President Trump has nominated Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) to take over the Department of Homeland Security, replacing Kristi Noem at an agency that has been shut down for weeks amid a partisan battle over Immigration and Customs Enforcement reforms. Mullin got the call on Thursday during lunch. One senator noted he left a full plate of food in front of him.
The Oklahoma Republican told reporters the nomination caught him off guard, saying he found out "a little bit before you guys did." His colleagues were less surprised. GOP lawmakers across the conference describe Mullin as a connector, a fighter, and the kind of operator who collects allies the way other senators collect press clips.
He will need every one of them. DHS sits at the center of the administration's immigration enforcement agenda, and Democrats have turned the agency into a political battlefield. Mullin's confirmation hearing will be chaired by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), a man Mullin recently called "a freaking snake" to an audience in Oklahoma.
According to The Hill, the praise from Republican senators was immediate and specific. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) drew a direct contrast with Noem:
"He's the sort of person who knows what he doesn't know. That was the problem with Noem. She couldn't scale her experience, and I think he can. He's a man of his word."
Tillis likened the appointment to an NFL team landing the first overall pick and becoming a Super Bowl contender a year later. His assessment of the trajectory at DHS was blunt: "There's nowhere to go but up."
Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.), who entered the Senate alongside Mullin in 2022, called him "a visionary and a workhorse." Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), who served with Mullin in both chambers, pointed to something less obvious than toughness:
"People see him as this pugnacious fighter, which he clearly does have strong beliefs and is going to go fight for his beliefs and his values. But he also has a core value that is a faith-driven value of 'I need to talk to everybody, and everybody needs to talk to everybody as well, and we can figure this out.'"
That combination matters for the job ahead. DHS does not need a bureaucrat. It needs someone who can execute the president's enforcement agenda while navigating a Senate that has weaponized the agency's funding as leverage. Mullin's relationships stretch across the entire Republican conference. He backed Thune's 2024 run for majority leader and has served on his leadership team throughout the 119th Congress. He sits on Barrasso's whip team. Collins recruited him to Appropriations. He is an ally of Speaker Mike Johnson and was a top backer of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
He also maintained a habit that former Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) called unusual: regularly attending House GOP conference meetings during his first two years in the Senate.
"I know it sounds kind of crazy, but people weren't doing that before him."
A DHS secretary who understands both chambers and has relationships in each is not a luxury. It is a prerequisite for getting anything through Congress on immigration.
Every nomination has friction points. Mullin's is straightforward and self-inflicted. He recently told a group in his home state that Paul is "a freaking snake" and sympathized with the neighbor who attacked the Kentucky senator in 2017. Paul chairs the committee that will hold Mullin's confirmation hearing. He declined to comment on the nomination on Thursday.
This is a manageable problem, not a fatal one. Paul has his own brand of institutional independence, but he also understands that blocking a Trump nominee over a personal insult would create more trouble for him inside the conference than it would for Mullin. And there is a backstop: Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), who sits on the Homeland Security panel, has already announced he will vote for Mullin, calling him a "good dude." If Paul or another Republican were to vote no in committee, Fetterman's vote provides a path forward.
Mullin has also demonstrated an ability to mend fences that most senators would leave broken. In 2023, he challenged Teamsters chief Sean O'Brien to a fight during a HELP Committee hearing. Months later, the two reconciled. On Thursday, O'Brien praised the nomination:
"If anyone is willing to stand their butt up to protect America, it's Markwayne Mullin."
When the head of the Teamsters endorses your DHS nomination, the same day a Republican committee chairman won't return your calls, the politics of confirmation get interesting.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) responded to the nomination by declaring that DHS's problems "transcend any one individual."
"This is a problem of policy, not personnel. The rot is deep. No one person can straighten this up until the president changes the whole agency, stops the violence, and reins in ICE."
This is useful rhetoric to decode. When Schumer says "stops the violence" and "reins in ICE," he is not describing a department in crisis. He is describing a department doing its job in ways Democrats find politically inconvenient. ICE enforcing immigration law is not "violence." It is the mandate. The demand to "rein in" an enforcement agency is a demand to stop enforcing. Schumer frames compliance with the law as the problem because the alternative, admitting that Democrats want less enforcement, polls badly.
Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) offered slightly more nuance, telling reporters he "would consider" backing Mullin contingent on "real changes" in immigration enforcement. Translation: he wants a commitment that Mullin will enforce the law less aggressively. That is not a condition. That is a negotiating position dressed up as a principle.
The department has been mired in controversy and operational paralysis. It needs a secretary who can do several things at once:
Mullin's profile fits. He is a close ally of the president. He is close friends with Vice President Vance, a fellow member of the 2022 Senate class. He has the trust of leadership. He has cross-chamber fluency. And he is a former mixed martial arts fighter whose colleagues describe his early morning workouts as "challenging and disciplined."
Asked what would change about Mullin's routine at DHS, Lankford laughed: "He'll just get up earlier. If he's not working out, he gets lethargic."
DHS has been lethargic long enough.