President Donald Trump called on Senate Majority Leader John Thune to fire Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough after she ruled that a $1 billion plan to fund a new White House ballroom could not pass under the simple-majority rules Republicans need to move their budget package without Democratic votes.
Two sources confirmed to NOTUS that Trump made the request directly. A third source told the outlet that Trump shared "his frustrations" with Thune during a phone call shortly after MacDonough issued her determination over the weekend. Breitbart News reported that MacDonough warned the funding provision would face a 60-vote threshold, effectively requiring Democratic support, if it stayed in the legislation as drafted.
Thune declined to confirm whether Trump asked him to remove MacDonough. But the Senate majority leader made clear he would not do it.
MacDonough's role is to interpret whether provisions in a reconciliation bill comply with the Senate's Byrd rule, which limits what can pass on a simple majority to items with a direct budgetary impact. Her finding was that the Republican-drafted ballroom funding, as written, did not meet that standard.
That matters because reconciliation is the procedural vehicle Republicans chose to advance funding for the ballroom alongside money for the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The whole point of reconciliation is to bypass the Senate's 60-vote filibuster threshold and pass legislation with only Republican support. If a provision fails the Byrd rule test, it gets stripped out or requires 60 votes, and in this Senate, 60 votes means getting Democrats on board.
Semafor first reported that Trump called Thune to share his reaction after the ruling came down. The president's frustration is not hard to understand: a procedural technicality, enforced by an unelected staff official, threatened to derail a priority he wanted included in the broader spending package.
The Senate majority leader framed the dispute as routine. Thune told NOTUS:
"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 is technically true. The parliamentarian's rulings have irritated both parties over the years. Democrats fumed at MacDonough in 2021 when she blocked a $15 minimum-wage hike from their reconciliation package. Some progressives called for her removal then, too.
But Thune's refusal to act on Trump's reported request puts the South Dakota Republican in a familiar position: caught between a president who wants results and the procedural guardrails that Senate institutionalists treat as sacred.
Rather than force a confrontation over the parliamentarian's role, Republican lawmakers are taking the more conventional route. They are continuing to draft new language on the security request that complies with the Byrd rule and can survive MacDonough's scrutiny.
That is the standard workaround. When the parliamentarian flags a provision, sponsors rewrite it until the budgetary nexus is strong enough to pass muster. It is slower and more frustrating than firing the referee, but it keeps the reconciliation vehicle intact for the rest of the package, including the Border Patrol and ICE funding that Republicans also need to move.
The risk of firing MacDonough is not just institutional backlash. It would set a precedent that any future majority could exploit. The next time Democrats hold the Senate, they could install a friendly parliamentarian and ram through provisions that would never survive an honest Byrd rule review. Thune appears to understand that trade-off, even if it means absorbing heat from the White House.
The $1 billion ballroom provision was always going to draw attention. Folding a White House construction project into the same reconciliation bill that funds border enforcement agencies invites obvious political attacks. MacDonough's ruling did not kill the idea, it forced Republicans to justify the spending in terms the Byrd rule can accommodate.
That is not an impossible task. But it requires more careful drafting, and it requires the kind of legislative patience that does not always align with a president who prefers speed and leverage.
Trump's instinct to remove an obstacle is consistent with his broader governing style. He has pushed to restructure agencies, replace officials he views as obstructionist, and compress timelines that Washington typically stretches across months. In many cases, that approach has produced results. The question here is whether the parliamentarian's office is the right target, or whether the smarter play is the one Republicans are already pursuing: fix the language and move on.
MacDonough has not commented publicly on the dispute. Trump has not issued a formal on-the-record statement. The exact wording of her ruling and the specific Byrd rule provisions she cited have not been made public.
What is public is the outcome: the ballroom funding hit a wall, the president pushed back, the majority leader said no, and Republican staff lawyers went back to their desks to find language that works.
Every administration eventually collides with the Senate's procedural machinery. The parliamentarian exists precisely to enforce rules that both parties agreed to decades ago, rules designed to prevent reconciliation from becoming a blank check for any majority to pass whatever it wants on 51 votes.
Conservatives who cheered when MacDonough blocked the Democratic minimum-wage push should think carefully before demanding her removal now. The principle is the same: reconciliation has limits, and someone has to enforce them.
That does not mean the president is wrong to be frustrated. It means the fix is better drafting, not a new referee. Republican lawmakers appear to agree. Whether the rewritten language satisfies MacDonough remains to be seen.
Rules that protect you when you're in the minority don't stop being rules when you're in the majority. That's the deal. And it's a deal worth keeping.