John Chapuis: Deputy staff director, Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso (R-Wyo.)

John Chapuis has become one of the Senate’s leading experts on rules and floor procedure — a skillset that allowed him to play a key role helping the Senate GOP leadership team navigate tough situations and score crucial wins on issues ranging from stalled nominees to war powers resolutions and passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

Chapuis, the deputy staff director for Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), has a couple of decades of experience in the Senate and previously worked for then-Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.). He’s also been on the Senate GOP whip team before, spending more than half of his career working in leadership.

During that time, he’s had a front-row seat to the Senate’s biggest floor battles, which are often won or lost based on a deep and nuanced understanding of the rules.

Republican senators trust Chapuis and look to him for answers, and he’s developed a reputation as an encyclopedia of Senate history.

He knows how to be creative with the Senate rules because he knows them so well.

He played a central role in coming up with a strategy to defeat the Senate Democratic blockade of President Trump’s civilian nominees.

Senate Republicans used a simple-majority vote to set a new precedent allowing the chamber to confirm a large number of executive branch nominees in a single bloc, saving untold hours of floor time.

At the start of the year, Chapuis helped craft a floor strategy to set aside a war powers resolution related to Venezuela that Democrats and a few GOP defectors had advanced out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The deft move averted a full-on confrontation with the president.

Chapuis also has a knack for remembering precedents that Democrats set in the past to win skirmishes on the floor today. It makes it tougher for Democrats to win an argument with the parliamentarian when Republicans are using a strategy lifted from the Democratic playbook.

Barrasso announced Chapuis as his deputy staff director in January 2025.

Before working for McConnell, Chapuis served as deputy chief of staff to then-Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas). He was instrumental to the successful whip operation for the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

Chapuis grew up in Oklahoma and served eight years as a senior policy director to former Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.).

He graduated from the University of North Carolina Asheville and received a master’s degree in national security studies from the U.S. Naval War College.