Derek Schmidt

Kansas Rep. Derek Schmidt is running for reelection after his first term in the U.S. House.

Schmidt found Washington's political environment more fragmented and noisy than his previous experience in Kansas politics.

He highlighted a bipartisan success in securing services for military hospitals, including at Fort Riley.

Schmidt advocates for larger Republican majorities to enact policies and prevent potential gridlock.

U.S. Rep. Derek Schmidt isn't new to politics, but the freshman congressman from Kansas found some differences in Washington, D.C.

"I think I underestimated how much the sheer size of the House of Representatives affect how you have to operate within the House — 435 people is a lot of people," Schmidt said. "It's a very fragmented, disjointed process. Very different from the Kansas system.

"That requires much more time and effort to build relationships. This is a relationship business. Even with people you're working with that you disagree with strongly, you have to be able to work with them. To do that, you have to know them. And that has taken more time than I had anticipated, simply because of the size."

Schmidt represents the 2nd Congressional District, which includes Topeka. His prior political experience includes three terms as Kansas attorney general and a decade in the Kansas Legislature, ascending to Senate majority leader.

Now 14 months into his first term in the U.S. House, Schmidt is running for reelection. He spoke with reporters in Topeka after filing on March 12.

"I think that's an area in a second term I can continue to be more effective," Schmidt said of relationships. "You can't just start at zero and do that. And so I think we'll have some advantages for the district (now) that I've invested that time and effort over the first (term)."

One of Schmidt's committee assignments is the House Judiciary Committee. It has had some high-profile, contentious hearings in recent weeks, including one where U.S. attorney general Pam Bondi was pressed on the Epstein files and one with Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem the day before she was fired by President Donald Trump.

"I would also say, in a more general sense, D.C. is a much noisier environment in which public policy gets debated and decided one way or the other than Kansas is," Schmidt said. "I'm a Midwestern guy who likes to get along with folks. Happy to fight when it's necessary, but I prefer to work cooperatively whenever we can.

"There have just been fewer opportunities for that in Washington. The parties are pretty entrenched."

Lower-profile bipartisan work helped Fort Riley's hospital

Schmidt said he has worked with some House Democrats on policies, some of which have already been enacted and others that are still being worked on.

"It's not a secret, but we haven't made it a big high-profile thing because we think we're more effective when we just go do it," Schmidt said.

He gave an example of working with a Democrat on maintaining military hospital services. Schmidt's district includes Fort Riley, which has the Irwin Army Community Hospital.

"There had been discussion over recent years, before I got into office, about having it on a list for potentially degrading to a clinic, as there have been at other posts," he said. "That would be unacceptable for Fort Riley because it is a heavy combat division.

"You cannot have large numbers of people doing active military training where people sometimes get hurt and not have a full service hospital right on post, especially when they're not close to any major city — Topeka's the closest. So we have to maintain a full service hospital on post at Fort Riley. We needed to end this conversation about potentially downgrading."

Schmidt worked with the two Kansas senators, especially U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran, who chairs the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee.

He also worked with a Maryland Democrat who represents Walter Reed, which he said faced a similar dynamic on maintaining services.

"We were able to come together, come up with some new authority for the Veterans Administration to work closely with the Defense Health Agency to provide the opportunity to treat more veterans on military posts like at Fort Riley, like at Walter Reed," Schmidt said. "The idea was to make those posts more sustainable, more effective, more efficient, be able to draw in more talent, a wider range of services. Everybody wins, and we got it done."

They ultimately got it signed into law through an amendment on the National Defense Authorization Act.

"It's a good example of being able to work in a bipartisan way, but not in part of the loud and noisy debate that is Washington these days," he said.

Derek Schmidt wants voters to send more Republicans to DC

Schmidt said he wants "to keep the progress going" in a second term.

He pointed to tax cuts and some farm bill provisions in last year's budget reconciliation bill, better known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. He also pointed to progress on "the cost of government" regulations and taxes and "reinvesting in the military."

"Big progress in terms of securing the border," Schmidt said, "and I'd like to get some of those changes locked into law that would make sure that they are Biden-proofed — for lack of a better term — going forward."

Schmidt dismissed concerns that Republicans in Congress have ceded too much power to the executive branch.

"I know there are people who are concerned about it. I've heard that," Schmidt said. "For the most part, they tend to be people who disagree with the policy direction that the administration has gone and didn't seem to have these concerns, for example, when a Congress that was more liberal didn't express concerns about a president who was more liberal. So I do think that there is sort of a situational concern that some have developed.

"My own view is that Congress needs to lock in some of the good policy changes — from our vantage point, good policy changes — that the administration has made. That's an area I think we need to continue to be more active. One of the challenges with that is that in order to do that, in most circumstances, you have to have 60 votes in the United States Senate because most of those changes require overcoming a filibuster. On a lot of them, there aren't 60 votes."

Republicans have slim majorities in both the House and Senate. Schmidt said voters in the 2026 midterm elections should send more Republicans to Congress.

"People who are supportive of the president and the agenda that the president's laid out and that voters approved by big numbers two years ago, it's essential to continue to have Republican majorities," Schmidt said. "In fact, it would be helpful to have slightly larger Republican majorities in order to be able to lock in some of the changes and the gains that have been made by executive action but we haven't had the votes to get done."

Schmidt predicted gridlock and impeachments if Democrats take control of the House for the second two years of Trump's second term.

"For everybody who cares about functioning government — maybe not folks that are just opposed to the president on principle and just don't like him, but folks who just want this government to operate — it's very important to send back Republican majorities because the alternative will be two years of absolute gridlock," he said.

"It will be Hakeem Jeffries and Democrat majority in the House of Representatives, for example, looking for a reason to impeach or impede the president at every step. And that accomplishes nothing. It doesn't continue to move us in the right direction in the areas I've talked about, and it just, once again, sort of turns things into gridlock that we've had 30 years of and we're trying to break out of."