President Trump on Monday called on Senate Majority Leader John Thune to immediately fire the Senate parliamentarian.
He said Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough deserves to be tossed out because she “treats Republicans, and everything that they stand for, horribly.”
Mr. Trump ranted that Ms. MacDonough was hired by Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada in 2012, when President Obama was in the White House, and then kept on the job by Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky when the GOP recaptured the majority in 2014.
Mr. Trump described her as “a nasty holdover” from Mr. McConnell, describing him as “a man who has proven to be very disloyal to John Thune!”
He also accused Mr. McConnell, a longtime nemesis of Mr. Trump, of keeping Ms. MacDonough as parliamentarian because “he loved giving Trillions of Dollars to the Democrats.”
Last month, Ms. MacDonough ruled against the $1 billion in security funding for Mr. Trump’s White House ballroom, finding it violated the Byrd Rule because it fell outside the Judiciary Committee’s jurisdiction.
Senate Republicans have had a contentious relationship with Ms. MacDonough, who, during the upper chamber’s consideration of Mr. Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act in June 2025, struck down nearly 50 provisions that violated the Byrd Rule, which bars non-budgetary items from reconciliation bills.
Her rulings knocked out major Medicaid restrictions, immigration enforcement provisions, a measure to gut the CFPB, gun control measures and a civil service pay provision, forcing Republicans to either rewrite or drop them.
At the time, Republicans such as Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama and Rep. Greg Steube of Florida called for her firing. Mr. Thune held firm, and the bill ultimately passed in July 2025, with language reworked to meet her requirements.
In the social media post, Mr. Trump described Ms. McDonough as a “Radical Left Lunatic that caters to Democrats, and has no respect for Republicans, or Republican Ideology.”
“Just the other night, as an example, she ruled against us on a proposal that would have easily been approved, and should have been, by anyone else,” he said.
“We have every right to change her, and should do so, IMMEDIATELY. As long as she’s there, we will never get our desperately needed, SAVE AMERICA ACT, approved, and put into full force and effect!”
The last time a parliamentarian was fired was in 2001, when Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, Mississippi Republican, fired Parliamentarian Robert Dove for ruling against President George W. Bush’s tax legislation.
Mr. Dove was also fired by Democrats. In 1987, he was ousted from the parliamentarian job by Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd, West Virginia Democrat.
Mr. Dove got the job back in 1995 thanks to Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, Kansas Republican.
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