President Donald Trump privately demanded that Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) fire Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough.
According to NOTUS, “President Donald Trump pressed Senate Majority Leader John Thune to fire the Senate parliamentarian after she ruled Republicans could not include funding for the president’s ballroom in a budget bill, two sources familiar with the request told NOTUS.” However, Thune is adamantly refusing to get rid of MacDonough, who was first appointed as the Senate rules referee in 2012 and has often frustrated majorities in both parties.
The bill, which is primarily intended to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol through the entirety of Trump’s remaining term, first included $1 billion in funding for strictly “security”-related features of the ballroom, which Trump for months has maintained would be financed solely through donor contributions.
Senate Republicans, who have previously expressed discomfort with the ballroom provision, are now moving to rewrite and scale it back in a way they hope will pass muster with the parliamentarian.
“Thune declined to comment on whether the president asked him to oust MacDonough, saying he does not discuss their private conversations. He also said he would not do it,” said the report. “‘No,’ Thune told NOTUS when asked if he would entertain that idea of firing MacDonough. ‘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’s been true.’”
The parliamentarian’s opinions are theoretically non-binding and can be ignored by a simple majority in the Senate; however, this is functionally equivalent to invoking the so-called “nuclear option” against the Senate’s 60-vote filibuster rule, which a strong majority of Republicans still refuse to do out of fear Democrats could use the precedent to much more easily pass progressive policies when they next hold unified control of government.
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