When Americans voted overwhelmingly to send Donald Trump back to the White House and deliver Republican majorities in both houses of Congress, they expected action. They expected the border to be secured. They expected the lawlessness of the Biden years to end. What they did not expect—and what they certainly did not vote for—was for a single unelected official appointed thirteen years ago by Harry Reid to have more control over our nation's immigration policy than the President, the Senate Majority Leader, and 53 Republican senators combined.
And yet, here we are.
Elizabeth MacDonough has struck again. The Senate Parliamentarian—an obscure procedural referee who most Americans have never heard of—just delivered what amounts to a death blow to Republicans' $72 billion border enforcement package. According to reports, MacDonough has ruled that core provisions of the bill violate the Senate's arcane "Byrd Rule," effectively stripping out Border Patrol funding, cutting security technology allocations, eliminating screening measures, and removing $2.5 billion in DHS cash from the reconciliation package.
Let that sink in. A bill designed to secure our southern border—funding the brave men and women of Customs and Border Protection, providing the technology needed to detect illegal crossings, and paying for the detention and deportation infrastructure necessary to end catch-and-release—has been gutted by one person. Not by the voters. Not by their elected representatives. By Elizabeth MacDonough.
Who is this woman, and why does she have more power over American border security than the Commander-in-Chief?
MacDonough was appointed Senate Parliamentarian in February 2012 by then-Majority Leader Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat who did more to destroy Senate comity and tradition than any leader in modern history. She has now held this position for over thirteen years—through the entirety of the Obama administration, Trump's first term, the Biden disaster, and now into Trump's second. She has become the longest-serving parliamentarian in Senate history, and increasingly, she has used that tenure not as a neutral arbiter of rules, but as a gatekeeper with an agenda.
This is not the first time MacDonough has conveniently found reasons to block conservative priorities. In June 2025, she torpedoed multiple provisions of Trump's "One Big Beautiful Bill," ruling against oil and gas leasing provisions, public land sales, and reforms to Medicaid work requirements—policies central to the President's economic and energy agenda. She has repeatedly sided against Republican priorities while finding creative ways to allow Democratic spending sprees to proceed through reconciliation. The pattern is unmistakable.
But her latest ruling on the border bill takes her obstruction to a new level. According to sources familiar with her advisory opinions, MacDonough determined that funding for Border Patrol would "inappropriately fund activities" outside the Homeland Security Committee's jurisdiction. Translation: Republicans cannot use the reconciliation process to actually fund border enforcement because MacDonough says so. Never mind that illegal immigration is costing American taxpayers hundreds of billions annually. Never mind that criminal cartels are pouring fentanyl across our border, killing over 70,000 Americans per year. Never mind that voters demanded action.
Elizabeth MacDonough has decided that procedural technicalities matter more than American lives.
The $19.1 billion she stripped from Customs and Border Protection funding represents the backbone of what Republicans promised to deliver: more agents, better equipment, surveillance technology, and the detention space needed to end the Biden-era catch-and-release crisis. The $2.5 billion in DHS funding she eliminated was earmarked for critical security infrastructure. These aren't marginal policy preferences—they're the core of what Americans voted for in 2024.
Let's be clear about what reconciliation is supposed to do. It's a budgetary process designed to allow fiscal legislation to pass with a simple majority. The whole point is to prevent the tyranny of the minority—to stop a small group of senators from blocking spending and tax measures that have majority support. But MacDonough has twisted the Byrd Rule—which was intended to keep reconciliation focused on fiscal matters—into a weapon she uses to strip out any policy she personally dislikes.
This is legislative tyranny disguised as procedural neutrality.
And where is Senate Majority Leader John Thune in all of this? Hiding. Cowering behind parliamentary procedure rather than standing with President Trump and the conservative movement. Thune knows he has the power to fire MacDonough. His predecessor as Majority Leader could dismiss her tomorrow and replace her with someone who will actually follow the law rather than rewrite it. Previous parliamentarians have been fired for far less.
In 2001, Republican leaders dismissed Parliamentarian Robert Dove when they felt he was obstructing their agenda. Harry Reid himself wasn't afraid to replace parliamentary referees when they ruled against Democratic priorities. The notion that the Parliamentarian is some untouchable Oracle of Delphi is a fiction invented by Republicans who lack the courage to govern.
Thune's excuse—that overruling MacDonough would "break Senate norms"—is laughable. What about the norm that elections have consequences? What about the norm that the majority party gets to set the legislative agenda? What about the norm that securing the border shouldn't require 60 votes in a body where 53 senators represent the majority view?
The truth is simpler and more damning: John Thune doesn't want to secure the border. He wants the appearance of trying while blaming a bureaucrat for his own lack of resolve. He wants to tell voters he fought for border security while hiding behind MacDonough's skirts when it matters. It's cowardice masquerading as institutionalism.
President Trump was elected with a mandate to secure the border. Republican senators campaigned on the same promise. Yet they are allowing one person—appointed by Harry Reid during the Obama administration—to nullify that mandate with advisory opinions that have no basis in the Constitution and no democratic legitimacy whatsoever.
This cannot stand. The Senate Parliamentarian serves at the pleasure of the Majority Leader. Elizabeth MacDonough is not a constitutional officer. She is not elected. She is not accountable to the voters. And she has more than demonstrated that her loyalties lie with the Democratic Party that elevated her and the procedural obstructionism that defines Beltway governance.
John Thune needs to make a choice: Stand with President Trump and the American people who demand border security, or stand with Elizabeth MacDonough and the permanent bureaucracy that wants to maintain the open-border status quo. He cannot do both.
If Thune continues to hide behind MacDonough's rulings, when he knows he has the power to end her obstruction, then he is complicit in the betrayal of Republican voters. He becomes an accessory to the very open-border policies he claims to oppose.
Fire Elizabeth MacDonough. Do it today. Or admit that you were never serious about securing the border in the first place.
The American people deserve leaders who lead—not politicians who look for excuses to fail.
Editorial comments expressed in this column are the sole opinion of the writer
