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Mullin Speaks at the Ribbon Cutting for the Coast Guard Training Center Birmingham-Southern, Jun. 5, 2026

June 5, 2026 · U.S. Department of Homeland Security · 1:25:56

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin participated in the ribbon cutting ceremony on Friday, June 5, 2026, officially opening Training Center (TRACEN) Birmingham-Southern — the new home of the Coast Guard’s Enlisted Training Center of Excellence and the service’s newest training facility, on the Birmingham-Southern College campus in Alabama — in the Department of Homeland Security’s upload of the ceremony, alongside Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Kevin Lunday, Senators Katie Britt and Tommy Tuberville, Representative Robert Aderhold, and college president Daniel Coleman, as the participants were introduced on the recording.

Speaking late in the ceremony, Mullin called the Coast Guard, as he put it, the first line of defense for the homeland, protecting the shores and then inland as well, and thanked the senators whose confirmation support, as he joked, he might not have been there without. He credited President Trump, as he stated it, as the first president in decades to invest heavily in the Coast Guard — over $24 billion to revitalize the service for today’s and tomorrow’s threats, in his figure — and walked through the icebreaker gap as he stated it: the United States has one ice cutter, Russia has 49, the investment brings 11, and the President’s goal is 50. He said the campus would host counter-UAS (drone-defense) work, as he described the training center’s mission, and noted, as he stated it, that the Senate had passed reconciliation legislation the night before giving Coast Guard men and women a 7% pay raise.

Why it matters

Birmingham-Southern is the Coast Guard build-out made physical under Mullin: a closed college campus converted into the service’s enlisted-leadership training home, with the Secretary personally attaching the administration’s Coast Guard investment case — the $24 billion figure and the icebreaker goal, as he stated them — to the new facility and its counter-drone mission.

Scoreboard watch

Scoreboard watch: the Coast Guard investment figures Secretary Mullin stated at Birmingham on June 5, 2026 — over $24 billion in revitalization investment and an icebreaker path from 1 toward 11 and a goal of 50, all as he stated them, plus the 7% Coast Guard pay raise he credited to the reconciliation bill. Flagged for the scoreboard editor; no entry is published from this page.

Sources: U.S. Department of Homeland Security, “Secretary Mullin Participates in Ribbon Cutting Ceremony for Newest US Coast Guard Training Facility” (official upload, Jun. 6, 2026, embedded above; event of Jun. 5, 2026 per the department’s description; remarks as delivered by Secretary Mullin, Admiral Lunday, Senators Britt and Tuberville, and fellow participants; the Secretary’s surname is rendered “Mullen” in the recording’s captions).