Tamara Keith

Giving people brand new jobs or ambassadorships or, you know, the first example, the president's former national security adviser said,

Mike Waltz, he then became the U.S.

ambassador to the United Nations.

What's happening with Kristi Noem is definitely not as much of a real thing until the president announced it.

And there is a summit of the Shield of the Americas for about an hour and a half or two hours this weekend in Florida.

Very quickly, Jimena, President Trump announced that Senator Mark Wayne Mullen from Oklahoma is going to be his pick.

He's planning to nominate Senator Mullen.

What do we need to know about him?

You know, Senator Mullen has been a strong ally of the president.

He was out there campaigning for him in 2024, mostly among the Native American and tribal communities.

You know, Mullen is an interesting switch because he's not someone that I think you would have seen as an obvious pick for DHS particularly.

But at the same time, I'm not surprised that he ended up on the cabinet.

Now, Mullen does not sit on the Judiciary Committee.

He also does not sit on Senate Homeland.

And so it will be interesting to see kind of how his confirmation goes through.

But I think the challenge here is he's inheriting, you know, a little bit of a mess.

You know, his agency that he's going to take on is currently not being funded.

You know, DHS is still in a single agency government shutdown.

We're in the third week of that.

Hundreds of thousands of employees are furloughed or working without pay, including a third of cybersecurity staff, many people that deal with disaster relief, not to mention administrative people and folks across Oregon.