Sen. Markwayne Mullin received a chilly welcome from the Senate Homeland Security Committee on Wednesday as he began the first steps of seeking congressional approval to replace Kristi Noem as head of DHS.
That was primarily due to his botched handling of bad blood between himself and the committee’s chairman, Sen. Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican who often breaks with his own party along libertarian ideological lines. The two have publicly feuded ever since Mullin offered sympathetic remarks to a neighbor who savagely beat Paul at his home in 2017, causing serious injuries.
Paul ripped into Mullin at the hearing Wednesday, accusing the Oklahoma senator of being a supporter of political violence who was unfit to lead the agency to which he was nominated and calling the former MMA fighter unwilling to grasp the consequences and implications of his own words. Addressing Mullin, Paul criticized “the sheer lack of any kind of self-awareness that you’re going to be leading thousands of men of women that are going to have the use of force…and you think a violent attack is just fine?”
“The fact he can’t bring himself to say that we shouldn’t settle political questions with violence, I think that would be a terrible example for ICE and Border Patrol,” Paul told reporters afterwards.
But even Mullin’s personal feud with the committee’s Republican chair may not be enough to derail his confirmation, thanks to the Republicans’ not-so-secret weapon: Sen. John Fetterman.
The Pennsylvania senator was, throughout 2025, the Democrat friendliest with the MAGA right and most willing to cross party lines on issues like immigration and foreign policy. On Wednesday, Fetterman signaled that he was willing to let bygones be bygones, even if Paul wasn’t.
“It’s better to just let it all go and find a way forward,” Fetterman advised both Paul and Mullin during his allotted question time, during which he also told the president’s nominee: “My experience with you has been constistent kindness and professionalism.”
While nothing is certain, it looked probable on Wednesday that Fetterman will once again cross party lines and be the deciding vote to push Mullin’s nomination through committee. The senator’s office didn’t immediately respond to an inquiry from The Independent about whether Fetterman thought Mullin should apologize for his past remarks before being voted through.
He repeatedly stressed at Wednesday’s hearing that he would keep an “open mind” to Mullin’s potential confirmation. What the senator was interested in hearing from Mullin in order to make that decision, however, was wholly unclear.
Strikingly, Fetterman didn’t ask a single policy-related question of Mullin during his several minutes of allotted time — the Democrat, known for wearing sweat suits nearly everywhere, asked a few expository questions confirming details of their past attendance on a bipartisan congressional delegation, and spoke about plans for Fetterman and his wife to have dinner with Mullin’s family.
Sure, he also brought up the Democrats’ demands for reforms to ICE and immigration enforcement, but only as a means to clobber his own allies on the panel for voting against funding for the agency and to defend his own committment to pressing for reforms.
Punchbowl and other outlets have reported that Fetterman’s support for Mullin is not in question at all. And, Fetterman has claimed Democratic leaders weren’t pushing him to oppose Mullin’s nomination.
The love-fest was more akin to the reaction Mullin received from Republicans on the panel — minus Paul.
Besides Fetterman, Republicans on the panel happily shielded Mullin from tough questions and the furor of their colleague. Democrats, led by ranking member Sen. Gary Peters, pressed Mullin on the knee-jerk response he (and Noem) had to the shootings of two Americans in Minneapolis by ICE and immigration enforcement agents, which Mullin told the committee he regretted.
Paul told Semafor after the hearing that he would bring Mullin’s nomination up for a committee vote on Thursday, but confirmed he wouldn’t support him.
“I think he’s unfit. I think his temperament is not suitable. I think his anger issues are a problem, yeah, and so I won’t vote for him, but I’ve promised to at least get an expeditious vote,” the Kentucky Republican told Semafor. “They’ve had to have known for weeks that I couldn’t be real happy about a guy that won’t apologize and thinks that my assault was perfectly understandable.”
With Paul in opposition to the senator’s confirmation, Fetterman’s vote will likely decide the fate of his colleague. Staff in the chairman’s office told reporters on Wednesday that initial plans were for a vote to be held to advance Mullin’s nomination out of committee on Thursday.
At home, Fetterman continues to get pummeled for his apparent heel turn. Conor Lamb, Fetterman’s former primary opponent who spent much of 2025 engaging in cautious probing of the senator’s weaknesses among the Democratic base, is now openly savaging him on social media every chance he gets.
Even as the senator has repeatedly stressed that he won’t switch parties, it seems like his voting base may have already at least partially made that decision for him.
A Philly Inquirer poll publised last month found the senator’s approval rating among Democrats in his home state to be hopelessly languishing in the murky depths. Six in ten Pennsylvania Democrats say he’s doing a poor job as senator, while two in ten support him. He’s hated by more Democrats than even Sen. Dave McCormick, his Republican colleague on the state’s congressional delegation.
2028 is still a long way away, however, and Democrats may have to come to terms with the fact that one of their own is often batting for the other team for now.
