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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........

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