The Senate confirms Markwayne Mullin as DHS Secretary, 54 to 45.

Hon. Tuesday afternoon. The United States Senate, on a roll-call vote, by fifty-four to forty-five, confirmed Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma as the next Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.

Three Republicans voted no. Senator Rand Paul, Senator Lisa Murkowski, and Senator Susan Collins. The Senator from Kentucky, hon, on the way out, repeated the anger issues line for the third time this month. He said it about the outgoing Secretary, he said it about the new Secretary, he said it about the administration generally. The Senator from Kentucky, hon, is not anyone’s idea of the moral compass of the chamber, but he is, on this one matter, on the factually correct side of the facts.

The new Secretary, hon, takes the oath next Tuesday. The new Secretary will inherit the longest agency shutdown in American history. As of Tuesday, the DHS shutdown is in its thirty-seventh day. The previous record, hon, was the thirty-five-day partial federal shutdown in 2019. The current shutdown, by the day the new Secretary takes office, will be in its forty-fourth day.

The workforce the new Secretary will manage, hon, is two hundred sixty thousand federal employees. As of Tuesday, most of them have not been paid in five weeks. As of Tuesday, three thousand five hundred and sixty TSA officers called out sick on a single day the previous Friday. As of Tuesday, ICE agents are being deployed to airport security under the new airport-help framework. As of Tuesday, FEMA is operating under the previous Secretary’s hundred-thousand-dollar-signoff policy that the new Secretary has, under oath, committed to scrap.

That, hon, is the job. The new Secretary will inherit, on his first day, a workforce that is exhausted and unpaid and deployed to jobs they were not trained for. He will inherit a budget that is not funded. He will inherit a boss, in the White House, who has been posting about the agency the whole shutdown and has not engaged in any substantive way with the Senate Democratic leadership on the path forward. The new Secretary will inherit a predecessor who has been promoted to a new role on the same calendar day.

The outgoing Secretary, by the administration’s own announcement, will take her seat as Special Envoy for the Shield of the Americas on the day Senator Mullin takes the oath. That, hon, is what we call, in the diner business, clearing the line for the next plate. The plate is clear by Tuesday. The plate is not on the table. The plate is gone.

You ever notice how the people who say they are cutting government waste keep creating a new senior position for every Cabinet officer they fire?

The vote, hon, was fifty-four to forty-five. The agency, hon, has two hundred sixty thousand employees who have not been paid in five weeks. The new Secretary, hon, is a former mixed martial arts fighter. He will, next Tuesday, sit at the desk and read the briefing book. The briefing book, hon, is thicker than it was a month ago.

Funny how that works.