly and suddenly taken from us on Friday. Kelly was a bright light- kind, thoughtful, hysterical, inappropriate, and just one of the most amazing people I’ve ever known. She left a lasting impression on anyone that was lucky enough to know her,” Robyn wrote in part.
Sayreville police confirmed officers responded to the Glynn Court residence on July 3 and found both people dead of gunshot wounds.
The incident is being treated as a murder-suicide, and Christopher is suspected to be the shooter, the spokesperson said.
The Department of Homeland Security and Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office did not immediately respond to additional requests for comment on the case.
What began as a heavy police response to a deadly scene left two people dead and the quiet Middlesex County neighborhood stunned.
Investigators are still trying to piece together what happened inside the home leading up to the gunfire.
Separately, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin made headlines last week with an election-related announcement.
Mullin on Friday said officials who don’t cooperate with the administration’s election security efforts may be slapped with fines — and potentially prison time.
“If the election officials, once we gave them the information they need to secure their elections — and they chose not to — then those individuals can also be held accountable by fines, by penalties, and even, depending on how far it goes, prison time,” Mullin said during a press conference at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.
Mullin also promised DHS would work to “speed up our security enhancements” for states.
He vowed to hold up federal election security grants until state officials took steps the administration demanded, including running their voter registration lists through a system that checks for non-citizen voters on the rolls.
Mullin made his comments after President Donald Trump’s primetime address on election security Thursday night, when he repeated already known concerns about the security of voting systems, alleged Chinese efforts to get into voter rolls, and aired old gripes about the results of the 2020 election, which he lost to Joe Biden.
In his remarks on Friday, the DHS secretary focused on DHS’s work with states to secure election systems and scrub voter registration rolls for fraud and concerns about noncitizen voting.
The Justice Department also sent letters this month threatening prosecution to election officials across the country if they don’t remove noncitizens from their voter rolls.
On Friday, Mullin seemed to suggest that the agency was able to estimate the numbers using the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and said 23 states are already working with DHS to analyze voter rolls.
And he criticized the legal challenges that are hindering the administration’s efforts: Last month, a judge blocked the Trump administration from creating a database of information about Americans, including Social Security numbers and citizenship status.
