President Donald Trump abruptly announced he’s replacing his embattled Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and nominating a Republican senator in her place.
That person will be Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin.
Who is Markwayne Mullin?
Mullin, a father of six, is a business owner and working cow-calf rancher who was sworn into office on Jan. 3, 2023. Prior to that, he served 10 years in the U.S. House of Representatives.
At the time he was sworn in, he was the only U.S. senator without at least a bachelor’s degree, according to Pew Research. Mullin left college to take over his family’s business, Mullin Plumbing, and has since founded numerous other businesses and obtained an associate degree from Oklahoma State University of Technology.
His business ventures were the subject of an ethics investigation while he was in the House, but the investigation ultimately ruled Mullin “made good faith efforts to seek the Committee’s informal guidance on issues regarding his family business, and substantially complied with the advice” and ordered him to return $40,000 “mistakenly paid to him in 2013.”
According to his biography, Mullin is a member of the Cherokee Nation and “is the first Tribal citizen to serve in the U.S. Senate in nearly two decades.” He’s also a former mixed martial arts fighter.
Mullin has been aligned with Trump on matters of border security, stating that “the first step to combatting illegal immigration is to secure our borders.”
“I have visited the southern border and witnessed firsthand the challenges our border patrol agents face. We are a nation of laws and those laws must be upheld,” his website reads. “We must ensure our immigration laws our 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.”
He has long been an outspoken supporter of Trump and has pushed forward false claims that the 2020 election was “stolen.”
In a 2025 report from Politico, Mullin was described as having “one of the closest relationships to Trump among Republican senators,” with Senate Majority Leader John Thune describing him as a “Senate whisperer” for Trump.
What happens next?
Mullin would need to be confirmed by the Senate, but under a federal law governing executive branch vacancies, he would be allowed to serve as an acting Homeland Security secretary as long as his nomination is formally pending.
Still, there are plenty of questions surrounding how the process will unfold in the days ahead.
Trump says he’ll make Noem a “Special Envoy for The Shield of the Americas,” a new security initiative that he said would focus on the Western Hemisphere.
Why did Trump fire Noem?
Trump made the announcement on social media on Thursday, two days after Noem faced a grilling on Capitol Hill from GOP members as well as Democrats.
Noem is the first Cabinet secretary to leave during Trump’s second term. Noem’s departure caps a tumultuous tenure overseeing immigration enforcement tactics that have been met with protests and lawsuits.
Noem has faced waves of criticism as she’s overseen Trump’s immigration crackdown, especially since the shooting deaths of two protesters in Minneapolis at the hands of immigration enforcement officers. The former South Dakota governor was also criticized over the way her department has spent billions of dollars allocated to it by Congress.
Frustrations over Noem’s execution of the Republican president’s hard-line immigration agenda — particularly her leadership after the shooting deaths of the two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis — as well as her handling of disaster response, paved the way for her downfall. She faced blistering criticism from Democrats, and some Republicans, in Congress hearings this week over those issues and others.
Aside from immigration, Noem also faced criticism — including from Republicans — over the pace of emergency funding approved through the Federal Emergency Management Agency and for the Trump administration’s response to disasters.
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