The Senate voted Monday evening to confirm U.S. Sen. Markwayne Mullin to lead the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), replacing embattled former Secretary Kristi Noem.
Mullin, a Republican senator from Oklahoma, inherits an agency facing a financial gridlock and a year of controversy. The final vote tally was 54-45, with Democrats John Fetterman of Pennsylvania and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico voting to confirm their fellow lawmaker.
The only Republican to vote against Mullin was Rand Paul of Kentucky, who engaged in a testy exchange with the nominee a week prior to the vote. Paul, who chairs the committee overseeing the department, said Mullin was too angry to set an example for the department that manages Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol agents.
Mullin said years ago that Paul deserved to be attacked by one of his neighbors in a 2017 confrontation at home in Bowling Green, Kentucky, that left the lawmaker with multiple broken ribs.
ICE has come under bipartisan criticism for its aggressive tactics. The department’s leadership reached a boiling point when Noem testified before a congressional committee, answering questions about her spending $220 million on an ad campaign featuring her as the focal point.
Mullin was a freshman senator who came over from the House to succeed Sen. James Inhofe in 2023. Those relationships aided Mullin in hearings, striking a conciliatory tone in pledging to keep a line of communication open with Democrats.
It’s not clear whether Mullin’s confirmation will help the Trump administration to break a weeks-long stalemate over DHS funding in Congress. Democrats have yet to back off their demands that any funding of DHS comes with new guardrails for ICE agents that include wearing identification, removing masks and not entering private property without a warrant.
The funding battle has also stopped paychecks for Transportation Safety Administration, or TSA, employees. The airport security agents have gone unpaid since Feb. 14. The resulting call-offs and agent departures have snarled airport security operations, leaving travelers with hours-long waits just to enter terminals. More than 400 TSA agents have quit since the shutdown began, according to NBC News.
In response, Trump on Monday deployed ICE agents to assist the skeleton TSA staff. It’s unclear whether immigration agents’ presence at airports is reducing wait times.
