Oklahoma Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin said he was “humbled” to be President Donald Trump’s nominee as the next Homeland Security secretary, replacing Kristi Noem. “Humbling,” Mullin told press when asked of his first reaction to his nomination. “I had to call my dad … because it happened quick. I had to call my wife,” Mullin said, adding, “It’s just, you know, pretty humbling when you start thinking about it: a little kid from Westville, Oklahoma gets to serve in the president’s cabinet. That’s pretty neat.” When Mullin is confirmed, he says his priority will be to enforce the laws Congress has passed. “My focus is to keep the homeland secure. That’s going to be my focus, and we’re super excited about this opportunity,” he told press. Mullin was a member of the House for 10 years before becoming a senator in January 2023. “I am grateful to President Trump for nominating me to lead the U.S. Department of Homeland Security,” Mullin wrote on X. “I look forward to earning the support of my colleagues in the Senate and carrying out President Trump’s mission alongside the department’s many capable agencies and the thousands of patriots who keep us safe every day.” As a kid from Westville, it has been the greatest honor and privilege to serve the people of Oklahoma for the past thirteen years in both the House and Senate. I am grateful to President Trump for nominating me to lead the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. I look forward to…— Markwayne Mullin (@SenMullin) March 5, 2026 Mullin will oversee the 260,000 employees and 22 components of the agency, taking over for Noem, who has served as Trump’s Homeland Security secretary since January 2025. Noem will now serve as “Special Envoy for The Shield of the Americas, our new Security Initiative in the Western Hemisphere we are announcing on Saturday in Doral, Florida,” Trump announced Thursday. “I thank Kristi for her service at ‘Homeland.’” Noem thanked Trump in a post on X for appointing her to the new position, adding that she looks forward to working with Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio “to dismantle cartels that have poured drugs into our nation and killed our children and grandchildren.” Trump’s announcement follows a report from National Review’s Audrey Fahlberg that Trump was “furious” with Noem following her testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday. During the hearing, Noem said Trump had approved a $220 million ad campaign featuring her that encouraged illegal aliens to self-deport. Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., pressed Noem on the ads while she was under oath, asking: “The president approved ahead of time you spending $220 million running TV ads across the country in which you are featured prominently?” “Yes,” Noem answered. While Noem said Trump knew about the ads, the president later told Reuters he “never knew anything about it.” Noem’s departure comes as DHS is currently in a partial shutdown while Congress continues to debate its funding. Senate Democrats have demanded changes to Immigration and Customs Enforcement policies as a condition of funding. Democrats continued their holdout on Thursday as a bill to fund DHS failed to receive the necessary 60 votes to end debate. The post ‘HUMBLING’: Markwayne Mullin Reacts to Being Appointed Next DHS Secretary   appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s video from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of his videos. Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal. We’ve seen Donald Trump’s punitive action, preemptive actions, in his first term and now in his second as well. And there’s a general pattern here, a Trump way of war, we could call it. One thing that’s central to all of his action is they’re geostrategic. Pressuring the Panamanians to divorce themselves from China. Making sure the Venezuelan oil does not go to Russia or China by changing the government and kidnapping, capturing, Maduro. Things like that suggest that the current Iranian operation has targeted China, but it’s a major supplier of Chinese oil. China’s one of the biggest, if not the biggest supplier of consumer goods, material goods to Iran. It supplies weaponry to Iran, and Iran has become a client more of China now than Russia. And it may be lost to China as Venezuela was, and maybe Panama was. You’re starting to see a pattern. These are wars of reckoning. People say, “Well, why are we attacking Iran?” and Trump’s way of reasoning, he’s settling up old scores. Panama was getting away with murder through a previous administration, maybe including his own, by stationing or allowing the Chinese to have strategic locations on the Panama Canal. It was time to say no more. [Nicolas] Maduro was getting away with literally murder. Sending drugs, working with the cartels into the United States, sending hardened criminals into the United States as well, illegal aliens. And it was time to say, “You’re not going to cause a Castroite Latin American Communist Revolution. We’re going to stop it.” And it was past time in Trump’s way of thinking. All of these wars are in that way. Same thing with Iran. They have killed more Americans, as we all have been told, than any other terrorist clique or operation. Going back even before the Iran-Iraq war, before our incursions in the Gulf War. At the very beginning that government was birthed on the idea of taking American hostages and then subsequently blowing up our embassy, blowing up Marine barracks, involvement in Khobar Towers, using proxies like Hezbollah to hijack planes, assassinate Americans. It was time, in other words, to even up the score. These take place during negotiations. Notice that Trump was negotiating with Iranians during the summer hit on their nuclear facilities. He was negotiating with them in this current war. He was negotiating with the Venezuelans, and that is his characteristic. He’s saying to these different entities, “I want a peaceful solution.” And even if he didn’t want a peaceful solution, the idea that he is negotiating lessens the criticism that they are preemptive, or preventative, optional wars. In other words, he can say, “Well, I wanted to make peace, but the negotiations broke down.” Notice their top-down attacks. They go after [Qasem] Soleimani in the first term, or [Abu Bakr al-] Baghdadi, or they go after Maduro or they go after [Ali] Khamenei. The idea is, everybody in the world should be on notice. That the people themselves are not culpable. They are Shanghai coerced by these terrible leaders. And I, Donald Trump, will get rid of the leaders and start with the top rather than the bottom or the people. And that’s a very successful strategy. Of course, there’s no nation building. Donald Trump ran against the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The MAGA base says, “We don’t want forever—optional—wars, especially in the Middle East.” So there is no pretense that there’s going to be a gender studies program on Iran, or there’s going to be George Floyd murals, or there’s going to be a Pride flag over the U.S. Embassy in Iran. There’s no cultural imperialism. No desire to say we were going to make democracies all over the Middle East. We’re not going to do that, and therefore, we’re not going to have boots on the ground. We’re not going to have ground troops unless emergencies. There’s a weird exit strategy too, that Donald Trump has in all of these. He determines when the war starts and when it ends. I don’t know if he’s going to be successful in all these cases, but he takes out the Iranian nuclear facilities, and everybody says we’re going to be in an endless tit-for-tat struggle now in the summer of 2025. And what happens? He allows Iran a performative art hit on American base in Qatar, and then he says, I want to make Iran great again. And that’s the end of it. After the death of Soleimani, the same thing. Already, prematurely, perhaps, he’s already talking about negotiations with Iran. And what that does is it sort of dampens the criticism of him. Just as he went to war in the midst of negotiations, he doesn’t say, “Well, negotiations will not work.” Maybe they will. And we can end this, but the war will start and end when he sees as favorable terms to the United States. An eighth aspect of the Trump way of war: There’s no effort to go to the United Nations. No United Nations, no International Criminal Court, no EU consultation. NATO, we consult with them in matters European, but nobody talked about NATO. The idea is that there’s very little trust that these platforms that are multilateral have the wherewithal or the ability or the desire to take prompt, decisive action. And they will only clog up the process if you consult them, and you hinge your decision making on a foreign entity. Nine, there are showcases for U.S. arms. Have you noticed that? Everybody’s talking about the greatest, biggest, strongest warship in the history of civilization, the Gerald R. Ford. New Ford-class carrier, 105,000 tons of displacement, $13 billion, maybe 4,500-manned warship. Very impressive. We’re talking about our new kamikaze, one-way drones that we haven’t seen before. You’ve seen the maps that the Pentagon has released that have been replicated by the news outlets. They show Iran in the middle. And then there’s American assets all the way in the Indian Ocean. They’re in the Red Sea, they’re in the Mediterranean Sea, they’re in the Gulf of Oman, they’re in the Straits of Hormuz, they’re in the Persian Gulf. And they’re all focused, fixated on Iran. It’s surrounded. And they want that to be known that only the United States has this type of weaponry and this reach and these resources. And finally, there’s no, I don’t know how to put it, but he’s not hiding U.S. self-interest. Of course, he talks about it’ll be much better for the greater Middle East, but we wouldn’t have gone to war if it hadn’t been for U.S. interest. And what is U.S. interest? We’re sick and tired of the Iranians attacking our allies, but more importantly, as the biggest killer of Americans. We don’t want them to hijack planes anymore. We don’t want them to stage assassination attempts in New York or in Washington against either dissidents or foreign entities like the Saudi ambassador. We don’t like them to capture hostages and torture them. We don’t like them sending lethal arms to kill Americans as they did during the Iraq war. We don’t want them to kidnap people in foreign countries or in Iran and hold them as hostages. We’re just sick of it. And it’s in our interest, in Trump’s way of war, to end it. Will all of this work? I don’t know. It’s very hard to say, “I’m going to decide when a war starts and I’m going to decide when a war ends and we’re not going to have ground troops, and we’re going to go across the world and settle scores.” And yet, as we’ve seen before, the Trump way of war worked to get Soleimani, the Gen. Qasem Soleimani, the architect of the Iranian terror state. Mr. Al-Baghdadi, who was taken out and ISIS was bombed, proverbially, into rubble. A clear end. A clear beginning, a clear end. The Wagner group. What were we going to do with them. This was a Russian entity. We killed more of them than any moment in the Cold War. I think 200 Russians were killed by Americans, and it followed the same script that I just outlined. We saw the same script during the first Iranian incursion in summer, and now we’re seeing it again. It’s a very strange idea. War doesn’t change because human nature is immutable. So we know the rules of war, but the actual practice of it, that is not the struggle between humans and political entities to use the force of arms to persuade someone of your own political, cultural, religious material agenda. That’s immutable. But how you do it. What are the tactics? What are the strategy? What are the weaponry? Have change, and no one has changed them more than Donald Trump. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Victor Davis Hanson: The ‘Trump Way of War’ Is About Settling Scores and Deterring America’s Enemies appeared first on The Daily Signal.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries vowed to keep fighting President Donald Trump’s administration as he celebrated the ousting of former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, whom he called an “unqualified corrupt political hack.” “Kristi Noem presided over the cold-blooded killings of American citizens like Nicole Good and Alex Pretti,” the New York Democrat told reporters at a snap press conference on Thursday. “She’s got to be put on ice permanently,” the minority leader said. Noem is not the only person Jeffries wants to see booted from the president’s inner circle. The minority leader vowed to fight for the removal of other senior officials such as Attorney General Pamela Bondi and “cold blooded liar” Special Advisor Stephen Miller. “Republicans have failed the American people in every possible way,” Jeffries added. While Trump removed Noem from her cabinet post, the president tapped her to be the Special Envoy for The Shield of the Americas, a new security initiative Trump plans to announce on Saturday in Doral, Florida. Noem’s departure from the president’s cabinet comes in the midst of a DHS shutdown. Democrats have refused to fund the department because of Trump’s mass deportation efforts, and are demanding reforms to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, which include limiting immigration enforcement near voting locations and opening the door for states to sue the administration. During the press conference, Jeffries suggested Democrats will not give up on their demands to reform ICE. “We have to make sure ICE conducts itself like any other law enforcement agency in the country,” Jeffries said. “The Trump administration is deeply unpopular. Abandon your ‘my way or the highway’ approach,” he added. Trump announced on Truth Social on Thursday that Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., will replace Noem, but Jeffries seems to believe that will come with substantial changes. “It’s not like Kristi Noem was in charge of anything,” Jeffries said. “We will continue dealing with the White House like we have always done.” The post ‘PUT ON ICE’: Jeffries Cheers Noem Ousting, Vows to Fight for Removal of Bondi and Miller appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Imagine that you’re one of the 520 or so immigration judges trying to slog through the estimated 3.3 million pending immigration cases, many of which are asylum cases. Unlike other judges, you don’t have contempt authority to hold attorneys accountable. And most denial of asylum decisions you make get appealed to the Board of Immigration Appeals within the Department of Justice for review. And even if they uphold your factual and legal findings and order of removal, the case gets appealed to the federal courts, some of which apply different standards of deference to your hard work. Yesterday, those immigration judges and members of the Board of Immigration Appeals got some welcome news from the Supreme Court in Urias-Orellana v. Bondi, which clarified the standard federal courts must use when reviewing Board of Immigration Appeals determinations. In a unanimous decision written by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the Supreme Court held that courts of appeals must apply the substantial evidence standard to the agency’s determination whether a given set of undisputed facts rises to the level of persecution, or demonstrates a well-founded fear of future persecution, under 8 U.S.C. §1101(a)(42)(A) for asylum claims. This is welcome news as it will give immigration judges and the Board of Immigration Appeals confidence that their findings of fact and application of the law will receive the deference they are due from federal courts of appeals. Moreover, this decision provides clarity to federal appeals courts about what standard they must apply when reviewing these types of actions. In this case, the petitioners were Douglas Humberto Urias-Orellana, his wife, and their minor child. They entered the U.S. illegally in 2021. After they were apprehended, they were placed in removal proceedings, admitted they were in the country illegally, and subsequently applied for asylum. Under 8 U.S.C. §1158(b)(1)(A) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, the U.S. government “may grant asylum” to a noncitizen if it “determines” that he or she “is a refugee.” To qualify as a “refugee,” a person must be “unable or unwilling to return” to his country of nationality “because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.” Urias-Orellana was the sole witness in his case before the immigration judge and claimed that he was being targeted in his hometown by a hitman in El Salvador. As a result, he and his family had moved to other cities in El Salvador where they were safe. The immigration judge believed Urias-Orellana’s testimony but decided that it did not establish past persecution under the statute and also found that it did not present a well-founded fear of future persecution. In his ruling, the immigration judge explained that under 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals precedent (where the case was brought), “death threats may establish past persecution only when they are ‘so menacing as to cause significant actual suffering or harm.’” His past-persecution claim failed because he had not submitted “any medical, psychiatric, or psychological evaluations indicating that he had experienced such suffering or harm.” Furthermore, because the claims of the wife and child were derivative of Urias-Orellana’s, the immigration judge denied those too. As a result, all three were denied asylum and ordered removed. They all appealed to the Board of Immigration Appeals, which affirmed and agreed with the findings of the immigration judge. All three then appealed to the 1st Circuit Court pursuant to 8 U.S.C. §1252, which governs judicial review of removal orders. They argued that the death threats established past persecution that met the standard under 1st Circuit precedent, i.e., that they were “so menacing as to cause significant actual suffering or harm.” The Court of Appeals emphasized that its review was limited to “whether the Agency conclusion [that petitioners] had not demonstrated past persecution or a well-founded fear of future persecution was supported by substantial evidence.” Under that standard, reversal was warranted only “if, in reviewing the record as a whole, any reasonable adjudicator would be compelled to conclude to the contrary.” Applying that standard, the Court of Appeals affirmed because, just as the immigration judge and the Board of Immigration Appeals did below, Urias-Orellana’s testimony “did not compel a finding of either past persecution or a well-founded fear of future persecution.” The agency reasonably concluded that the threats experienced by Urias-Orellana were not “so menacing as to cause significant actual suffering or harm.” It similarly determined that, because “Urias-Orellana was able to live in towns across El Salvador for years without harassment and only encountered difficulties once he returned to his hometown,” a reasonable factfinder would not be compelled to find a well-founded fear of future persecution. The case then came to the U.S. Supreme Court where Justices started by noting that 8 U.S.C. 1252(b)(4) addresses the “scope and standard of review” that the court of appeals must apply when evaluating immigration judge and Board of Immigration Appeals removal orders. The court noted that “each of §1252(b)(4)’s four subparagraphs truncates the court’s review in a particular manner.” According to the court, in this case, 8 U.S.C. §1252(b)(4)(B) controls and provides that “the administrative findings of fact are conclusive unless any reasonable adjudicator would be compelled to conclude to the contrary.” The court noted that it had “previously interpreted subparagraph (B) to prescribe a deferential, ‘substantial-evidence standard’ for review of agency factual findings.’” Applying the facts and the law to this case, the court held that “§1252(b)(4)(B) requires courts to review the entirety of the agency’s conclusions—both the underlying factual findings and the application of the Immigration and Nationality Act to those findings—for substantial evidence.” Jackson made clear that the court rejected Urias-Orellan’s contention and that of multiple U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeals that a de novo standard of review should only apply to the finding of facts. Courts now have clear guidance that they must apply substantial evidence review to the Board of Immigration Appeals’ findings of fact as well as the ultimate statutory question of whether the facts compel a finding of either past persecution or a well-founded fear of future harm in these types of immigration proceedings. The post SCOTUS Clarifies That Federal Courts Must Apply the Substantial Evidence Standard to Agency Findings in Certain Immigration Proceedings appeared first on The Daily Signal.

President Donald Trump was elected on a simple, clear promise to put America first. Not America alone, and not America apologizing. America first. His decision to strike Iran in coordination with Israel is the fulfillment of that promise. For 47 years, Iran’s regime has chanted “Death to America,” funded terrorist proxies, attacked U.S. personnel, targeted international shipping lanes, and openly pursued regional domination. Weak presidents issued statements. They drew red lines in disappearing ink. They sent pallets of cash and hoped for moderation. Trump did something different. He restored deterrence. “America First” means recognizing that the primary duty of the commander-in-chief is to protect American lives, American interests, and American sovereignty. When Iran coordinates with terrorist networks, threatens our troops, and works hand-in-glove with America’s adversaries, a decisive strike that degrades its capacity to harm us is self-defense. Some voices on the right have objected. Some have argued that this move departs from what they believed Trump’s foreign policy would be. They warn of entanglement. They invoke Iraq. They caution against regime change. Many in the grassroots fought the disastrous nation-building experiments of the past. We opposed wars that drained American blood and treasure with no clear objective. But that is not what this is. Trump did not ask Congress for an open-ended commitment. He did not announce a decades-long democratization campaign. He did not commit America’s troops to policing another country’s internal politics. He authorized a targeted strike in coordination with an ally to eliminate a clear and present danger. The caricature of America First pushed by some critics reduces it to isolationism. But America First has never meant retreat or withdrawal. It has meant strength without apology. It has meant peace through strength. It has meant that adversaries understand that attacking Americans will come at a price. Ronald Reagan understood that. So did Trump in his first term, when he ordered the strike that eliminated ISIS’ territorial caliphate and when he authorized the operation against Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps chief Qasem Soleimani. Those actions did not launch World War III. They reestablished deterrence.  Iran’s regime thrives on the perception of American weakness. When Washington sends mixed signals, Tehran fills the vacuum. When America hesitates, Iran’s proxies escalate. A measured but unmistakable military response tells the ayatollahs that the days of testing America without consequence are over. Critics argue that coordination with Israel somehow proves that this is not America First. That argument misunderstands both alliances and sovereignty. Supporting an ally when our interests align is not subservience, it is strategic realism. Israel faces the same Iranian missiles, the same proxy networks, and the same destabilizing ambitions that threaten U.S. forces and assets. Neutralizing a shared threat is mutual defense and nothing more. America First does not require America to stand alone while enemies collaborate. It also does not require Trump to ignore the world as it is. The Middle East is not a distant abstraction. It affects global energy markets, international shipping, and the security architecture that protects American prosperity. Allowing Iran to expand unchecked would not keep us out of conflict. It would invite larger, more dangerous confrontations later. There is a deeper principle at stake. Sovereignty means control over your borders, your economy, and your security. A regime that openly plots harm against Americans forfeits any expectation that we will simply tolerate it. The strike signals that the United States will not outsource its security to international committees or wait for consensus from adversaries. The grassroots did not elect Trump to be passive. They elected him to be decisive. They elected him to reverse the culture of apology that defined previous administrations. They elected him to ensure that when America speaks, the world listens. The same critics who now warn of “mission creep” should recognize that strength, applied clearly and narrowly, prevents the very quagmires they fear. Deterrence is cheaper than war. Clarity is safer than ambiguity. Trump’s action was limited, purposeful, and aligned with American interests. It degraded the capabilities of a hostile regime. It reinforced a critical alliance. It reminded the world that American resolve is not a relic of the past. America First is not a slogan for rallies. It is a governing philosophy. It says that American lives come first, American security comes first, and American strength comes first. That is exactly what this strike represents. The alternative is not peace. It is drift. And drift in a dangerous world is not prudence, it is peril. Trump chose strength. That is the promise kept. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Trump’s Strike on Iran Is as American First as It Gets appeared first on The Daily Signal.