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 Blue Light News 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 Blue Light News. 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.”

Speaker Mike Johnson said Friday morning he still intends for the House to vote on changes to the Senate’s version of a stalled housing affordability package — despite intense opposition from White House officials and Senate Republicans.

“Yeah, I don’t think we have the votes to pass the Senate bill as this, so we’re going to stand by the House product,” Johnson said.

In doing so, Johnson is defying White House officials and GOP senators who are deeply opposed to his plan to amend the housing bill on the House floor next week and send it back to the Senate. White House officials have told Blue Light News the new bill text unveiled in the House this week may contain “serious policy concerns or implementation challenges.”

“The bill is under review. New provisions were added before the administration had a chance to review or provide technical assistance,” one White House official said in a statement.

Johnson was dismissive of that pushback: “I’ve talked to the White House. We’ll get it all straightened out,” he said Friday.

“We’re focused on producing a housing bill that meets all the objectives,” Johnson continued. “It’ll be bipartisan, bicameral. It’s great for the American people. So, sometimes the process is messy, but we’ll get there.”

Asked if he was still planning to put the bill on the floor next week, Johnson said he was going to discuss “timing” with his leadership team “this morning.” House GOP leaders want to bring the bill up through a fast-track process next Wednesday where a two-thirds majority of those present and voting are needed to secure passage.

President Donald Trump met with Senate Republicans at the White House Monday to discuss cross-chamber disagreements over the housing affordability legislation. During that meeting, Trump called Johnson and put him on speaker phone as the senators present pushed for the House to simply pass their version of the bill and clear it for the president’s signature.

Trump also pressed the speaker and others to move the bill quickly, the speaker agreed, with both Johnson and the senators concluding the meeting with a sense that each of their divergent plans had been validated, according to three people with knowledge of the conversation.

“While I was there, [Trump] spoke with the speaker and the speaker said he would try to get the bill moving. And that’s where we are,” said Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), who was part of the group who met with Trump earlier this week.

Jordain Carney contributed to this report. 

Republicans uneasy about the political risk of sending taxpayer dollars toward the new White House ballroom are hoping the Senate’s rule keeper will make the decision for them as soon as Friday.

Lawmakers in both parties are watching closely for Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough to decide whether Republicans’ latest party-line bill can include a $1 billion Secret Service provision that could fund parts of President Donald Trump’s ballroom project.

Bipartisan staff will meet with MacDonough Friday on that provision and the rest of the Judiciary Committee’s section of the bill, according to two people granted anonymity to disclose private scheduling. She demonstrated just how quickly she can upend the GOP’s plans Thursday when she ruled against another portion of the bill funding immigration enforcement (more on that below).

Even ahead of the ruling, Senate Republicans are discussing making changes to the billion-dollar item — including reducing its amount — due to concerns from their own members about the money.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune told Blue Light News the discussions are centered on “how to get 50 votes in the Senate” on the security funding.

On the other side of the Capitol, House Republicans are keeping mostly quiet until they know whether the provision will survive MacDonough’s interpretations of the “Byrd rule,” the restrictions governing what is permissible in a filibuster-skirting budget reconciliation bill

“We want to see what the Senate does,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said. “Right now, I don’t think people are passing judgment because they don’t know what the final product is going to look like coming from the Senate.”

Scalise, asked about the alarm from some of his GOP members about the political optics of public funding for the ballroom, replied, “There’s a lot of meetings going on.”

Several House and Senate Republicans have said they want a more detailed accounting of how the Secret Service will use funding related to the East Wing project.

“I haven’t committed one way or another until we get more of a further breakdown as to how it’s going to be allocated,” Rep. Rob Bresnahan told Blue Light News Thursday.

The White House is working to get Republicans on board, with officials from the Secret Service and Department of Homeland Security making the case for the funding as its fate wobbles. The pressure campaign is making some headway, according to six people involved in the conversations.

Rep. Don Bacon initially voiced apprehension about the funding Tuesday, saying, “I don’t think it’s wise.” Hours later, after meeting with DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin, Bacon softened his views, arguing it wasn’t “as much money” for the ballroom project as he thought.

Still, he argued the lack of details in the initial White House request represented a “botched delivery.”

— GOP TO TRY AGAIN ON HOMELAND PROVISIONS: Republicans will have to rewrite other portions of the bill funding immigration enforcement following MacDonough’s ruling Thursday.

The parliamentarian found four parts of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs panel’s portion of the package will need to be reworked following a Democratic challenge if Republicans want to pass them at a simple-majority margin.

They will need to work quickly if they are going to meet the June 1 deadline Trump has set for clearing the legislation.

What else we’re watching: 

— WHITE HOUSE, SENATE PUSH HOUSE ON HOUSING BILL — Thune and the White House Thursday again pressured House lawmakers to pass the Senate’s version of a housing bill and abandon their own tweaks. The clearest path to getting housing legislation to Trump’s desk is for the House to pass the Senate’s bill, Thune said, adding his chamber’s version “was carefully constructed to get at what the president wanted to address.”

— CRYPTO BILL MOVES TO SENATE FLOOR — Senators on the Banking panel Thursday advanced a landmark cryptocurrency bill that would overhaul how digital assets are regulated, sending the measure to the floor with bipartisan backing.

Jordain Carney, Meredith Lee Hill, Jennifer Scholtes, Katherine Hapgood and Jasper Goodman contributed to this report.