{"id":168868,"date":"2026-03-20T02:06:29","date_gmt":"2026-03-20T02:06:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/168868\/"},"modified":"2026-03-20T02:06:29","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T02:06:29","slug":"john-fetterman-vote-saves-markwayne-mullin-nomination-to-lead-dhs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/168868\/","title":{"rendered":"John Fetterman vote saves Markwayne Mullin nomination to lead DHS"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2014 Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) crossed party lines to advance his colleague\u00a0Markwayne Mullin\u2019s nomination to lead the Department of Homeland Security<\/a>\u00a0in a nail-biting committee vote Thursday.<\/p>\n

Senate Homeland Security Committee\u00a0Chairman Rand Paul (R-Ky.) voted against reporting Mullin (R-Okla.) to the full Senate, but\u00a0Fetterman voted in favor of sending the pick to the floor for a final vote.<\/p>\n

All 13 other committee members voted along party lines, making the final tally 8-7 in Mullin\u2019s favor.<\/p>\n

Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee member Sen. John Fetterman (above) saved Mullin\u2019s nomination to lead DHS. Getty Images<\/p>\n

Senate Homeland Security Committee\u00a0Chairman Rand Paul voted against reporting Mullin to the full Senate. Getty Images<\/p>\n

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) told reporters Wednesday that Mullin would receive\u00a0a final confirmation vote \u201chopefully early next week.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), the top Democrat on the panel, was the only member to speak ahead of the vote, noting that he would\u00a0reject Mullin\u2019s nomination<\/a>\u00a0because he \u201chas failed to be forthright and transparent\u201d and lacks \u201cthe experience or the temperament\u201d to lead the domestic law enforcement agency.<\/p>\n

Peters also quoted from a Senate Ethics Committee finding on Mullin related to a 2023 incident in which the Oklahoma Republican\u00a0offered to fight Teamsters president Sean O\u2019Brien<\/a>\u00a0during a\u00a0Senate Housing, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee\u00a0hearing.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen offered multiple public opportunities to clarify the intent of your conduct, you declined to uphold the Senate standard,\u201d Peters read from the finding, \u201cand advocated physical violence as a means to resolve political disagreement.\u201d<\/p>\n

All 13 other committee members voted along party lines, making the final tally 8-7 in Mullin\u2019s favor. WILL OLIVER\/EPA\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n

Mullin had defended his conduct on Wednesday, insisting that he was\u00a0\u201csimply pointing out \u2026 some of the rules that still apply to this body \u2014 for instance, dueling with two consenting adults \u2014 is still there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Congress outlawed dueling in the District of Columbia in 1839.<\/p>\n

Paul erupted at Mullin during the hearing for having \u201cno regrets\u201d about his history of pugnacious remarks \u2014 which also included condoning a 2017 assault against Paul himself by a crazed Kentucky neighbor.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe just don\u2019t get along,\u201d Mullin fired back at Paul. \u201cThat doesn\u2019t keep me at all from doing my job. I can have differences of opinion with everybody in this room, but as secretary of Homeland, I\u2019ll be protecting everybody \u2014 including Kentucky as much as my own backyard in Oklahoma.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve worked with many people in this room. It seems like you fight Republicans more than you work with us,\u201d added Mullin, a former MMA fighter. \u201cAnd as far as me saying that I invoke violence \u2026 I don\u2019t think anybody should be hit by surprise. I don\u2019t like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

By contrast, Fetterman praised Mullin for treating him with \u201cconsistent kindness and professionalism\u201d since the two arrived in the Senate together in 2023.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven before you got the call for the big job, we were even discussing about getting together and having dinner as family,\u201d the Democrat said. \u201cSo, that\u2019s an ongoing relationship, because that\u2019s also part of the fact [that] here in this town, you gotta get along and find a way to work together, and now we have to come at it and just let things go in the past.\u201d<\/p>\n

Paul and Peters also grilled Mullin on his failure to share details about a \u201cclassified\u201d trip he took overseas while a House lawmaker \u2014 the details of which were revealed after the ranking member listed other travels shared in an FBI report.<\/p>\n

Sen. Markwayne Mullin speaking at a hearing of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee at the US Capitol. Michael Brochstein\/ZUMA \/ SplashNews.com<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 2015, I was asked to train with a very small contingency and go to a certain area, which was scheduled for 2016,\u201d Mullin told Peters, saying he had to \u201cmeet certain training qualifications\u201d that included a military survival program known as Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape training.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve never spoken specifically\u00a0on details, on dates, or on\u00a0the mission,\u201d Mullin also said. \u201cAnd like I said, that was an official trip that is classified.\u201d<\/p>\n

Later Wednesday, Mullin, Peters and Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) huddled in a secure setting to learn more about the trip.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON \u2014 Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) crossed party lines to advance his colleague\u00a0Markwayne Mullin\u2019s nomination to lead the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":168869,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2300,11995,64127,9,11,10,87,855,58],"class_list":["post-168868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-department-of-homeland-security","tag-john-fetterman","tag-markwayne-mullin","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-politics","tag-senate","tag-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168868"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168868\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/168869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}