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Quoted By:
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/01/06/house-republicans-anxiety-margins-midterms-00713358
Tuesday was supposed to be a rah-rah day for House Republicans — a chance to strategize with President Donald Trump about their agenda for the tough election year ahead.
Instead, 2026 got off to an unexpectedly somber start as they confronted the sudden death of a well-liked colleague and pondered the dire political and policy straits their dwindling majority has to navigate.
Most members learned about California Rep. Doug LaMalfa’s overnight passing as they boarded buses outside the Capitol to head to the Kennedy Center for their annual policy meeting. That news — as well as word that another Republican, Rep. Jim Baird of Indiana, had been badly hurt in a car crash — cast an immediate pall.
“This is coming as a shock to all of us,” said one House Republican who, like others quoted for this story, was granted anonymity to speak candidly about the mood.
Even a characteristically freewheeling speech from Trump — delivered at the performing arts center his hand-picked board had recently renamed for him without congressional approval — hardly lightened the mood. He remembered LaMalfa, a rice farmer who represented a rural northern California district for seven terms, as a loyal supporter and said he considered skipping the speech out of respect for his death.
“But then I decided that I have to do it in his honor,” Trump said. “I’ll do it in his honor because he would have wanted it that way.”
Tuesday was supposed to be a rah-rah day for House Republicans — a chance to strategize with President Donald Trump about their agenda for the tough election year ahead.
Instead, 2026 got off to an unexpectedly somber start as they confronted the sudden death of a well-liked colleague and pondered the dire political and policy straits their dwindling majority has to navigate.
Most members learned about California Rep. Doug LaMalfa’s overnight passing as they boarded buses outside the Capitol to head to the Kennedy Center for their annual policy meeting. That news — as well as word that another Republican, Rep. Jim Baird of Indiana, had been badly hurt in a car crash — cast an immediate pall.
“This is coming as a shock to all of us,” said one House Republican who, like others quoted for this story, was granted anonymity to speak candidly about the mood.
Even a characteristically freewheeling speech from Trump — delivered at the performing arts center his hand-picked board had recently renamed for him without congressional approval — hardly lightened the mood. He remembered LaMalfa, a rice farmer who represented a rural northern California district for seven terms, as a loyal supporter and said he considered skipping the speech out of respect for his death.
“But then I decided that I have to do it in his honor,” Trump said. “I’ll do it in his honor because he would have wanted it that way.”
