WHAT IS JOHN FETTERMAN DOING?

WASHINGTON — Six days after I-95 collapsed in Northeast Philadelphia, U.S. Sen. John Fetterman grabbed a lectern emblazoned with the presidential seal and began what would be his last public remarks in Philadelphia for the next three years.

With President Joe Biden on his right and Gov. Josh Shapiro on his left, Fetterman spent two minutes praising the president while largely ignoring the governor leading the response. It was a pleasure to be there, he said publicly while among his peers. Privately, he never wanted to be there at all.

“He didn’t want to go,” recalled a former Fetterman staffer who was involved in getting him to appear at the site of one of the largest calamities in Philadelphia in recent years. “The fight leading up to that was, ‘I don’t want to be in the same room with Josh.’”

Shapiro and Fetterman have long had a cold relationship, something the senator would later devote an entire chapter to, called “The Shapiro Affair,” in his 2025 memoir.

But his initial refusal to attend an event with the governor just a few months into his term in 2023 was indicative of what many in his orbit would later recognize as a larger trend — one of Fetterman actively trying to avoid the routine elements of his job as a senator.

An analysis of Fetterman’s record and public appearances by The Inquirer shows he has accomplished little legislatively while also doing less — in bills introduced, public appearances made, and committee hearings attended — as time has gone on. He has attended just 16% of his own committee meetings in the last two years and had only 31 public appearances or publicized meetings in his home state in nearly four years, The Inquirer found. He has also voted increasingly with Republicans ahead of a 2026 election that could make him a key swing vote if Democrats regain a narrow Senate majority.

Fetterman, whose office did not respond to requests for comment for this article, has dismissed past accusations that he is an absentee senator as “smears.” But as he floats the possibility of running for another six-year term after the midterm elections next month — as he did at an out-of-state event in late September — his record in office is likely to come under greater scrutiny.

Fetterman’s time in office has been marked by a series of controversies and the near-evaporation of support from the Democratic voters who helped elect him to two statewide offices in the last decade.

Interviews with more than a half dozen former Fetterman staffers with close knowledge of his day-to-day activities, meanwhile, describe a senator who is almost entirely disengaged from the work.

Repeatedly and consistently, they describe Fetterman — who is paid a $174,000 salary and received $517,500 in book advances for his memoir, according to financial disclosures — as a “lazy” lawmaker who declines to meet with constituents or colleagues and is dismissive of criticism. He sometimes leaves Washington in the middle of session weeks. And asking him to do “the bare minimum of being a senator” often involves “begging” him to take meetings, one former staffer said, sharing a sentiment echoed by several others.

“It was like arguing with a toddler every day,” the former staffer said, adding that it felt like “arguing with him nonstop to pretty much get out of bed in the morning and tie his shoes.”

As he has avoided public appearances, the Western Pennsylvania resident has shown a private disregard for Philadelphia in particular, according to several former staffers.

One former staffer said they were disturbed when Fetterman once described Center City as “a f— war zone” when the staffer said they had recently visited. Another pointed out that while Fetterman publicly praises the city’s mayor, “he’s met with [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu more than he’s met with Mayor [Cherelle] Parker.”

“He never said a nice thing about Philly besides getting a roast pork sandwich,” a third staffer said, referring to Fetterman’s taste for Tommy DiNic’s sandwiches at Reading Terminal Market.

“He never said a nice thing about Philly besides getting a roast pork sandwich.”

Publicly, Fetterman has not heaped praise on the city. He has issued statements about federal funding awards and has said he is “constantly impressed by [Parker’s] willingness to confront the hard issues.” During a Senate Homeland Security Committee meeting in 2025 about security measures for major sporting events, he gave two emphatic thumbs-up when reading from a prepared statement about how the city was set to host the 2026 MLB All-Star Game.

Still, he has had just six public appearances in Philadelphia — four of which were within the initial months of his term in 2023, according to The Inquirer’s review. That includes a Martin Luther King Jr. Day event at Girard College and a news conference with Biden (in which he flew on Air Force One with the president from Washington to Philly) during his first few weeks in office. He attended a Black mayors’ conference in May 2023 and the I-95 news conference the following month.

He visited Philadelphia Housing Authority leaders and toured the site of a public housing redevelopment project in West Philadelphia in August 2025 after helping secure a $21.4 million federal grant, according to PHA. And just outside the city in Upper Darby, he joined a 2024 news conference touting $317 million in funding for SEPTA, though he has otherwise foregone the typical political move of taking credit for funding with publicized in-person events.

His only other public event in Philadelphia was in June of this year, when he joined Republican U.S. Sen. Dave McCormick at a youth basketball camp to promote the new President Donald Trump-branded savings accounts for kids. When McCormick was asked by a reporter after the event about his close relationship and multiple meetings with Parker, a Democrat, Fetterman quickly jumped in.

“I think she’s great,” Fetterman said. “I hoped to have seen her today.”

Fetterman’s full schedule of events and meetings is not public. But The Inquirer’s review of government calendars and records, media reports, event agendas, and Fetterman’s own social media since 2023 show he has spent his time in office far differently from typical senators — including McCormick, who has become his closest ally in the chamber.

Over just 11 days during the recent August recess, McCormick’s office said, he traveled 2,000 miles and made 32 stops across Pennsylvania.

It was more than Fetterman’s in-state public appearances in nearly four years.

Fetterman was once known for barnstorming Pennsylvania’s 67 counties and drawing enthusiastic crowds.

And for at least a few months in 2023, he showed signs of keeping up at least a semblance of the pace. The Black mayors’ conference in Philadelphia in May. Pittsburgh’s Pride celebration in June. An August recess in which he and two staffers drove from Pittsburgh to Scranton, stopping at Pennsylvania State University’s Ag Progress Days and ending at another mayors’ conference.

He showed up on picket lines at least seven times that fall, including a few in Michigan and Ohio during the United Auto Workers strike. He rallied voters in Iowa in what a former staffer said Fetterman thought would be a “funny” way to create speculation that he would run for president someday.

“This was the golden era,” a former staffer said, echoing others who described Fetterman as more motivated to show up as he had said he would during his campaign a year earlier. “He was beloved for a minute there.”

Former staffers say the dividing line was the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, attack in Israel. The resulting war by Israel against Hamas in Gaza has killed tens of thousands of civilians and has faced increasing public opposition from Democrats, who once had been part of Fetterman’s base and now oppose Israel’s tactics.

Fetterman has repeatedly said he is “always going to stand with Israel.” In an August appearance on Jon Stewart’s podcast in which the host challenged him on the topic, he said the killing of civilians was “terrible” and “collateral” damage but “not a genocide,” as some have suggested. In that interview and previously, he has also acknowledged that he has lost previous supporters who disagree with him.

“I know this has cost me support from a significant part of my base, and I’m well aware that it may cost me my seat,” Fetterman wrote in his memoir, Unfettered. “I’m completely at peace with that.”

While Fetterman also wrote in the book that his “support for Israel is not new,” one former staffer said that the senator had not frequently talked about U.S. support for Israel before Oct. 7 and that it was a “political calculation” on his part to become a voice for the country as loudly and ubiquitously as he had for other causes in his past. That unyielding position amid growing public opposition led to Fetterman being concerned about protests at his events.

“Into the winter and into the spring, it totally shifted,” a former staffer said. “It was impossible to get him to do much of anything.”

“We thought he ought to be doing everything he can legislatively to reinstate our contract, and that didn’t seem to happen.”

His 24 public events in and outside Pennsylvania in 2023 dropped to seven in 2024, 10 in 2025, and eight in the first nine months of 2026, according to The Inquirer’s tally. After Oct. 7, he has dedicated most of his time in the public eye to speaking engagements held outside the state he represents. He has also traveled to Israel twice and met with Netanyahu at least four times abroad and in Washington.

Phil Glover, national vice president for the American Federation of Government Employees district that covers Pennsylvania, said he has not seen Fetterman at any labor-related events in years despite union support being an essential part of his political rise.

He has also been unable to meet with the senator. Before U.S. Sen. Bob Casey (D., Pa.) left office two years ago, Glover said, 30 to 40 federal workers from Pennsylvania would travel to Washington annually to meet with him. They tried the same with Fetterman as the Department of Government Efficiency was beginning to slash the federal workforce and claw back union rights. But the union was told about 20 minutes beforehand that Fetterman could not attend, Glover said.

On Thursday, Fetterman posted an AFGE statement on social media to celebrate a court order that reinstated federal prison workers’ union protections terminated by the Trump administration. Glover, who worked at the Bureau of Prisons for 25 years, said he was not aware of Fetterman working on the issue at all.

“Losing the contract for the Bureau of Prisons was traumatic,” Glover said. “We thought he ought to be doing everything he can legislatively to reinstate our contract, and that didn’t seem to happen.”

Like his public events, Fetterman’s meeting schedule is not public record. Still, he has posted images of himself with constituents and advocacy groups in his Capitol office 52 times since he entered the Senate. Some posts have come in bursts after other stories about Fetterman’s light schedule — including just last month, when the Wall Street Journal highlighted a time when Fetterman avoided meeting with paralyzed veterans and other groups.

On his first full day back in Washington after the story, Fetterman’s office posted a photo of a meeting for the first time in seven months — a group of veterans with the VFW National Legislative Committee.

Rich Cassey Jr., the group’s legislative chairman for Pennsylvania, said it was the first time he’d had the chance to sit with Fetterman in person but that his staff had always been accommodating during his twice-annual visits to Washington. During this visit, Fetterman was “gracious” and engaged as the discussion touched on bills to help connect veterans with benefits and improve their medical care, Cassey said.

“It was refreshing to speak to someone who genuinely had questions and concerns,” Cassey said, adding that Fetterman interrupted him at one point to express his concern about veteran suicide. “That doesn’t happen a lot when I’m down there.”

“It was refreshing to speak to someone who genuinely had questions and concerns.”

Fetterman dismissed the recent Wall Street Journal story in a statement to CNN as “lies, half-truths, innuendos, smears, and anonymous.” After similar reports in 2025, he told the New York Times that voting in the Senate and committee meetings were “performative” and that his public struggles with mental health were being “weaponized” against him.

His health has been a major question since his 2022 stroke and 2023 hospitalization for depression. Staffers have previously questioned whether Fetterman is seeking proper treatment, a claim that he has also rejected.

But he has also said he needs to improve. In his memoir, he wrote that he left the hospital in 2023 to find the job had three core responsibilities — “keeping up with politics in your home state,” fundraising, and “the business of legislation and being in Washington when the Senate is in session.”

“I have to do better on all three,” he wrote.

While Fetterman’s staff of more than four dozen — including those in regional offices across Pennsylvania — has stayed active with constituent services, securing federal funding for the state, and trying to craft a legislative agenda, Fetterman largely holes up in his Capitol office, lying on the couch and scrolling Apple News, several former staffers said.

“Every day was a battle that by the end of the day you were physically and emotionally battered just by getting John to do any part of his job,” a former staffer said, describing the work as “soul-crushing.”

One former staffer who recently spent several months in the office and whose role in normal circumstances would have them regularly interact with the senator said they did not interview with, meet with, or even speak to Fetterman a single time.

“The staff is just like beat down, drained, stressed, because of him,” that former staffer said. “He’s never there, and he’s never supporting you.”

“The staff is just like beat down, drained, stressed, because of him. He’s never there, and he’s never supporting you.”

Fetterman has never regularly met with Democratic House members from Pennsylvania. Socializing outside the Capitol — during fundraisers, dinners, even the congressional baseball game — has not been of interest, former staffers say.

The senator has not only avoided the extracurricular activities in Washington, but has often left town completely in the middle of session weeks. Fetterman has departed Capitol Hill immediately after voting and headed to his parents’ house in York before returning to the capital the next morning, according to four former staffers.

Former staffers say Fetterman’s driver either will take him the entire 100-mile trip or will bring him somewhere outside Washington and he will drive the rest of the way himself.

“He’ll be like, ‘Why would I give up an opportunity to have dinner with my family?’” a former staffer said. The staffer added that Fetterman won’t stay with his parents but will rent a nearby hotel room, paid for by his campaign.

Fetterman’s campaign disclosures show he has spent $8,900 for hotel stays in York since the start of his term. The campaign spent a total of $168,700 on lodging and almost $430,000 on travel in that time. An additional $172,700 was spent on four vehicles “for campaign purposes” — three in 2024 alone, according to disclosures.

Some of the car purchases are dated around the time of a 2024 car crash in Maryland that sent Fetterman and his wife, Gisele, along with a 62-year-old woman in another vehicle, to the hospital. A police report noted that Fetterman was “at fault” and traveling “well over the posted speed limit” before hitting the other vehicle. The damage done to both vehicles was “disabling,” according to the police report.

Three former aides said they later heard Fetterman say the reason the crash occurred was because he fell asleep at the wheel. Fetterman’s office did not respond to a specific question about that claim, and he has not commented publicly on the crash.

Under Federal Election Commission guidelines, federal officeholders are permitted to use campaign funds for travel and lodging expenses directly related to the individual’s official responsibilities in office or their campaign. They are not permitted for personal travel. Vehicle purchases are also permitted if the personal use of the vehicle is “insignificant in relation to the overall vehicle use.”

Fetterman’s office did not respond to questions about whether he used his campaign to pay for hotels near his parents’ home for personal visits, or if he purchased vehicles primarily for personal use.

Meanwhile, Fetterman is still fundraising with an eye toward running again after the midterms, he said during an onstage interview at the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin last month. Political observers have debated whether he will switch parties or become an independent. And while he has rejected those rumors, his campaign has collected donations from major GOP donors since last year, and new campaign solicitations have specifically targeted GOP voters as his poll numbers among Democrats have plummeted, including after his video introducing McCormick and complimenting Trump at the Republican midterm convention in September.

Former staffers say Fetterman, early in his term, would talk about potentially running for president in 2028. In the summer of 2025, he even gathered a close group of staffers at a hotel near the Capitol to float the idea of him being a vice presidential nominee, according to a former staffer present for the conversation.

Now, they say, they don’t know exactly what he will do after November.

“The people of Pennsylvania elected somebody who they thought really wanted to fight for them,” a former staffer said. “People are relying on you to do that job. It’s irresponsible, and it’s unfair to the people of Pennsylvania to not do it.”

This is Part I of two articles on U.S. Sen. John Fetterman. Part II will publish Monday, Oct. 12.