Markwayne Mullin

• 1. Introduction

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  Markwayne Mullin carries a name stitched together from two uncles, Mark and Wayne. In 2026 that name landed on the door of the ninth United States secretary of homeland security. He reached the office after a decade as a House member and a stint in the Senate, representing Oklahoma in both. Few cabinet officers arrive with a résumé quite like his. His route ran through a family trade, a fighting ring, a radio microphone and a long run of campaigns. It also ran through ethics complaints, mysterious trips overseas and a personal fortune that grew enormously. How does a boy from a small Oklahoma town end up running a vast federal department? And why did his rise draw such sharp reactions from allies and critics alike? The answers start far from Washington, in the east of his home state.

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• 2. Westville Roots

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  Mullin was born on the 26th of July 1977 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the youngest of seven children. He grew up in Westville. As a child he struggled with a speech impediment and a clubfoot, which put him in leg braces. His maternal grandfather, Kenneth Morris, gave him his Cherokee ancestry, and Mullin became an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation. His family history includes Native Americans who reached Oklahoma both before and after the Trail of Tears. Wrestling became his outlet at Stilwell High School, where he graduated in 1996. A wrestling scholarship then took him to Missouri Valley College. His father's declining health ended that chapter early, and Mullin left college to run the family firm. He later earned an associate degree in plumbing from the Oklahoma State University Institute of Technology in 2010. Bacone College gave him an honorary doctorate in 2018. By then he had already married Christie Renee Rowan, whom he met in grade school. They dated through high school and wed in 1997, and they went on to raise six children, three of them adopted.

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• 3. The Plumbing Empire

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  When Mullin took over Mullin Plumbing in the late 1990s, the company employed just six people. Christie put her own degree on hold to help him keep it running. By July 2011 it had grown into the largest plumbing service company in Oklahoma. Around it he built Mullin Environmental, Mullin Services and Mullin Properties, plus ranches in Adair and Wagoner Counties. The Oklahoman counted eight businesses under his name by July 2013. In December 2021 he sold the whole group to CenterOak Partners, a private equity firm based in Dallas. His family kept operating the plumbing arm. The business also brought scrutiny. In September 2012 the Associated Press reported that Mullin Plumbing had received about $370,000 in federal stimulus money passed through the Cherokee and Muscogee Nations. Mullin said no one told him where the money came from. Records the Tulsa World obtained from the Cherokee Nation suggested the firm knew, though not Mullin himself. A second round of questions followed the pandemic, when the company took Paycheck Protection Program loans. In August 2022 the White House Twitter account, then run by the Biden administration, mocked him over $1.4 million in forgiven loans.

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• 4. Fighter and Host

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  Between 2006 and 2007, Mullin fought as a professional mixed martial artist. He claimed an unbeaten 5-0 record in that short career. One documented bout came against Bobby Kelley in Miami, Oklahoma, where Mullin won by rear-naked choke in the first round after only 46 seconds. Kelley later told The New York Times that Mullin ranked among the best welterweights in the four-state area. Mullin also faced Clinton Bonds twice. He won one fight by armbar in Oklahoma City and another by punches in Tulsa. Years later the National Wrestling Hall of Fame inducted him in 2016. By 2012 he ran the Oklahoma Fight Club, a jujutsu and mixed martial arts school in Broken Arrow. His second stage was a radio booth. By 2011 he hosted House Talk, a home improvement call-in show that The New York Times likened to NPR's Car Talk. Guest host Daryl Brown told the paper that Mullin expected visitors to prepare meticulously. The show aired on Saturday mornings on KFAQ. In 2016 his fighting past even shaped a bill, the Muhammad Ali Expansion Act, which the Ultimate Fighting Championship opposed.

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• 5. Capitol Hill

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  Dan Boren's announcement in June 2011 that he would not seek reelection opened Oklahoma's second congressional district. Mullin jumped in that July, lending his campaign $100,000. An adviser later said he was fed up with a health law requirement to insure his employees. He announced his run in Sallisaw on the 6th of September. Trouble followed. A complaint to the Federal Election Commission claimed his campaign took excess and corporate contributions and blurred plumbing ads with political ones. The hiring of Tim Saylor, who had a 2009 conviction on gun-related crimes, added another controversy. Mullin beat state representative George Faught in an August runoff, then defeated Democrat Rob Wallace on the 6th of November 2012. The win gave Oklahoma its first all-Republican delegation since 1998. He took office on the 3rd of January 2013 and won reelection four more times. That included a 2017 reversal of his pledge to serve no more than three terms. In the House he started an early-morning workout group with Joe Kennedy III and Tulsi Gabbard. His closeness to Donald Trump grew after Mullin's son Jim suffered a severe brain injury in a high school wrestling match. Trump offered to pay for Jim's treatment and called regularly to ask about him. The 6th of January 2021 tested that loyalty. Photographers caught Mullin in the House chamber urging rioters to stop, and he witnessed the killing of Ashli Babbitt. He still declined to blame Trump. In February 2022 Senator Jim Inhofe announced his resignation, and Mullin entered the race for the seat. He beat state House speaker T. W. Shannon in the August runoff and former representative Kendra Horn in November. When he took office on the 3rd of January 2023, he was the only senator in the 118th Congress without a bachelor's degree. He was also the first tribal citizen in the Senate since Ben Nighthorse Campbell left in 2005. Senate hearings brought sharper theater. In a March 2023 hearing he told Teamsters president Sean O'Brien to shut his mouth, and in November he threatened to fight him. Chairman Bernie Sanders had to urge Mullin to back down.

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• 6. Unexplained Journeys

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  The Congressional Record shows Mullin spent three days in Jordan in August 2016, and little else about the visit was clear. Years later, at his 2026 confirmation hearing, he called it a classified trip. He said he had completed Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape training to prepare. The New York Times linked the visit to his praise for King Abdullah II, who sent a personal helicopter to rescue him and other Americans. A second episode unfolded in August 2021, as the Taliban advanced across Afghanistan. The Washington Post reported that Mullin flew to Greece and asked the Department of Defense for permission to enter Kabul. The department said no. He then asked John Pommersheim, the American ambassador to Tajikistan, to help move cash into the country. His plan was to rescue an Afghan woman and her four children by helicopter, flying from Tbilisi to Dushanbe. Embassy officials in Dushanbe said they could not help him get around Tajikistan's cash limits. Reports said Mullin was furious and threatened Pommersheim and the staff. Mullin later wrote in a fundraising letter that the Biden administration had tried to kill him during the effort. In March 2026 Axios reported that he had privately hinted at security work for the government in the Middle East. His spokesperson described it as mission work and mentorship support. Michigan senator Gary Peters pressed him on remarks implying he had been in a war zone.

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• 7. Money and Ethics

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  A June 2013 disclosure suggested Mullin might be the richest member of Oklahoma's congressional delegation, with a net worth between $2.8 and $9 million. By 2024 his assets were estimated between $29 and $97 million. PitchBook reported that on the day he sold his companies, he moved between $25 million and $50 million into a cash management account. Forbes counted 30 businesses wholly or partly owned by him in March 2026. In April 2017, at a town hall in Jay, Oklahoma, he called it "bullcrap" that taxpayers pay his salary. Ethics questions dogged him early. In December 2013 the Office of Congressional Ethics recommended a full House investigation. A report the next March alleged he earned over $600,000 from his plumbing companies, beyond the limit for lawmakers, and sat on a company board. In 2018 the committee told him to return $40,000 to Mullin West. His stock trades drew attention too. Around January 2017 he bought shares in Innate Immunotherapeutics, which was tied to an insider trading scandal involving Representative Chris Collins. As a senator, he bought Raytheon shares weeks before the October 7 attacks, and a tracker built on his portfolio followed. A spokesperson told The New Yorker in June 2024 that an independent third party managed it. In December 2025 he invested in over 30 companies in one deal worth as much as $2.8 million. The Campaign Legal Center complained in 2024 that he reported nine 2023 stock purchases nearly a year late.

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• 8. Homeland Security

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  On the 5th of March 2026, Trump fired Kristi Noem as secretary of homeland security and named Mullin to replace her. The department was in the middle of a shutdown. Politico expected a straightforward confirmation because Mullin was a sitting senator, though Chuck Schumer urged the Senate to wait until Immigration and Customs Enforcement was reined in. At his Senate hearing on the 18th of March, Mullin promised to keep the strict immigration policy but end home entries without a search warrant. He also said DHS would seek agreements with local jails instead of mass raids like Operation Metro Surge, and would drop Noem's review of large FEMA contracts. Chairman Rand Paul attacked him over a remark about Paul's 2017 assault and suggested he had anger issues. The committee advanced the nomination 8-7 on the 19th of March, with Paul opposed and John Fetterman in favor. A 54-37 procedural vote came on the 22nd. The full Senate confirmed him 54-45 the next day, with Martin Heinrich and Fetterman crossing party lines. He resigned his seat on the 23rd of March. Governor Kevin Stitt named businessman Alan Armstrong as interim successor. Attorney General Pam Bondi swore Mullin in on the 24th of March, making him the first Cherokee Nation member in the Cabinet. He took over a department shaken by the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, and by criticism of Noem's spending. He remained a longtime hardliner on immigration, yet said he regretted calling Pretti a "deranged individual". In April he reversed Noem's rule requiring personal review of contracts and grants above $100,000. Whether he can end the shutdown while keeping Trump's deportation strategy intact is still unresolved.

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