Minutes after President Donald Trump announced he was firing Kristi Noem as secretary of homeland security and nominating Sen. Markwayne Mullin for the post, the Oklahoma senator was positioning himself as a bipartisan nominee.
“We’re going to try to earn everybody’s vote. I want people to understand, when I go into this position, yes, I’m a Republican, yes, I’m conservative,” Mullin told reporters. “Regardless if you support me, if you don’t support me, regardless of what your thoughts are, I’m here to enforce the policies that Congress passed, and right now I’m part of it, but once I make that transition, my focus is to keep the homeland secure.”
He said he was “going to have a conversation” with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and acknowledged that he faces a potentially contentious confirmation process with the department at the center of the fight over immigration enforcement and a department shutdown.
“I want to try and earn their [Democrats’] support and I’m going to be very open and honest with them,” Mullin said Thursday. “If they have real concerns, I’m going to listen to it. I’m going to see if it’s practical, but nothing’s going to prevent me from doing my job. I’m going to enforce the policies and the laws that Congress has passed, and we’re going to protect our homeland.”
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Mullin would need a simple majority vote to be confirmed as DHS secretary. While most Republican senators are expected to support his nomination, Sen. Rand Paul, the chair of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, which will oversee the confirmation hearings, might be a potential roadblock.
At an event with Oklahoma voters last month, Mullin called Paul “a freaking snake” over the Kentucky senator’s record of fighting his own party in crucial votes, according to the Oklahoma journalist David Arnett. Mullin noted that Paul was a hurdle for Republicans as they considered how to end the country’s longest shutdown over a provision in the funding package that would regulate hemp sales.
“Rand Paul’s a freaking snake. And I understand completely why his neighbor did what he did. And I told him that to his face,” Mullin said, referring to the neighbor who attacked Paul in 2017 and broke his ribs in a dispute over their yards. Paul’s office did not immediately respond to NOTUS’ request for comment.
Sen. John Fetterman is the only Democrat so far to say he would vote to support Mullin’s nomination. It’s unclear whether any other Democrats would back Mullin for the post, but Schumer already announced he would not support Mullin because “the Senate should not consider any DHS Secretary nominee until DHS and ICE are reined in.” While Mullin is emphasizing he would serve without regard to his party affiliation, he has a reputation on Capitol Hill as a staunch conservative and one of Trump’s most loyal allies.
Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso told reporters that as a member of the whip team, Mullin played a key role “at whipping for everybody that the president has nominated.”
“I expect the same for Markwayne Mullin,” Barrasso continued. When asked by reporters how long he thought Mullin’s confirmation would take, Barrasso said, “We’re going to have to have hearings first.”
The last time the Senate considered a fellow senator for a Cabinet position was when then-Sen. Marco Rubio was nominated as secretary of state. He was confirmed unanimously.
Mullin was instrumental in passing Trump’s signature reconciliation bill last year. He essentially worked as a House liaison for Senate Majority Leader John Thune and was often spotted going into House Republican conference meetings run by Speaker Mike Johnson to help the speaker maneuver around internal divisions about specific policies. He served as a member of the House of Representatives for 10 years before being elected to the Senate in 2023.
The reconciliation bill ultimately passed, providing approximately $170 billion in new funding for DHS, with the largest share going to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection.
Mullin is “going to a great job. I don’t mean that flippantly, he’s going to do a great job. He’s an executive, he knows the books, he knows how to be able to deal with the issues,” Sen. James Lanford, the senior senator from Oklahoma, said. “From Oklahoma, we know how to deal with disaster relief, FEMA and all those issues. I think he’ll do a really good job.”
NOTUS reported that Federal Emergency Management Agency staff are excited about a new secretary replacing Noem.
Mullin’s nomination for DHS’s top job comes as the department shutdown is in its third week. Democrats in Congress are currently in discussions with the White House over conditions to rein in ICE after border officials shot and killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis in January.
When asked by NOTUS about whether he expects to work with Mullin, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters that Democrats “remain ready, willing and able to talk with anyone, anytime, anyplace, in a position of significance within the administration, if they are prepared to make sure that ICE conducts itself like every other law enforcement agency in the country.”
However, he added, Democrats have not been dealing with Noem during funding negotiations, casting doubt that Mullin would play a part.
“It’s not like Kristi Noem was the one who was involved in negotiating anything. She was a corrupt lackey,” Jeffries said. “We were dealing with the White House before, and we’re going to continue to deal with the White House at this point.”
Sen. Thom Tillis was quick to endorse Mullin for the post. He lit into Noem at a Senate hearing this week about her handling of immigration enforcement and made a reference to a story she revealed in her book about killing her own dog because it was “untrainable.”
After Trump announced Noem was out, Tillis released a statement praising Mullin that included a photo of Mullin’s family, including one four-legged member, with a line at the end: “Another big positive: he likes dogs.”
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