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President Donald Trump wants Senate Republicans to boot the upper chamber’s rules referee after security funding for his ballroom was nixed.
Trump pointed his fury on Wednesday at Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough, who holds a nonpartisan role that dictates what can and cannot make it through the budget reconciliation process.
Republicans are currently trying to ram through a $72 billion immigration enforcement funding package, but MacDonough over the weekend stripped out one of Trump’s major requests for $1 billion to in part pay for security enhancements to his colossal White House ballroom project.
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President Donald Trump walks to speak with reporters before boarding Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington on May 8, 2026. (Jose Luis Magana/AP Photo)
“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, who ran the Senate for the Dumocrats with an ‘iron fist,’” Trump said on Truth Social.
“Over the years, she has been brutal to Republicans, but not so to the Dumocrats — So why has she not been replaced? There are many fair people who would be qualified for that vital job,” he continued.
But it’s not a move Republicans are keen to make, especially in retaliation for the ballroom security funding getting stripped out. Trump earlier this week privately pushed Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., to axe MacDonough.
Thune said he wasn’t having any discussions on firing MacDonough, but noted that tempers flare against the parliamentarian “every time there’s a reconciliation.”
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“There are always people that are unhappy with some decisions that come down, and it’s kind of the nature of the beast. So, you know, we will work through the process and do our best to get the things that we want, you know, on the floor, later this week,” Thune said.
Still, Republicans are continuing to haggle over whether to include the security funding at all. Much of the money, about $600 million, would go to the Secret Service, while $220 million was intended to bolster security on the East Wing Modernization project.
Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, whose portion of the package contained the controversial funding, noted that the parliamentarian hasn’t just ruled against Republicans during reconciliation.
“I think the best answer to that is that the parliamentarian has demonstrated in the Biden administration with their recommendations, reconciliations that they didn’t get everything they wanted,” Grassley said.
Like Thune, other Republicans recognized that reconciliation is difficult, but not worth firing MacDonough over.
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Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., spoke with reporters as he headed to the Senate chamber at the U.S. Capitol on March 12, 2026, in Washington, D.C. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
“For what,” Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., said when asked if MacDonough should go. “Does she have a DWI or something?”
It’s also not the first time that Republicans have called for MacDonough to be fired. Last year, after MacDonough stripped out provisions that would have caused steep cuts to Medicaid spending, a handful in the GOP demanded that she be replaced.
Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., told Digital at the time that there was already a precedent in place to do it.
“In 2001, Majority Leader Trent Lott fired the Senate parliamentarian during reconciliation,” Marshall said.
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Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., told Digital that the true root cause of the issue was the 60-vote filibuster threshold.
Republicans took the reconciliation route because they couldn’t muster enough votes from Senate Democrats to smash through the threshold and fund the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) without making steep concessions on immigration enforcement funding.
“We’re as likely to end the filibuster as we are to get rid of the parliamentarian, so you might as well put pressure on Republicans to address the root cause, which is the 60-vote threshold,” Johnson said.
