Unelected Official Targets Gun Owners, Private Schools In Latest Rejection of Trump Policies

Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough continues to rummage through the Senate’s version of President Donald Trump’s “one big, beautiful” bill and strike provisions that she has determined violate the upper chamber’s stringent budget rules.

MacDonough, an unelected official with outsized influence over the final shape of the president’s landmark tax and immigration bill, advised the Senate on Friday morning that provisions eliminating a tax on firearm suppressors and creating a $4 billion private school tax credit program will have to be revised or struck to pass the Senate plan by a simple majority vote. The parliamentarian’s rulings striking 52 sections from the initial draft bill thus far have infuriated conservative GOP lawmakers who have accused her of undermining Republican policy goals.

Congressional Republicans are using the so-called budget reconciliation process to pass the president’s bill. The fast-track procedure allows Senate Republicans to circumvent Democratic opposition by passing the budget legislation by a simple majority vote.

However, provisions that MacDonough determines violate the Senate’s budget rules would be subject to a 60-vote legislative threshold, effectively forcing GOP senators to get Democratic buy-in before those proposals can pass the upper chamber. MacDonough was appointed to her role in 2012 under the late former Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

MacDonough ruled Friday that a $200 tax on firearm silencers violates budget rules requiring provisions to directly affect spending and revenue and have little to no impact on policy. Members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus notably pushed