Mullin at DHS Is a Step Up. The Real Problem Is the Funding Formula.

Personnel Is Policy, Until It Isn't

Markwayne Mullin is a lot of things. Soft is not one of them. The Oklahoma senator-turned-DHS-secretary has a biography that reads like a rejection of every Washington cliché: plumbing contractor, MMA fighter, congressman who didn't forget where he came from. When Mullin told a union boss to stand up and fight him during a Senate hearing in 2023, he wasn't performing. That was the actual man.

So yes — Mullin at the top of DHS is a meaningful change from the Mayorkas era, which managed the remarkable feat of making the Department of Homeland Security feel like it was actively hostile to the homeland. The Jewish community's concern about whether Mullin will prioritize their security is understandable given the past four years. But it's also slightly misplaced. The question was never really about the secretary's personality.

The Nonprofit Security Grant Program — the federal mechanism for funding security at synagogues, churches, mosques, and other at-risk religious institutions — has structural problems that no single DHS secretary can fix by being tougher or more sympathetic than his predecessor. The money is real: Congress appropriated $305 million for NSGP in fiscal year 2024. The dysfunction is also real, and it lives in the administrative layer beneath any political appointee.

What the Program Actually Does (and Doesn't)

Here's how NSGP works in practice. A synagogue — let's say a mid-sized congregation in the suburbs of Cleveland — wants to upgrade its security cameras, hire a part-time security coordinator, and install a new access control system. Total cost: maybe $150,000. They apply through their state's administering agency, which in Ohio is the Ohio Emergency Management Agency. The state agency processes applications, scores them, and submits a ranked list to FEMA, which actually controls the grant money under DHS oversight.

That's already three bureaucratic layers between the synagogue and the funding. Add in the requirement to hire a grant writer — because the application is genuinely complex — and you've created a system that advantages larger, better-resourced congregations and disadvantages the smaller rural ones that are arguably more vulnerable because they have less capacity to hire security in the first place.

I spoke with the administrator of a small Jewish day school in the mid-Atlantic region last year, name withheld at their request, who told me they had given up applying for NSGP funds after two failed cycles. Not because they didn't qualify. Because the paperwork burden was prohibitive for a staff of four administrators who were already doing the work of eight. That's a grant program failure, not a personnel failure.

The Mullin Factor: Real, but Limited

None of this is an argument against Mullin's confirmation or an argument that his priorities don't matter. They do. A DHS secretary who treats faith-based security as a genuine national security priority will send different signals down the bureaucratic chain than one who treats it as a line item to be managed. Mullin's background — evangelical Christian, rural Oklahoma, personal comfort with physical confrontation — suggests he'll take threats to religious communities seriously in a way that isn't performative.

But DHS secretaries don't process grant applications. They set policy, oversee budgets, and — critically — decide whether to push for administrative reform. That last one is where Mullin can make a real difference if he chooses to. Streamlining the application process for smaller congregations, reducing the state agency bottleneck, and ensuring that grant funds are reaching the most vulnerable institutions rather than the most administratively sophisticated ones — that's the work that matters.

The antisemitism threat is not theoretical. The 2018 Tree of Life shooting in Pittsburgh. The 2019 Poway synagogue attack. The 2022 Colleyville hostage crisis. These are not isolated incidents against a background of statistical normalcy. FBI hate crime data shows Jewish Americans are targeted at a rate disproportionate to their share of the population every single year, in every region of the country. That's not going to change because of who runs DHS.

What Needs to Happen

The ask from the Jewish community — and from every religious community that relies on NSGP — should be specific. Not "will you protect us?" That question is unanswerable. Ask instead: will you simplify the application process? Will you push Congress to increase the appropriation and tie funding allocation to threat assessment rather than administrative capacity? Will you create a dedicated liaison for faith-based security institutions within FEMA's grant programs?

Mullin can say yes to all of those. They're operational questions with operational answers. They don't require him to personally intimidate anyone, though based on his track record, he'd probably enjoy the option.

Personnel is policy. But policy also lives in the forms nobody reads until they have to fill them out. Fix the forms.