Trump pushes to oust Senate parliamentarian after she blocks White House ballroom funding

President Donald Trump wants Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough fired, and the fight over her weekend ruling on a $1 billion White House ballroom plan is exposing a deeper rift inside the Republican majority over how far leaders should go to advance the president's agenda through budget reconciliation.

MacDonough ruled over the weekend that the GOP proposal to fund the White House ballroom could not pass under the strict rules of budget reconciliation, meaning the provision would need 60 votes instead of a simple majority if it stayed in the legislation. Trump responded by pressing Senate Majority Leader John Thune to remove her, as Breitbart News reported. Two sources confirmed to NOTUS that Trump had called for Thune to fire MacDonough. Another source told the outlet that Trump shared "his frustrations" with Thune during a phone call.

Thune, for his part, declined to confirm whether Trump had asked him to oust the parliamentarian, and made clear he would not do it.

"We're going through a process that we go through every time we have a reconciliation bill and the people on both sides are mad at the parliamentarian."

That response from the South Dakota Republican landed somewhere between diplomatic and dismissive. It satisfied no one.

The ballroom is just the beginning

The ballroom funding dispute is one piece of a much larger collision between the White House and the Senate's procedural gatekeepers. Republicans are using budgetary reconciliation, a process that allows passage with a simple majority, to fund not just the ballroom but also the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Every provision in the package must survive scrutiny under the Senate's Byrd rule, which bars items that do not have a direct budgetary effect from riding the reconciliation vehicle.

MacDonough's job is to advise whether each provision clears that bar. When she says one doesn't, the provision either needs 60 votes, an impossibility in a closely divided Senate, or it must be rewritten.

Republican lawmakers are still working to draft language on the security request that complies with the Byrd rule and will survive the parliamentarian's review. That effort continues even as Trump's allies escalate their public demands for MacDonough's removal.

The ballroom ruling did not happen in isolation. The New York Post reported that MacDonough also ruled that several Medicaid and health-care provisions in Trump's broader "big beautiful bill" could not pass through reconciliation. Blocked provisions included changes to provider-tax funding, limits on some Medicaid eligibility for non-citizens, reduced FMAP funding for certain states, and a ban on federal Medicaid and CHIP funding for gender-transition care. Each of those items would now require 60 votes, a threshold that effectively kills them in the current Senate.

That string of rulings set off a louder chorus of Republican frustration, well beyond the ballroom question.

Calls to fire MacDonough grow louder

Sen. Tommy Tuberville did not mince words. The Alabama Republican publicly declared that MacDonough should be fired "ASAP." Rep. Greg Steube went further, framing the issue as one of democratic accountability.

"The Senate Parliamentarian is not elected. She is not accountable to the American people."

Steube added: "It is time for our elected leaders to take back control." Other House Republicans, including Ralph Norman, Eric Burlison, Jeff Van Drew, and Keith Self, urged Senate Republicans or Vice President JD Vance to overrule or ignore the parliamentarian's rulings, Fox News reported. Sen. Roger Marshall joined Tuberville in calling for MacDonough's ouster.

The argument from these lawmakers is straightforward: an unelected adviser should not have the power to block provisions that a majority of elected senators support, especially when the president's agenda hangs in the balance. It is an argument that resonates with voters who sent Republicans to Washington expecting results, not procedural stalemates.

But Senate leadership sees the question differently. Thune told reporters that firing MacDonough "would not be a good outcome for getting a bill done," a position the Washington Examiner explored in detail. The concern among senior Republicans is that removing or overruling the parliamentarian would set a precedent that a future Democratic majority could exploit, gutting Senate norms and opening the door to far more aggressive use of reconciliation by the left.

The broader pattern of institutional clashes over presidential authority has defined much of Trump's second term. Whether the obstacle is a federal court, a regulatory body, or a Senate procedural officer, the dynamic is the same: the White House pushes, and an unelected gatekeeper pushes back.

The parliamentarian's peculiar power

MacDonough's rulings are technically advisory. The Senate is not bound by them. Senators can vote to override the parliamentarian's guidance, and the presiding officer, in this case, Vice President Vance, could theoretically disregard her advice and sustain a challenged provision.

But that has almost never happened. Both parties have treated the parliamentarian's word as effectively binding for decades, and neither has been willing to break that norm when it mattered most.

Sen. Kevin Cramer, a North Dakota Republican, captured the institutional reluctance plainly: "It's the institutional integrity, even if I'm convinced 100% she's wrong." That sentiment, respect for the process even when it produces an unwelcome result, is the argument Senate institutionalists are making. Whether it holds against sustained pressure from the White House and a frustrated conservative base is another question.

Trump himself appeared to modulate his tone in at least one public comment, saying he disagreed with MacDonough on some rulings but that "on other ways she's been fine." That measured framing contrasts with the more forceful private pressure reported by NOTUS and Semafor, and it suggests the president may be keeping his options open rather than demanding an immediate confrontation.

The tension mirrors other recent Washington power struggles. Allies and opponents alike have had to choose sides on questions of executive authority, and the parliamentarian dispute is forcing Senate Republicans into a similar reckoning.

What happens next

Republican lawmakers are pressing ahead with revised language designed to satisfy the Byrd rule. The goal is to keep the ballroom funding, the border security provisions, and the Medicaid reforms inside the reconciliation package, but in a form the parliamentarian will accept.

That work-around approach is the path of least resistance. It avoids a precedent-setting confrontation with the parliamentarian's office, preserves Senate norms, and keeps the broader bill on track. But it also means accepting that an unelected adviser has, in practical terms, a veto over which parts of the president's agenda can move on a majority vote.

For conservatives who watched Republicans win the White House and both chambers of Congress, that arrangement is hard to swallow. The Byrd rule exists for a reason, to prevent reconciliation from becoming a vehicle for any policy a majority wants to ram through. But when the rule is invoked to block border enforcement funding, Medicaid eligibility limits for non-citizens, and a ban on taxpayer-funded gender-transition procedures, the gap between procedural principle and political reality becomes painfully wide.

The question is whether Thune and Senate leadership can thread the needle: satisfy the parliamentarian's requirements, keep the president's priorities intact, and avoid a norm-breaking confrontation that could backfire in a future Congress. It is a narrow path, and the margin for error is slim.

Meanwhile, some Republicans are warning that intraparty feuds risk distracting from the bread-and-butter issues voters care about most. With midterms on the horizon, the cost of a prolonged procedural standoff is measured not just in legislative delays but in political capital.

The parliamentarian fight also fits a broader second-term pattern in which Trump has confronted institutional resistance on multiple fronts. From foreign policy disputes to domestic spending battles, the president has repeatedly tested the boundaries of executive influence, and repeatedly found that Washington's permanent structures do not bend easily.

The real stakes

Strip away the procedural jargon, and the dispute comes down to a simple question: Who decides what the government spends money on, elected officials accountable to voters, or an appointed rules adviser accountable to no one?

The parliamentarian's defenders say the Byrd rule protects the Senate from becoming a rubber stamp. Her critics say the rule has become a shield for the status quo, wielded by an unelected official to block policies that majorities in both chambers support.

Both arguments have merit. But the practical effect of MacDonough's rulings is clear: provisions that would limit Medicaid access for non-citizens, end taxpayer funding for gender-transition care, and fund border enforcement are all in jeopardy, not because a majority of senators oppose them, but because one adviser says they don't fit the reconciliation box.

Voters who sent this Republican majority to Washington did not do so to watch their priorities die on a procedural technicality. If Senate leadership cannot find language that clears the Byrd rule and delivers the substance, the frustration now aimed at MacDonough will land squarely on Thune and his colleagues.

Rules matter. So do results. Republicans were elected to produce the latter, and right now, the former are winning.