WASHINGTON — House Republicans are crafting a game plan ahead of the 2026 midterm elections as the party seeks to defend their slim majority and maintain control of all three branches of government in Washington, D.C.
The House Republican conference met for a closed-door policy and strategy forum on Tuesday at the Kennedy Center as rank-and-file members pressed top leaders for guidance as most of them seek reelection in November — some in highly competitive races.
Committee chairs hosted breakout sessions where lawmakers could ask about specific policy issues and convey concerns about messaging, members present told the Deseret News.
“A meeting like today, it’s kind of a difficult task to boil that down into what we want the main focus to be,” Utah Rep. Blake Moore, the vice chairman of the House Republican conference, told the Deseret News in an interview. “You have a broad swath of like, ‘Hey, what do we need to accomplish?’ And if I were to boil it down, I would look at it and say, ‘We need to make sure that the American people actually know what was in the tax reconciliation.’”
Moore was referring to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the $4.5 trillion tax package passed last summer along party lines that Republicans have touted as their most significant agenda item yet. The package spans nearly 1,000 pages of complicated legislative language, prompting questions from lawmakers who say it can be difficult to translate the policy wins to a general audience.
“(Ways and Means Chairman) Jason Smith said that every week, people come to him with ideas to fix the tax code that are already fixed in the Big Beautiful Bill that we did,” Utah Rep. Mike Kennedy said with a laugh. “So part of it is messaging and making sure we’re focused on no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, and that the child tax credit has been enhanced for families with children and so on and so forth.”
President Donald Trump, who made an appearance at Tuesday’s forum to offer opening remarks, seemed to lament the reality that his signature policy bill has been too difficult for voters to understand and therefore has resulted in lower-than-desired approval.
Instead, Trump pushed Republicans to focus on selling his agenda to strengthen their chances in the midterms, an election cycle that typically benefits the opposite party of the sitting president.
“It’s an amazing phenomenon: You win the presidency, but you lose the midterms,” Trump said during his nearly 90-minute speech. “I wish you could explain to me what the hell’s going on with the mind of the public. Because we have the right policy, (Democrats) don’t. They have horrible policy.”
Trump wants Republicans to step forward on health care
Trump laid out a number of areas he says Republicans should focus on ahead of the midterms, particularly his recent policies on drug pricing and health care costs. Those issues, he said, open the door for Republicans to compete in a policy area that Democrats have historically dominated.
“That’s partly what, I think, President Trump was trying to say was we’re not very good at explaining it or talking about it, because Dems have kind of owned the message on Obamacare,” Moore said. “So hopefully we can kind of combat that messaging and get out the reality and then actually deliver on some legislation.”
The president offered ways to counter Democrats, specifically pointing to his Most Favored Nation drug pricing model that would decrease the costs of prescription drugs to match the lowest prices found in other developed nations. Fourteen companies have signed on to deals to cooperate with that policy.
Kennedy, a family physician, pointed to Trump’s remarks on the drug pricing model as a way to “save an enormous amount of money for health care.”
But the biggest struggle for Republicans might not be deciding what to include in their agenda — but rather keeping the party in line long enough to pass it.
Republicans have a historically slim margin in the House heading into 2026, especially after the resignation of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga, and the unexpected death of Rep. Doug LaMalfa, R-Calif., this week. That gives GOP leaders just two votes to spare on any piece of legislation, assuming there is full attendance and all Democrats vote against.
“Here we are this year with only one or two votes to lose,” Rep. Burgess Owens, R-Utah, told the Deseret News. “We have to really come together and look at what is good for the American people. Not for ourselves, not for checking the box on social media.”
“That’s what this whole thing is about,” Rep. Celeste Maloy, R-Utah, said in a separate interview. “When we get together and we talk about our priorities and we give people a chance to weigh in, then we are setting a unified agenda that we can move together to try to get enacted. We’re here to set the agenda together for the sake of unity.”
Trump implored Republicans to stick to the playbook he offered on Tuesday, referring to it as a “roadmap to victory.”
“I think I gave you something,” Trump said. “You have so many good nuggets, you have to use them. If you can sell them, we’re going to win.”