The Democrat, a key figure in the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump as chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, died at Gilchrist Hospice Care, a Johns Hopkins affiliate, at approximately 2:45 A.M., a spokeswoman said.

Cummings, who had been absent from Capitol Hill in recent weeks while under medical attention, had health issues in recent years. In 2017, he underwent an aortic valve replacement. The procedure, which aides described as minimally invasive in Cummings’ case, is used to correct narrowing of the aortic valve in the heart. The surgery led to an infection that kept him in the hospital longer than expected. He was later hospitalized for a knee infection, but he said this summer that his health was fine.

Cummings had not participated in a roll call vote since Sept. 11. His office said recently that he had undergone a medical procedure but the seriousness of his condition had not been known.

The committee he chaired, Oversight and Reform, is among three panels leading the impeachment inquiry of Trump, a Republican.

A former Maryland state delegate and trial attorney, Cummings became a national figure in 2019 as chairman of the committee. With Democrats assuming the House majority after the 2018 elections, he won the ability to demand documents related to Trump’s personal finances and policies, as well as possible abuses at federal agencies in the Trump administration.

Pundits had speculated before the change of power in the House that Cummings, who could be boisterous in his questioning of witnesses, might become a “nightmare” for Trump, a Republican.

“Are we going to be the nightmare? It’s in the eyes of the beholder,” he told The Baltimore Sun before ascending to the chairmanship.

Cummings clashed with the administration over a number of issues, including the high cost of prescription drugs, a longtime concern of his. His committee engaged in a protracted court fight with the administration over subpoenas — challenged by the president — of Trump’s personal and financial records.

Cummings said he had just a single one-on-one conversation with the president. It was in 2017 when both were working on plans to lower drug prices.

The Democrat recalled saying: “Mr. President, you’re now 70-something, I’m 60-something. Very soon you and I will be dancing with the angels. The thing that you and I need to do is figure out what we can do — what present can we bring to generations unborn?”

Cummings said he then told Trump that “we don’t need to be doing mean things. We don’t need to be just representing 30-something percent of the people that like us. You need to represent all the people.”

Cummings particularly resented Trump’s tweet over the summer of 2019 that four Democratic congresswomen of color should "go back” to other countries. He said it recalled the summer of 1962, when white mobs taunted and threw rocks and bottles at Cummings and other African American kids seeking to integrate the Riverside Park pool in South Baltimore. Read more at Baltimore Sun

In July, Trump began a weeklong series of tweets and comments attacking the congressman, his hometown of Baltimore and his congressional district, which Trump called “rat and rodent infested.” Cummings chose not to respond directly but in a National Press Club speech decried “racist language” used by the nation’s leaders and urged them to “work together for the common good.” Read more at Baltimore Sun