Senate set to vote on confirming Sen. Markwayne Mullin as DHS secretary
Sen. Markwayne Mullin, nominee to be Secretary of Homeland Security, testifies during a Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, March 18, 2026. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — The Senate is set to vote to confirm Sen. Markwayne Mullin to replace Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Monday night.
The vote comes amid backlash over the immigration crackdown and deportations under DHS as well as the ongoing partial shutdown of the department.
A simple majority is needed to confirm Mullin for the job; he is expected to be approved.
Mullin, a first-term Republican senator and ardent supporter of President Donald Trump, will take over DHS with little homeland security experience. During his confirmation hearing last week, Mullin said that he will work hard to earn the respect of people at the department.
“I’ll work beside them every single day to not just secure a homeland, to bring peace of mind and confidence to the agency. My goal in six months is that we’re not in the lead story every single day. My goal is for people to understand we’re out there, we’re protecting them, and we’re working with them,” Mullin said at his confirmation hearing.
Mullin’s confirmation vote comes during ongoing DHS partial shutdown — with employees of Transportation Security Administration, Federal Emergency Management Agency and other agencies under DHS not getting paid.
Travelers are experiencing long TSA lines at airports around the country during a busy spring travel season as TSA agents call out. Sunday set a new record with the highest call out rate from TSA officers since the partial government shutdown began at 11.76%, according to newly released data by the agency.
President Donald Trump announced over the weekend that he would send Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to airports starting on Monday to assist TSA officers.
Trump nominated Mullin to lead the agency earlier this month, after firing Secretary Kristi Noem. His decision came after a week of disastrous hearings on Capitol Hill for Noem and questions about her personal and professional relationships while leading DHS.
Noem has faced criticism over her handling of ICE operations in Minneapolis after the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal law enforcement. She was removed from leading operations in Minnesota following the scrutiny, and Border Czar Tom Homan was sent in to take over.
Noem later walked back her comments, claiming she did not have all of the facts at the time.
“I think I said this privately when we had a conversation. Those words probably should have been retracted. I shouldn’t have said that,” Mullin said to Democratic Sen. Gary Peters, adding he was “responding immediately without the facts.”
“That’s my fault. That won’t happen as secretary,” Mullin said.
Homan told ABC News’ Kyra Phillips on Monday that he is behind Mullin and looks forward to working with him as DHS secretary.
“We talk every day, if not several times a day. I think he’s the right guy, the right time and the right job,” Homan said. “I think he’s going to come in and you can work across the aisle, and I think, I think we got a lot of good things coming in the near future.”
In this U.S. Coast Guard handout, the Coast Guard investigates aircraft wreckage on the Potomac River on January 30, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Petty Officer 1st Class Brandon Giles/ U.S. Coast Guard via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — The National Transportation Safety Board on Tuesday presented a cockpit visual simulation demonstrating what contributed to the deadly mid-air collision between an Army helicopter and an American Airlines jet near Washington, D.C., last year.
The simulation indicates it was very difficult for both aircraft to see each other before the January 2025 crash that killed 67 people as the jet was landing at Ronald Reagan National Airport, according to the NTSB.
The first video shows the last three minutes before the collision from the viewpoint of the right seat of the helicopter.
Around 8:46:15, a magenta circle with a label “Flight 5342” appears just above the horizon on the right side of the upper portion of the screen. The label “Flight 5342” fades out about 8:46:35. The magenta circle tracks the lights of Flight 5342 and remains visible until the airplane becomes visually recognizable about a minute later.
After a Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance System warning indicated in the transcript, the local controller on the ATC recording is heard asking the pilots if they have the CRJ (Flight 5342) in sight and the pilots confirm they do. It remains unclear what they thought they had in sight. There was only one controller working both the helicopter and plane traffic, the NTSB said.
The simulation screen goes black at the moment of the collision.
The second animation shows the viewpoint of pilots from Flight 5342 as the plane approaches the runway to land. According to the cockpit voice recorder transcript shared by the NTSB, the last words about one second before the crash from both the first officer and the captain were “oh” and “ohhh ohhhh” as the animation shows the helicopter colliding with the plane.
About 90% of wreckage from both aircraft was recovered by the NTSB.
A third animationshows what the local controller from the DCA tower saw at the time of the crash as they were handling the air traffic and issuing instructions. Based on the recordings, the NTSB said Flight 5342 was not warned by the controller of the nearby helicopter at any point. A conflict alert came 26 seconds before the collision between the two aircraft as they were 1.6 miles apart, according to the NTSB.
According to the NTSB, the local tower said they were concerned about the close proximity of the helicopter and Flight 5342.
“This coupled with the conflict alert that was active at the time, the controller should have issued a safety alert, which would have included updated traffic advisory information and an alternate course of action if feasible, neither were done. In this case, had a safety alert been issued, it would have increased the situation awareness of both crews and alerted them of their closing proximity to one another. Additionally, a timely safety alert may have allowed action to be taken by one or both crews to avoid avert the collision,” NTSB investigator Brian Soper said at the hearing.
Ahead of Tuesday’s hearing, Chair Jennifer Homendy said she fears that some of the agency’s safety recommendations, which will be issued at the conclusion of the hearing, may once again go unimplemented.
“Of course I’m concerned. We have 300 aviation recommendations that still haven’t been implemented. Those recommendations were issued because somebody died or was injured, and they have not been implemented yet. So here we are again,” Homendy told ABC News.
“So yes, at the end of this, I am concerned that we’re going to issue recommendations and that they won’t be implemented,” Homendy said. “I can tell you, and anyone who knows me knows I vigorously advocate for the implementation of our recommendations. I don’t care when it is. Could be 50 years later, as I did with positive train control, and I will not hold back on these.”
At Tuesday’s hearing, NTSB investigators will present their investigative findings to board members and the public. NTSB board members, including Homendy, will then question investigators and the parties to the investigation.
At the end of the hearing, the board members will vote on the probable cause of the crash and the agency’s safety recommendations. The NTSB can only make recommendations and does not have the authority to enforce them, therefore they are not always adopted.
Though a formal final report will be released two weeks after the hearing, this hearing will mark the end of what Homendy described as “one of the most complex investigations” conducted by the agency, which they had aimed to conclude by the first anniversary of the mid-air collision.
Homendy told ABC News the investigation “was not easy and it was definitely not straightforward.”
“We will start in one direction and then take it in a different direction, depending on what we’re finding, and then we’ll exclude things that didn’t have anything to do with the investigation. But we have to do our due diligence to make sure that we’re tracking all of that down, all that evidence to support that it wasn’t a factor, while also looking at the issues that were,” Homendy said.
Homendy said the helicopter altimeter discrepancy is what surprised her the most in this investigation.
“The altimeters I did not see coming, that we would have some problems with how the altimeters were reading,” Homendy said.
During last year’s three-day investigative hearing, investigators said they found discrepancies in the altitude data shown on radio and barometric altimeters on Army helicopters after conducting test flights following January’s accident.
It is likely that the helicopter crew did not know their true altitude due to notoriously faulty altimeters inside this series of Black Hawks, according to the investigation. At their closest points, helicopters and planes flew within 75 feet of each other near DCA, an astonishingly close number. During the hearings, the NTSB was told Army Black Hawks can often have wrong readings and a margin of error of +-200 feet.
Another key focus of Tuesday’s hearing is the close proximity of the helicopter route to the runways at Reagan National Airport. According to the NTSB, which cited FAA surveillance data, there were over 15,000 close-proximity events between helicopters and commercial aircraft at DCA between October 2021 and December 2024.
Homendy said warnings about the close proximity were raised by people, but they were ignored.
“Years ago, that hot spot was identified and [people] repeatedly tried to say that the helicopter route needed to be moved, and nobody listened. It was like the ultimate in government bureaucracy,” Homendy said.
“They were completely ignored. Told it couldn’t be done, not responded to, said it would probably be too political. Those are quotes from our interviews, but they went nowhere.”
At last year’s hearing, FAA officials cited “bureaucratic process” as a deterrent to addressing these issues.
Other topics expected to be discussed include the approval of helicopter routes near DCA, the experience level of the air traffic controllers working in the tower at the time of the crash, the visibility study, and the testing of the barometric altimeters.
When asked what stays with her from this investigation, Homendy pointed to a personal item recovered with the wreckage.
“In the hangar, we had the Black Hawk laid out. We had the wreckage laid out for 5342 and on the side next to 5342 there were some personal effects, and a lot of people mentioned different things, but every time I passed, there was a brown teddy bear, just eight inches maybe, and it was muddy and dried mud, dried water, and I just kept looking at the teddy bear, and that’s the thing that sticks with me,” Homendy said.
In this U.S. Coast Guard handout, the Coast Guard investigates aircraft wreckage on the Potomac River on January 30, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Petty Officer 1st Class Brandon Giles/ U.S. Coast Guard via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Ahead of Tuesday’s National Transportation Safety Board hearing into last year’s deadly mid-air collision at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, Chair Jennifer Homendy said she fears some of the agency’s safety recommendations, which will be issued at the conclusion of the hearing, may once again go unimplemented.
“Of course I’m concerned. We have 300 aviation recommendations that still haven’t been implemented. Those recommendations were issued because somebody died or was injured, and they have not been implemented yet. So here we are again,” Homendy told ABC News.
“So yes, at the end of this, I am concerned that we’re going to issue recommendations and that they won’t be implemented,” Homendy said. “I can tell you, and anyone who knows me knows I vigorously advocate for the implementation of our recommendations. I don’t care when it is. Could be 50 years later, as I did with positive train control, and I will not hold back on these.”
At Tuesday’s hearing, NTSB investigators will present their investigative findings to board members and the public. NTSB board members, including Homendy, will then question investigators and the parties to the investigation.
At the end of the hearing, the board members will vote on the probable cause of the crash and the agency’s safety recommendations. The NTSB can only make recommendations and does not have the authority to enforce them, therefore they are not always adopted.
Though a formal final report will be released two weeks after the hearing, this hearing will mark the end of what Homendy described as “one of the most complex investigations” conducted by the agency, which they had aimed to conclude by the first anniversary of the mid-air collision.
Homendy told ABC News the investigation “was not easy and it was definitely not straightforward.”
“We will start in one direction and then take it in a different direction, depending on what we’re finding, and then we’ll exclude things that didn’t have anything to do with the investigation. But we have to do our due diligence to make sure that we’re tracking all of that down, all that evidence to support that it wasn’t a factor, while also looking at the issues that were,” Homendy said.
Homendy said the helicopter altimeter discrepancy is what surprised her the most in this investigation.
“The altimeters I did not see coming, that we would have some problems with how the altimeters were reading,” Homendy said.
During last year’s three-day investigative hearing, investigators said they found discrepancies in the altitude data shown on radio and barometric altimeters on Army helicopters after conducting test flights following January’s accident.
It is likely that the helicopter crew did not know their true altitude due to notoriously faulty altimeters inside this series of Black Hawks, according to the investigation. At their closest points, helicopters and planes flew within 75 feet of each other near DCA, an astonishingly close number. During the hearings, the NTSB was told Army Black Hawks can often have wrong readings and a margin of error of +-200 feet.
Another key focus of Tuesday’s hearing is the close proximity of the helicopter route to the runways at Reagan National Airport. According to the NTSB, which cited FAA surveillance data, there were over 15,000 close-proximity events between helicopters and commercial aircraft at DCA between October 2021 and December 2024.
Homendy said warnings about the close proximity were raised by people, but they were ignored.
“Years ago, that hot spot was identified and [people] repeatedly tried to say that the helicopter route needed to be moved, and nobody listened. It was like the ultimate in government bureaucracy,” Homendy said.
“They were completely ignored. Told it couldn’t be done, not responded to, said it would probably be too political. Those are quotes from our interviews, but they went nowhere.”
At last year’s hearing, FAA officials cited “bureaucratic process” as a deterrent to addressing these issues.
Other topics expected to be discussed include the approval of helicopter routes near DCA, the experience level of the air traffic controllers working in the tower at the time of the crash, the visibility study, and the testing of the barometric altimeters.
When asked what stays with her from this investigation, Homendy pointed to a personal item recovered with the wreckage.
“In the hangar, we had the Black Hawk laid out. We had the wreckage laid out for 5342 and on the side next to 5342 there were some personal effects, and a lot of people mentioned different things, but every time I passed, there was a brown teddy bear, just eight inches maybe, and it was muddy and dried mud, dried water, and I just kept looking at the teddy bear, and that’s the thing that sticks with me,” Homendy said.
People protest against Immigration and Customs Enforcement as they march toward the South Texas Family Residential Center, January 28, 2026 in Dilley, Texas. (Joel Angel Juarez/Getty Images)
(HOUSTON) — Law enforcement deployed tear gas during a clash with protesters outside a Texas detention facility on Wednesday, where a 5-year-old boy and his father are being held.
At least two protesters were detained, according to ABC News’ San Antonio affiliate KSAT.
Both U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents and Texas Department of Public Safety troopers were on the scene during the protest, according to KSAT.
Video of the encounter showed troopers pushing back protesters as tear gas was deployed.
Ahead of the protest, community organizers said in a press release they were gathering at the facility to hold “a vigil to amplify the voices and protests of children and families held in detention against their will.”
The facility in Dilley, Texas, is located about 85 miles southwest of San Antonio.
The protest took place on the same day that Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, met with 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and his father, Adrian Alexander, at the center.
Castro said he was able to meet with him and his father for 30 minutes in the facility’s courtroom.
The lawmaker told reporters that he was told by the father that the 5-year-old has “been depressed and has not been eating well” since being detained.
“His father said that Liam has been sleeping a lot, that he’s been asking about his family, his mom, and his classmates, and saying that he wants to go back to school.”
Castro added that there are other children at the detention center, including several under the age of five and a two-month-old baby.
The father and son were detained on Jan. 20 as part of the federal government’s ongoing immigration crackdown in Minnesota.
Images from the young boy’s detainment garnered international attention when he was apprehended by immigration officials shortly after arriving home from preschool while his father was in their driveway, school officials said last week.
The Department of Homeland Security said at the time that “ICE conducted a targeted operation to arrest Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, an illegal alien from Ecuador who was RELEASED into the U.S. by the Biden administration.”
“As agents approached the driver, Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, fled on foot — abandoning his child. For the child’s safety, one of our ICE officers remained with the child while the other officers apprehended Conejo Arias.”
DHS’ account differed from what the family’s attorney and school officials said occurred.
“Another adult living in the home was outside and begged the agents to let them take care of the small child, but was refused,” officials from Conejo Ramos’ school said.
A federal judge in Texas on Monday temporarily blocked the removal of Alexander and Ramos, saying that the father and son cannot be removed from the district in Texas pending the habeas case challenging their detention.
At the time of their detention, they had a pending asylum case but no order of deportation directing that they be removed from the United States.
