WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Wednesday demanded that Senate Republicans fire the chamber’s nonpartisan parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, accusing the longtime rules adviser of treating his party unfairly after she stripped a $1 billion provision tied to his new White House ballroom from a sweeping immigration enforcement bill. The broadside, delivered in a series of posts on Truth Social and amplified at the Capitol within hours, was the most aggressive move yet by a president who has spent months trying to bend the upper chamber’s machinery to his agenda.
“Shockingly, Republicans have kept the very important position of ‘Parliamentarian’ in the hands of a woman, Elizabeth MacDonough, who was appointed, long ago, by Barack Hussein Obama and a vicious Lunatic known as Senator Harry Reid,” the president wrote, repeating a familiar grievance about a procedural official whose rulings have repeatedly forced Senate Republicans to redraft pieces of his domestic agenda. “Over the years, she has been brutal to Republicans, but not so to the Dumocrats — So why has she not been replaced?”
The fury followed a ruling delivered over the weekend by MacDonough, the sixth Senate parliamentarian and the first woman to hold the office, that effectively killed a $1 billion Secret Service provision Republicans had tucked into a roughly $72 billion package financing Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection through 2029. About $220 million of the money was earmarked for “hardening” the East Wing site where Mr. Trump’s 90,000-square-foot ballroom is now rising, with the rest spread across visitor screening, counter-drone systems and protective details.
MacDonough concluded that the provision violated the Byrd Rule, the 1985 statute that bars extraneous, nonbudgetary matter from being smuggled into bills that move through the Senate on a simple majority. As written, she advised, the ballroom security money sat outside the Judiciary Committee’s jurisdiction and would therefore require 60 votes, an impossible bar in a chamber where Democrats are unified against the project. The decision arrived in writing through Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon, the ranking Democrat on the Budget Committee, who released a summary of the guidance.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, Republican of South Dakota, told reporters at the Capitol that he had not read Mr. Trump’s posts in full but found the targeting of the parliamentarian troubling. “Obviously, it’s concerning when anybody gets targeted like that,” Mr. Thune said. “But it’s, I guess, his opinion. We’ll make sure everybody’s got security around here.” He flatly rejected the idea of removing her, adding that tempers flare at the parliamentarian “every time there’s a reconciliation.”
Behind the scenes, the pressure has been more direct. Mr. Trump telephoned Mr. Thune on Monday to vent about the ruling, according to three people familiar with the call, and pressed him to oust MacDonough. The majority leader declined. The episode, first reported by NOTUS and quickly confirmed by other outlets, captured the central tension of the moment: a president who treats Senate procedure as an obstacle to be cleared, and a leader who has built his career inside that procedure and refuses to dismantle it.
The parliamentarian’s office is a quiet one. MacDonough joined the staff in 1999, became senior assistant in 2002, and was elevated in 2012 by then-Majority Leader Harry Reid. She earns about $217,000 a year and serves at the pleasure of the majority leader, which means Mr. Thune, not Mr. Trump, has the power to dismiss her. She has guided the Senate through two Trump impeachment trials, the 2020 Electoral College certification, and dozens of reconciliation fights. Her predecessors, including Alan Frumin, have described the work in the same terms she does: a referee whose calls are meant to be the same regardless of which team is at bat.
That posture has not insulated her from political heat. In June, after she ruled against a Republican proposal to slash hundreds of billions of dollars in Medicaid spending as part of Mr. Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama called for her to be fired “ASAP,” accusing her of pushing a “woke agenda.” In 2021, some Democrats demanded the same treatment after she rejected a $15 minimum wage in a reconciliation package. In each case, leaders of both parties have ultimately decided that overriding the parliamentarian would inflict more damage on the institution than living with the ruling.
The ballroom itself has been a slow-burning controversy since demolition crews began tearing into the East Wing in October, reducing the visitor entrance to a rubble field and igniting a preservation fight that pulled in the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the National Capital Planning Commission, and the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts. The administration has said the structure will seat about 999 guests, host state dinners and summits, and replace the constrained East Room. Mr. Trump initially promised the project would cost roughly $400 million and would be financed entirely by private donors, a list that includes Comcast, Coinbase, and a roster of corporate and individual contributors.
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