Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) will spend the next several months attempting to prove that he can send the Department of Homeland Security in a new direction after President Donald Trump fired Kristi Noem after a year atop the embattled agency.
Trump’s decision to nominate Mullin on Thursday checks several boxes for Republicans weary of the drama surrounding Noem, who drew calls for her resignation and an impeachment push by congressional Democrats over her handling of immigration enforcement in Minnesota.
Mullin is regarded as loyal to the president, one of the black marks against Noem, but also a relationship-builder who has a strong rapport with Democrats. He is sharp-elbowed but not a bomb thrower and is a known quantity in the halls of Congress. Mullin, 48, has served in the Senate since 2023 and before that was a House member representing Oklahoma for a decade.
In any other political climate, that would be enough to earn bipartisan support for Mullin’s confirmation as the next secretary of DHS, a sprawling agency that manages the border, disaster relief, and more. He doesn’t have the sort of baggage that would alienate centrist Republicans and is firmly within the mainstream for Democrats with a pragmatic streak.
But looking good on paper may not be enough to repair a tumultuous tenure for Noem, whose handling of deportation operations in Minneapolis contributed to a DHS shutdown now in its third week.
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Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Mullin declined to get into a “tit for tat” with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who minutes earlier said that his nomination would not fix the “rot” at the agency. He also committed to meeting with Democrats in good faith as the Senate rushes to schedule a confirmation hearing.
“I want to try to earn their support, and I’m going to be very open and honest with them,” Mullin said.
“If they have real concerns, I’m going to listen,” Mullin added, before making clear there were limits to that olive branch.
The Trump administration has shown a willingness to change tack on immigration enforcement after federal officers fatally shot two protesters in Minneapolis. But Trump hasn’t been able to see eye to eye with Democrats on most of the reforms they’ve demanded, and talks over government funding have recently stalled.
“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,” Mullin said.
Mullin’s biggest asset is that he starts with the trust of both Trump and congressional Republicans. He is a go-between for GOP leadership and the White House and will ease the nerves of GOP senators who felt stonewalled by Noem.
Her ouster came after weeks of complaints that she was not cooperating with congressional oversight and had shown disloyalty to the president by claiming he had signed off on an expensive, widely panned TV ad blitz.
The challenge will be convincing Democrats that his leadership will be any different than Noem’s. Their votes are not needed for Mullin to be confirmed, given that Republicans have a three-seat majority in the Senate. But Republicans are eager to end the shutdown and initially hoped that Mullin’s nomination could help soften Democratic resistance.
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Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) argued on Thursday that Mullin would provide a “fresh set of eyes and fresh approach,” likening his nomination to Trump’s decision to ask border czar Tom Homan to oversee the wind-down of immigration operations in Minnesota last month.
“I think some of the things that Tom Homan has emphasized since he’s been more heavily engaged on the scene, and especially with the steps he took in Minneapolis, I think that’s a model that can work, and I think he and Sen. Mullin can work well together,” Thune told reporters.
Mullin can count on at least one Democrat to back his nomination. He got a quick endorsement and congratulatory text from Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA), a centrist who entered the Senate at the same time as Mullin. Sen. Angus King (I-ME) also described Mullin as an “upgrade” over Noem.
Still, Mullin will be forced to navigate a highly polarized confirmation fight that is not entirely of Noem’s making. Trump’s no-holds-barred readiness to clash with Democrats turned nominations into a partisan exercise at the outset of his second term, and though Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a former senator himself, sailed through the Senate in a 99-0 vote last year, other confirmation votes have been far closer.
Mullin has made a name for himself in Congress by quietly reaching across the aisle, befriending senior Democrats like Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) and hosting regular workout sessions in the House gym that draw both Democrats and Republicans.
His nomination will nonetheless be viewed through the lens of DHS’s alleged “lawlessness,” and Democratic leadership quickly signaled they would be a “no” when he comes up for a vote on the Senate floor.
“The president has fired Kristi Noem, good riddance. But the problems at ICE transcend any one individual,” Schumer told reporters on Thursday. “He’s got to end the violence and rein in ICE.”
“This changes nothing,” Booker said of Noem’s firing. “We are in a shutdown right now because we have a rogue and reckless organization that is breaking into Americans’ homes, jumping out of unmarked cars, masked, literally slamming Americans to the pavement, or worse – as we’ve seen in two cases – murdering people.”
Mullin will get a chance to change Democrats’ minds as he meets with senators before his confirmation hearing. Thune told reporters that Mullin has already been “pretty well vetted around here” and that the Senate would move quickly.
He must also overcome some bad blood with Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who chairs the Senate committee that will process his nomination.
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Sen. James Lankford (R-OK), Mullin’s home state colleague in Oklahoma, predicted that he would receive Democratic support beyond Fetterman. Noem was able to attract seven Democratic votes for her nomination in January 2025, a time when ICE was not such a political lightning rod.
“Lots of good relationships, we’ll have no issue,” Lankford said of Mullin. “I mean, I’m not saying everybody’s going to vote for him, but I think he’ll be treated fairly. And I think everybody knows on both sides of the aisle that he listens to people.”