{"id":20192,"date":"2026-03-18T16:01:41","date_gmt":"2026-03-18T16:01:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/markwayne-mullins-dhs-nomination-not-at-risk-from-rand-paul-thune-says\/"},"modified":"2026-03-18T16:01:41","modified_gmt":"2026-03-18T16:01:41","slug":"markwayne-mullins-dhs-nomination-not-at-risk-from-rand-paul-thune-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/markwayne-mullins-dhs-nomination-not-at-risk-from-rand-paul-thune-says\/","title":{"rendered":"Markwayne Mullin’s DHS nomination not at risk from Rand Paul, Thune says"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Senate Majority Leader John Thune<\/a> said he is confident Sen. Markwayne Mullin<\/a> will be confirmed as the next secretary of Homeland Security despite a contentious exchange with fellow GOP Sen. Rand Paul<\/a> at a hearing Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Paul, the chair of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, sharply questioned the Oklahoma senator<\/a> about past remarks that he “understood” why Paul suffered a heinous assault from a neighbor in 2017. Mullin refused to apologize for the remark.<\/p>\n

“Those two obviously have some history, and it’s, you know, personal stuff,” Thune said. “They’ve got to work through it. I mean, in the end, this is about the job, and it’s about making sure that we got the right person there. I think Markwayne is the right person for the job.”<\/p>\n

Asked if he was still confident Mullin can be confirmed, Thune said, “Yeah.”<\/p>\n

Paul has scheduled a committee vote on Mullin for Thursday. While Paul’s vote is in serious doubt, Mullin could win over Democratic Sen. John Fetterman<\/a> of Pennsylvania, who has expressed support for Mullin previously and said Wednesday he would approach the nomination “with an open mind.”<\/p>\n

“I haven’t been rocked by some mic-dropping kind of moments,” Fetterman told reporters after the hearing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Senate Majority Leader John Thune said he is confident Sen. Markwayne Mullin will be confirmed as the next secretary of Homeland Security despite a contentious exchange with fellow GOP Sen. Rand Paul at a hearing Wednesday. Paul, the chair of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, sharply questioned the Oklahoma senator about past remarks […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20192"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20192\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}