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President Donald Trump announced on Thursday that he’s canning Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and will nominate Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin to replace her. In his announcement, Trump said Mullin would be in the job “effective March 31, 2026,” although there is a little process called Senate confirmation that Mullin will first have to go through. Noem, meanwhile, “will be moving to be Special Envoy for The Shield of the Americas,” some new security initiative Trump is announcing this weekend.

Noem has been in acute trouble ever since her management of the immigration enforcement surge in Minnesota, in which officials shot and killed two U.S. citizens. Her management of the agency has made her widely disliked both within DHS and among other members of the Cabinet and White House staff.

Plus, she’s picked up enemies among Republicans in Congress. And the precipitating event for Trump’s change appears to have been a question-and-answer session with Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy in a Senate hearing this week. Kennedy probed her about a self-promotional DHS ad campaign, costing hundreds of millions of dollars, from which a consultancy with ties to Noem—and run by the DHS spokesperson’s husband—received a hefty cut in a no-bid deal. Noem claimed in the hearing that Trump had signed off on the campaign, an assertion that reportedly infuriated Trump. Now she’s gone.

So what’s the deal with Markwayne Mullin?

Mullin entered the Senate in 2023 after a decade in the House. A member of the Cherokee Nation, he’s rich, having taken over, expanded, and then sold what was originally his father’s plumbing business. He’s done a noticeable uptick in media over the last year or so, talking more often to reporters in the Senate hallways and appearing all over cable news. Whether by design or not, these appearances served their purpose. “Trump loves watching Mullin on TV, aides said,” CNN reports, “which played a role in the president’s decision to tap him for the position.” It may have played more than a role in the selection, considering Mullin doesn’t have much of a legislative record, and the closest thing he has to Homeland Security experience is a seat on the Armed Services Committee.

Mullin, who is swole, was inducted into the Oklahoma Wrestling Hall of Fame in 2016 and, per his official website, “is a former undefeated Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) fighter with a professional record of 5-0.” He seems eager to merge that fighting background with his politics. He has a lot of confrontational energy, and the United States Senate—a lunch club for seniors, in which members aren’t even allowed to address their remarks directly to each other on the Senate floor—can feel constricting in that regard. But he’s found ways to channel that energy nonetheless.

Mullin was ready to tango on Jan. 6. When it appeared that rioters might breach the chamber, Mullin helped barricade the door. He then, as Politico reported, “broke two wooden upright hand sanitizer stations and handed a block of the wood to [Rep. Troy] Nehls, giving them both makeshift weapons.” Mullin tried to reason with protesters through broken glass, asking them, “You almost got shot. You almost died. Is it worth it?” Hours later, he voted, for a second time, to object to counting electoral votes for Joe Biden.

In 2021, during the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, then-Rep. Mullin tried to enter the country a couple of times on personal rescue missions. The first time, he flew to Greece and requested permission from the Department of Defense to let him fly into Kabul. It was denied. Shortly afterward, he told the U.S. embassy in Tajikistan that he planned to fly there from Tbilisi, Georgia, and “needed assistance in transporting a huge amount of cash into the country, saying he was going to neighboring Afghanistan to rescue five American citizens, a woman and her four children, stuck in the country,” as the Washington Post reported. “They planned to hire a helicopter for the effort.” He was denied again. He went home.

In 2023, during a hearing of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, he challenged Sean O’Brien, the head of the Teamsters, to a fight. “This is a time, this is a place,” Mullin told O’Brien after reading critical remarks O’Brien had made about him in the past—including the union official saying he and Mullin could fight and meet “any time” and “any place” for a confrontation. “If you want to run your mouth, we can be two consenting adults. We can finish it here,” the U.S. senator said during a congressional hearing. O’Brien said he’d “love to,” Mullin told him to “Stand your butt up then,” and O’Brien said, “You stand your butt up.” Mullin then did stand his butt up, before the bewildered committee chairman, Bernie Sanders, stopped it.

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So we have ourselves a character here. The Trump administration believes, though, that Mullin will get the “senatorial courtesy” of a smooth confirmation process from his colleagues, who mostly like him. He doesn’t cause trouble for fellow Republicans, Senate leadership, or the White House. He’s reliable.

There is one potential hiccup, though. Yes, Mullin’s colleagues “mostly” like him. But there may be one who doesn’t. According to Oklahoma journalist David Arnett, Mullin recently teed off on Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul at an in-state event.

“I respect Bernie Sanders because he’s an open socialist, and you know that he’s a communist so you know what you’re getting,” he said. By contrast, “Rand Paul’s a freaking snake.” He added that “I understand completely why his neighbor did what he did,” referring to the 2017 assault when a neighbor attacked and seriously injured Paul during a dispute.

This may be one confrontation Mullin comes to regret. The DHS secretary is confirmed by the Senate Homeland Security Committee. And the chairman of that committee is Rand Paul.

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