President Donald Trump is demanding that Senate Majority Leader John Thune sack the upper chamber’s nonpartisan parliamentarian in favor of a more compliant and partisan replacement after she scuttled GOP plans to attach funding for his massive ballroom project to a piece of border security and immigration enforcement legislation.
Writing on Truth Social on Wednesday, Trump hit out at the Senate’s Republican majority for “shockingly” keeping MacDonough in the job she has held since 2012 and claimed — inaccurately — that then-president Barack Obama had played a role in her appointment in addition to the person who did appoint her, then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
He also accused her of being “brutal to Republicans” while not giving Democrats the same treatment even though it was MacDonough who faced calls for her firing from Democrats in 2021 after she found that a minimum wage increase could not be inserted into Democrats’ American Rescue Plan pandemic relief package.
“So why has she not been replaced? There are many fair people who would be qualified for that vital job,” he said.
He then attacked senators from his own party for “playing a very soft game” compared to Democrats because, in his telling, they “allow the Elizabeth MacDonoughs of the World to stay in power, and brutalize us.”
Trump continued his social media screed with a demand that Republicans in the Senate pass the voting restriction package he has been pushing for under the name “the Save America Act” and urged them to end the upper chamber’s filibuster to allow the GOP majority to ram through legislation without needing Democratic votes before their party could lose control of Congress this fall.
“Get smart and tough Republicans, or you’ll all be looking for a job much sooner than you thought possible,” he said.
MacDonough, an attorney who earned her law degree from the Vermont Law School, has worked in the Senate’s Office of the Parliamentarian for almost three decades.
She joined it as an assistant parliamentarian in 1999 and was promoted to a senior assistant position three years later.
When she was named to the top role in the parliamentarian’s office in 2012, she received bipartisan praise from top senators, including Thune, who at the time described her as “very steeped in the traditions of the Senate.”
As parliamentarian, MacDonough is charged with reviewing whether spending legislation considered under fast-track “reconciliation” procedures complies with the Byrd Rule — a strict prohibition against including non-budgetary and “extraneous” provisions in any spending bill that is permitted to bypass the filibuster and pass the upper chamber with a bare majority.
After Republicans on the Senate Judiciary and Homeland Security Committees attempted to include ballroom funding in legislation to fund Immigrations and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection operations that were left out of a bill to end the months-long Department of Homeland Security shutdown last month, MacDonough examined the legislative text and determined that the ballroom funding provisions did not meet the Byrd Rule standard.
Thune’s communications director, Ryan Wrasse, wrote on X late Saturday that senators would “redraft, redefine and resubmit” the legislation.
“None of this is abnormal during a Byrd process,” he said.
Asked about Trump’s latest attack on the veteran Senate staffer, Thune told reporters on Wednesday that the president’s broadside against MacDonough was “concerning” because it could put her safety at risk.
“Obviously, it’s concerning when anybody gets targeted like that. But it’s, I guess, his opinion,” he said. “We’ll make sure everybody’s got security around here.”
