The fix was in from the moment Donald Trump picked up the phone. One day you’re Kristi Noem, a cabinet secretary with a taste for $200 million ad campaigns featuring your own face. The next day, you’re the new “Special Envoy for the Shield of the Americas,” which sounds like a made-up job from a Batman movie, and a senator from Oklahoma with fists of fury and a diploma from a technical college is taking your place.
Trump fired Noem on Thursday and named Sen. Markwayne Mullin to replace her as head of the Department of Homeland Security. The president called him a “MAGA warrior” and noted, with all the gravity the moment required, that Mullin is a former undefeated professional MMA fighter, which is good because nothing says homeland security like being able to choke out a terrorist in a cage match.
But here’s the thing about the Department of Homeland Security: It’s not a fight club.
It’s the third-largest federal department, with a budget bigger than most countries’ entire economies, responsible for immigration enforcement, border security, disaster response, cybersecurity, and keeping the country from falling apart when the next hurricane hits.
Mullin’s qualifications? He runs a plumbing business. He owns a steakhouse. He wrestled in college until he dropped out when he was 20 years old.
In 2010, he finally finished his degree in construction technology. He is now the only sitting senator without at least a bachelor’s degree, which is fine if you’re starting a drywall business, but maybe less fine if you’re overseeing an agency with 240,000 employees.
“I don’t want reality,” Mullin once said at a Senate hearing about race.
That was in February, when he tried to grab a protest sign from Rep. Al Green, who was demonstrating against a racist Trump social media post depicting the Obamas as apes.
Mullin didn’t want to see the sign, so he tried to take it by force. That’s his approach to things he doesn’t like: grab them.
Last year, he challenged Teamsters President Sean O’Brien to a fistfight during a Senate hearing. “You want to run your mouth? We can be two consenting adults — we can finish it here,” Mullin said, standing up in the middle of testimony.
A fellow senator had to remind him he was in Congress, not a bar. Later, Mullin said the country should go back to settling differences like they did in the 1800s, when duels were legal.
He didn’t mention that most of those duels ended with one man dead and the other running for governor, which actually might explain a lot about American politics.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has watched Mullin’s career with the kind of fascination usually reserved for train wrecks, put it bluntly after the nomination: “Markwayne Mullin could not remember if we were at war THIS WEEK. His state has one of the highest crime rates in the country, with a murder rate 40% higher than California’s. He literally tried to fight union workers during a hearing and told them to ‘shut your mouth.’ This erratic, unstable man is now in charge of Homeland Security.”
Newsom was referring to Mullin’s recent confusion about whether the U.S. is at war with Iran. Mullin has mixed up Iran and Iraq repeatedly in interviews.
Earlier this week, he called Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth “President Hegseth,” which is either a slip of the tongue or a peek into the future.
On immigration, Mullin is a true believer.
He’s defended the ICE agent who shot and killed Renee Good, a mother of three in Minneapolis, saying she used her car as a lethal weapon. He’s called ICE agents “red-blooded American patriots.”
He’s suggested deporting U.S.-born infants along with their undocumented parents, which would require shredding the 14th Amendment. He wants to shut down airports in sanctuary cities. He talks about securing the border the way a plumber talks about unclogging a drain: with confidence that brute force will solve everything.
Sen. John Fetterman, the Pennsylvania Democrat who has made a career of breaking with his party, immediately endorsed Mullin.
“I’m an aye,” he said, calling Mullin “a nice upgrade” from Noem.
Other Democrats were less enthusiastic. Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut said Mullin would have to commit to major reforms to win his vote. Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii said he likes Mullin personally, which is what people say when they don’t want to say anything at all.
The question nobody seems to be asking is what Mullin actually knows about homeland security. Not immigration, not border enforcement, but the whole sprawling mess of it: FEMA, which Noem tried to gut; the Coast Guard, which protects the country’s ports and waterways; the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which fights off hacking attacks; the Secret Service, which protects the president and has had a rough few years.
Mullin has expressed skepticism about FEMA, saying communities will be “fighting with FEMA to get reimbursed” after disasters. He’s suggested that local governments shouldn’t rely on federal help at all, which is fine until a hurricane wipes out a town and the state can’t afford to rebuild.
On Thursday, Mullin stood outside the Capitol and told reporters he was surprised by the nomination. “The president and I still have to communicate,” he said. He was leaving a Senate lunch, his plate full of food, when the call came. A few minutes later, Trump announced on Truth Social that Mullin would be the new secretary at the end of the month.
Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who had called for Noem’s firing, praised the choice. “He likes dogs,” Tillis said, which was a dig at Noem’s infamous story about shooting her own puppy. It’s a low bar, but at this point, maybe liking dogs is enough.
Mullin will need Senate confirmation, though he can serve as acting secretary while the process drags on. The department is partially shut down, with thousands of employees working without pay. Democrats are demanding reforms: requiring ICE agents to wear body cameras, banning them from wearing masks during operations, limiting warrantless arrests. Mullin has opposed all of it.
“The first step to combatting illegal immigration is to secure our borders,” he says on his website. “We must ensure our immigration laws are enforced, bring back the Remain in Mexico policy, finish building the wall, and end the liberal incentives that are fueling the worst border crisis in American history.”
These are standard Republican talking points, the kind of thing you hear at rallies and on Fox News. But running DHS isn’t about talking points. It’s about managing a bureaucracy that touches every part of American life. It’s about deciding when to send federal agents into cities and when to hold back. It’s about balancing security with civil liberties, which is hard work that doesn’t lend itself to sound bites.
Mullin has never done any of it. He’s never been a law enforcement officer. He’s never worked in national security. He’s never managed a large government agency. He’s a plumber who got elected to Congress, a rancher who wrestles in his spare time, a fighter who thinks the best way to settle an argument is with fists.
Trump called him a “fantastic advocate for our incredible tribal communities,” noting that Mullin is an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation. That’s true. He’s also the first tribal citizen to serve in the Senate in nearly 20 years and only the second Cherokee Nation citizen ever elected to the chamber. It’s a historic distinction, and it matters. But it doesn’t teach you how to stop a cyberattack or respond to a terrorist threat or rebuild a town after a flood.
The administration is at war with Iran. The border is a perpetual crisis. The country is more divided than at any time since the 1860s. And the man tasked with keeping Americans safe is a former MMA fighter with an associate degree in construction technology who once tried to start a brawl during a Senate hearing.
Maybe he’ll surprise everyone. Maybe he’ll turn out to be a brilliant administrator, a calm hand in a crisis, a leader who rises to the occasion. It’s possible. America is a country of second acts, of underdogs, of people who prove the doubters wrong.
But if history is any guide, and it usually is, the Department of Homeland Security is about to get a lot more interesting. And not in a good way.
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