US Rep. Elijah Cummings has died from complications of longtime health challenges

Author: Associated Press
Published: Updated:
FILE – In this June 12, 2019 file photo, House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairman Elijah E. Cummings, D-Md., wields his gavel on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, June 12, 2019. Cummings says in a letter to White House acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney that he wants all documents “memorializing communications between President Trump and the leader of any other foreign country” that relate to Trump’s efforts to pressure the Ukrainian president. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Maryland Rep. Elijah E. Cummings died early Thursday at Johns Hopkins Hospital due to complications from longstanding health challenges, his congressional office said. He was 68.

A sharecropper’s son, Cummings became the powerful chairman of a U.S. House committee that investigated President Donald Trump, and was a formidable orator who passionately advocated for the poor in his district that encompassed a large portion of Baltimore.

As chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, Cummings led multiple investigations into Trump’s governmental dealings. The investigations angered the president, who criticized the congressman’s district in 2019 as a “rodent-infested mess” where “no human being would want to live.”

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