SCOOP: White House Pressures Thune to Fire Senate Parliamentarian
With the One Big Beautiful Bill Act on the line, Trump and Stephen Miller want Thune to oust the Senate Parliamentarian.
WASHINGTON — The White House has quietly begun to pressure Senate Majority Leader John Thune to fire Elizabeth MacDonough, the Senate Parliamentarian, according to multiple sources with knowledge of conversations this week between Thune, President Donald Trump, and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, Migrant Insider has learned.
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MacDonough is set to review the One Big Beautiful Bill Act as part of an arcane legislative maneuver called budget reconciliation, which allows the majority party to pass legislation with only 51 votes as long as it remains germane to the budget. On Thursday, the House of Representatives passed the legislation by the narrowest of margins.
Strict rules limit what can be included in reconciliation, especially if it increases the federal deficit beyond a 10-year budget window. The parliamentarian interprets these rules, including the powerful Byrd Rule, which bars "extraneous" provisions from reconciliation bills. MacDonough made headlines when Democrats controlled the Senate for blocking efforts to raise the minimum wage in and to include immigration reform in Build Back Better in 2021.
On Wednesday, Thune ignored the parliamentarian’s guidance on a vote overturn a Clean Air Act waiver, granted by the Biden administration in late 2024. The waiver allows California to set its own stringent vehicle emissions rules—rules that effectively ban new gas-powered cars by 2035.
“Republicans have eroded away at the Senate foundation and undermined this institution they claim to care about,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer in a statement. “Make no mistake, Republicans have set a new precedent that will come back to haunt them and haunt this chamber. What goes around comes around.”
Republicans Push “Current Policy Baseline”
On Wednesday, pressured by Trump and Miller pressured Thune to ignore MacDonough’s likely objections to the GOP provision in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act to permanently extend Trump’s 2017 tax cuts and add sweeping new tax breaks, despite violating long-standing reconciliation rules designed to protect the federal budget.
Republicans are reportedly planning to use a controversial budget scoring maneuver called “current policy baseline,” which would treat Trump’s expiring tax cuts as if they were already permanent—thereby eliminating their official “cost.”
If that doesn’t work and MacDonough objects to the tax provisions anyway, a simple majority vote can sweep her guidance aside. Here’s how that could work: When Thune proposes a budget vote, he could ask the presiding officer—a Republican senator rotating hourly—to ignore the Parliamentarian’s advice.
The presiding officer, advised by the Parliamentarian’s clerks, would then have two choices: bypass the Parliamentarian and allow the vote, or sustain the “point of order” and block the vote for violating the rules. The move would allow Republicans to avoid reconciliation rules that bar provisions increasing the deficit outside the budget window.
But the legality and legitimacy of this approach remain hotly contested by Democrats and several Republican Senators, including Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Thom Tills (N.C.) and Susan Collins (Maine), a likely roadblock to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that has Trump and Miller. They are now actively pressuring Thune to fire MacDonough if she advises against the tax provisions.
Neither White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt nor Thune’s office immediately replied to our requests for comment.
Meanwhile, Senate Democrats are watching closely. “If that happens, I'm certainly going to remember that next we have the power to push as much as we can in immigration reform through reconciliation also,” said Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.). “It would be a terrible break with the traditions and rules of the Senate,” lamented Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.).
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Precedent Versus Power
MacDonough is no stranger to controversy. Progressives called for her removal in 2021 after she advised against two popular programs: a citizenship program for undocumented migrants in Build Back Better and a $15 minimum wage in the American Rescue Plan. But leadership, including then-Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, declined to remove her.
“I would say that this particular parliamentarian sees herself more as, almost an administrative law judge,” said Paul Winfree, president of the Economic Policy Innovation Center and former Senate Budget Committee staffer. “I think that she has more of a ‘small-c’ conservative approach to what is allowable.”
The role, while unelected and largely unknown to the public, is central to how federal policy gets written. MacDonough’s office conducts the so-called “Byrd bath,” reviewing each section of a reconciliation bill for compliance with Senate rules.
“The Budget Committee sets the baseline,” Graham has insisted, downplaying the parliamentarian’s role. But under normal order, the parliamentarian provides guidance, and while her decisions can be ignored by a simple majority, the firing of a parliamentarian is extremely rare—and potentially destabilizing.
It last happened in 2001, when Republicans ousted Parliamentarian Robert Dove during a budget standoff. Weeks later, Vermont Senator Jim Jeffords defected from the GOP, handing Democrats control of the Senate.
With Senate Republicans aiming to get the One Big Beautiful Bill to Trump’s desk by July 4th, the next few weeks will test the resilience of Senate norms and the independence of its gatekeepers.
“They’ve actually been pretty conservative in how they’ve approached the language,” said Winfree. But he added that “some of the immigration provisions could get a second look.”
What happens next will likely shape not just tax policy but the future of the Senate.