Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has taken some steps to improve his department’s relationship with Capitol Hill. Lawmakers in both parties, however, say there’s much more to be done before the damage from his predecessor’s tenure is repaired.
Senate Republicans, largely adulatory of Mullin’s early efforts to change course at the Department of Homeland Security, acknowledge that the poor relationship between DHS and its Senate committee of jurisdiction is limiting productive engagement.
Tensions still exist between Mullin and the chair of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who has lashed the Homeland Security secretary for not having what he considers the proper temperament for the role. The enmity between the two men burst out in public view during Mullin’s March confirmation hearing, when Paul upbraided Mullin for disparaging comments Mullin had made about a violent 2017 attack against the Kentucky Republican.
“There needs to be a good relationship between the secretary of Homeland Security and the chairman of the committee,” Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) said. Declining to say if any members are working to smooth over the relationship between the two, Scott emphasized: “I think it’s important they figure out how to have a positive human relationship.”
Paul declined to comment on his relationship with Mullin. While Paul was also a critic of former Secretary Kristi Noem’s heavy-handed approach to deportations, his frustrations with Noem did not appear as personal.
The White House has also been slow to embrace Mullin as its go-to representative on the Hill for DHS matters. As funding legislation snaked its way through Congress in March and April, the White House mainly dispatched border czar Tom Homan to talk to lawmakers, casting Mullin into a less direct role in the push to end the monthslong shutdown of his department.
That omission is all the more striking given that Mullin, who represented Oklahoma in both the House and Senate, was hailed as a Capitol Hill dealmaker when he was nominated. Mullin had also vowed to be accessible and very communicative with Congress during his confirmation hearing. Early reports had also suggested he was trying to play a role during his confirmation process as a broker for a funding deal.
Many of those dynamics will be on sharp display this month when Mullin returns to testify before the House Appropriations Committee, his first public appearance before his former colleagues since he entered the Cabinet. His testimony at an oversight hearing, which has been postponed after it was initially scheduled for Monday, will give lawmakers their first chance to publicly press Mullin on his efforts at the department.
DHS said in a statement that “while serving in his new role as DHS Secretary, he’s continuing this leadership style and is in constant communication with leaders on Capitol Hill, his 22 agency heads, and the White House to deliver on President Trump’s promise to protect the homeland.”
The department added that “the secretary’s number one priority was re-opening DHS and getting the patriots who protect our homeland paid. His relationships with his former colleagues — on both sides of the aisle — were critical to getting DHS re-opened.”
Mullin is making inroads on the Hill. He and White House deputy chief of staff James Braid met with members of the Republican Governance Group on Wednesday, signaling Mullin may play a larger role in the unfolding effort to secure funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection via a to-be-negotiated reconciliation bill.
One bright spot has been the House, where Mullin’s relationship with Republican lawmakers is uniformly better. House Homeland Security Chair Andrew Garbarino (R-N.Y.) said Mullin has briefed his committee since taking office. And both Garbarino and Rep. Mark Amodei (R-Nev.), the top House appropriator on the subcommittee that funds DHS, said communication from DHS has improved under Mullin’s watch.
“We do have an open line of communication,” Garbarino said. “Dealing with his team has been very good, and I think the information coming out of HQ is not as siloed as it was previously.”
But Democrats still have many concerns about DHS and Mullin, at a time when slim margins in the House and Senate have made potential Democratic support useful in sticky legislative battles.
Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), the top Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security Committee, said he’s met with Mullin since his former colleague’s confirmation as DHS secretary. But when asked about Mullin’s leadership of DHS, he demurred.
“I think we’ve still got to wait and see,” Peters said.
There were high hopes from Republicans going into Mullin’s confirmation that he would repair what many saw as an unproductive relationship between DHS and Capitol Hill. Senators identified his predecessor’s rough relationship with Capitol Hill as one of the reasons for her downfall.
Noem “wasn’t as engaged with senators as some of her Cabinet colleagues,” Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) said. “That became a problem when she needed some support when she was getting attacked.”
While Mullin was not a major driver of negotiations to restore funding for DHS, the secretary was a fixture on news shows, arguing that Democrats were hurting U.S. national security by keeping his department shuttered. In particular, Mullin singled out Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer as a “lying scumbag politician” for what he characterized as dishonest messaging around Democrats’ opposition to funding legislation.
There’s no love lost with Senate Democrats over that. Schumer’s office said in a statement that Mullin “can throw around insults all he wants, but the facts are the facts: Senate Democrats passed bipartisan DHS funding bills twice, and House Republicans sat on them for more than 70 days — holding up funding for TSA, FEMA, the Coast Guard, and other critical agencies because they refused basic accountability for ICE and CBP.”
That caustic performance did not cost him with most Republicans. Amodei said in an interview that “my initial impressions are excellent. Communications culture has done a 180 … he’s been put there to be a leader.”
Congressional confidence in Mullin is likely to get him over these current hurdles, argued Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), a past chair of the House Homeland Security Committee.
“He’s a creature of Congress, and a creature not in a bad sense,” McCaul said. “We know him from the House. The Senate knows him. That always helps … there’s a level of trust with Markwayne there that helps a lot.”
