Stephen Tausend: Legislative director, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) 

Stephen Tausend’s years with Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) have put him at the center of some of the highest profile Senate negotiations of the past decade.

He served as Cornyn’s senior counsel on the Judiciary immigration subcommittee from 2011-16 before moving on to his current role as the Texas Republican’s legislative director.

In those roles, he has overseen the enactment of 84 bipartisan laws sponsored by Cornyn, which ranks the Texas senator as one of the most successful legislators in the upper chamber.  

Tausend served as the lead Republican staff negotiator on the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which the Senate passed with a large bipartisan majority, 65-33, in response to the 2022 mass shooting that claimed the lives of 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. It was the first gun legislation Congress has passed in decades.

He served as a lead Republican staff negotiator on the First Step Act, the criminal justice reform package that then-President Trump signed into law in 2018. It included criminal sentencing reform to give those convicted of a crime more opportunity to avoid mandatory minimum prison terms as well as reforms to improve conditions at federal prisons.  

Tausend also oversaw the drafting and negotiation of the CHIPS for America Act and the $52.7 billion funding package for the domestic semiconductor research, development, manufacturing and workforce development included in the CHIPS and Science Act.  

He oversaw the drafting and negotiation of the Ukraine Democracy Defense Lend-Lease Act to help provide weapons to Ukraine, which became law in 2022 in response to Russian’s invasion of the country.