Just over a year ago, Senator Andy Kim was willing to give Kristi Noem the benefit of the doubt, supporting her nomination for Homeland Security Secretary in what ranks among the most controversial votes of his nascent Senate career. With Noem out and a new Homeland Security nominee now before the Senate, Kim isn’t going down that road again.
Markwayne Mullin, a Republican senator from Oklahoma and President Donald Trump’s pick to lead DHS, testified before the Senate Homeland Security Committee today, and will likely be put up for a vote tomorrow. Kim, a member of the committee, had announced long prior to the hearing that he would oppose Mullin’s nomination, and said that Mullin’s answers today didn’t make him change his mind.
“A number of the questions he answered seemed like it’s a step up from Kristi Noem,” Kim told the New Jersey Globe. “But that’s like jumping over a toothpick. It’s not a hard thing to do better than her.”
Over the course of both the hearing and a private meeting with Kim beforehand, however, Mullin did commit to looking into a number of issues, New Jersey-specific and otherwise, that the senator raised.
Perhaps most notably, after Kim asked Mullin about controversial plans to convert a warehouse in New Jersey’s Roxbury Township into an immigrant detention facility, Mullin said that he plans to visit the planned facility in person, a visit that Kim said he hopes will happen soon after he’s confirmed. Mullin also obliquely criticized DHS’s past handling of the issue; GOP officials in Roxbury were never contacted by DHS prior to the purchase of the warehouse property, leading to a wave of local anger and confusion.
“It’s important that we’re talking to the communities, and if we’re having additional needs, we can work with the cities,” Mullin said. “But we should always communicate with them.”
Mullin didn’t go so far as to commit to re-evaluating DHS’s plans for the facility itself, though, as Kim pressed him to do. And Kim noted afterwards that some red states – including Mullin’s home state of Oklahoma – have been successful at warding off local detention facilities, but blue states have not been afforded the same opportunity.
“Whether it’s New Hampshire or Mississippi or Oklahoma, you can’t just do it in the states where there are Republican governors and leaders,” Kim said. “I made that clear to him, especially given that Roxbury is a town that actually voted for Trump, and the leadership is Republican.”
Mullin also agreed with Kim that Noem’s policy of personally approving every grant of more than $100,000 was inefficient and should be done away with: “That’s called micromanaging,” he said. Asked about conditions at Delaney Hall, a Newark detention facility where a detainee died in custody late last year, Mullin said that “everybody deserves to be treated with a dignified hand.”
Mullin’s nomination could face headwinds for a host of other unrelated issues, including accusations of stolen valor and his own frosty relationship with Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky), the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee. That could make tomorrow’s scheduled vote on his nomination trickier, though one Democrat, John Fetterman (D-Pennsylvania), may be open to supporting him.
Kim’s New Jersey colleague, Senator Cory Booker, plans to vote no on Mullin’s nomination assuming he makes it to the Senate floor, his office said.
But one New Jersey Democrat is more pro-Mullin than either of them: Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-Tenafly), who attended Mullin’s confirmation hearing in person. Gottheimer said his presence wasn’t meant as an endorsement of Mullin’s nomination, per se, but as a sign of the close friendship between the two congressmen.
“The Department of Homeland Security plays a critical role in protecting our nation, and it’s clear the Department needs new leadership,” Gottheimer said in a statement. “We don’t agree on everything, but after a decade of working out together, and taking on bipartisan issues, Markwayne has become a very good friend.”
Mullin even referenced their friendship during questioning, saying of Gottheimer that he would “run through fire for the guy.” Their daughters are writing a book together titled Ozzie & Shmoo Go to Washington.
In the months after supporting Noem’s confirmation last year, Kim backtracked away from his vote, saying that he would have voted differently if he knew more about how the Trump administration would behave. The core problem, Kim said today, remains in place: no matter the quality of the person Trump puts forward for key roles like DHS, he doesn’t think the underlying culture will be able to change.
“Single individuals, they can be good-intentioned and qualified, but in the wrong environment, or in an environment that just is dead-set on pushing in a certain direction, they’re not going to be effective,” Kim said. “I just cannot, in this environment, see how anybody’s going to be able to address this when it so clearly goes up to Stephen Miller and ultimately Donald Trump.”
