Erika D. Smith, Columnist

Mullin's New Job at DHS Keeps Getting Harder

March 25, 2026 at 5:45 PM UTC

Erika D. Smith is a politics and policy columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. She is a former Los Angeles Times columnist and Sacramento Bee editorial board member.

Is it too late to back out?
Photographer: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images North America

Provide news feedback or report an error

Site feedback:

Take our Survey

Markwayne Mullin, the newly sworn in secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, couldn’t ask for a bigger hype man than President Donald Trump. “Everybody wanted this job,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Tuesday, as Mullin looked on. “I said there’s one man for this job and I have no doubt he’s going to be fantastic.”

But hype will only get a member of Trump’s Cabinet so far. (Just ask former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.) And Trump is not exactly setting Mullin up for success.