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Mullin Testifies at the House Appropriations Homeland Security Oversight Hearing, Jun. 25, 2026

June 25, 2026 · C-SPAN · 2:25:46

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

What happened

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin testified on DHS oversight and operations before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security on June 25, 2026, in C-SPAN’s coverage of the hearing — the department’s fiscal year 2027 oversight hearing before the appropriators, with Deputy Secretary Troy Edgar also testifying, as the subcommittee’s witness record shows; Chairman Mark Amodei presided — the appropriations installment of Mullin’s fiscal 2027 budget-hearing round (Senate Appropriations on June 2 and House Homeland Security on June 3, this oversight hearing on June 25).

The border wall ran through the questioning. Mullin told the subcommittee, as he stated it, that his number-one job is to protect the homeland, that he and Deputy Secretary Edgar talk daily on how to deliver it, and that he and CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott meet almost daily on the wall — describing, as he stated it, how the cartels control every stretch of Mexico’s northern border through plaza bosses and shift tactics to choke points as the wall rises, including the discovery of the first tunnel in years, as he put it. Ranking Member Henry Cuellar walked the Secretary through the Rio Grande siting problem — the fence set back from the riverbank boundary — and invited him to Laredo, an invitation Mullin accepted on the record, as the exchange shows.

Criticism was carried in the hearing and is part of this record: members questioned the Secretary on FEMA disaster decisions, with one member citing, as the member stated the analysis, disaster-declaration approvals running about 30% below the historical average and FEMA approving 23% of disaster requests from Democratic-led states compared to 89% from Republican-led states — a politicization charge the Secretary faced at the hearing. Members also marked, as one member stated it two weeks into the tournament, that the World Cup had so far been a success across the 11 host cities the department was responsible for securing.

Why it matters

The June 25 oversight hearing is the appropriators’ check on the Mullin department a quarter into his tenure: the Secretary’s daily wall-management account, on the record with the subcommittee that funds it, set against the hearing’s sharpest criticism — the FEMA disaster-approval disparity figures — which the weekly record can track against FEMA’s decisions from here.

Scoreboard watch

Scoreboard watch: the FEMA disaster-approval figures cited to Secretary Mullin at the June 25, 2026 hearing (23% Democratic-led states vs. 89% Republican-led states, as the questioning member stated the analysis) and the Secretary’s wall-progress account, as he stated it. Flagged for the scoreboard editor; no entry is published from this page.

Sources: C-SPAN, “DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin testifies before Senate” [the upload’s title mislabels the chamber; its own description and the C-SPAN event record identify the House Appropriations subcommittee hearing] (Jun. 25, 2026, embedded above; remarks as delivered by Secretary Mullin, Deputy Secretary Edgar, Chairman Amodei, Ranking Member Cuellar, and subcommittee members; written testimony of Secretary Mullin and Deputy Secretary Edgar before the subcommittee, docs.house.gov, Jun. 25, 2026). The C-SPAN upload continues past the hearing’s adjournment into a following program segment.