As Democrats Try to Regroup, Fetterman Charts Own Path

As Senate Democrats last week agonized over a looming vote that could boost deportations of immigrants living unlawfully in the U.S., the first Democrat to sponsor the Republican-led measure wasn't even in the room.

Instead, Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania was meeting last Thursday behind a different set of closed doors with Pam Bondi, President-elect Donald Trump's pick for attorney general. Television crews waited outside, eager to ask Fetterman about the news that he planned to visit Trump at Mar-a-Lago, becoming the only Democratic senator so far known to meet with him after the election.

"If somebody is shocked or freaked out if I'm going to take a conversation with the president, I'd like to remind you that I'm not just for Democrats-I'm for everyone," Fetterman said in an interview.

After all, he said, "Most Pennsylvanians chose Donald Trump as our next president." After the meeting, Trump told the Washington Examiner that Fetterman was "a fascinating man, and his wife is lovely."

Trump went on to say that "he's not liberal or conservative. He's just a commonsense person, which is beautiful."

The unconventional senator, whose political stances have sometimes exasperated progressives, has emerged as the Democrat most open to working with the incoming administration.

Last week, his endorsement of the immigration bill marked the start of a stampede of Democrats to open debate on the measure, while also raising concern within the party that lawmakers were tacking too far right.

As Democrats regroup following the loss of the Senate and the White House, Fetterman argues that some of Trump's ideas deserve consideration.

He cautions against what he casts as overblown Democratic rhetoric that Trump will serve as an autocrat bent on purging the federal workforce in favor of loyalists. The senator also signaled he could provide votes for Trump's cabinet choices.

"It's like our phasers are set at freakout," Fetterman said of Democrats, using a "Star Trek" reference.

"You have a right to react any way you want, but I'm not that guy, and I am here to have conversations with our nominees and look for the ways we can possibly be a part of the dialogue." Last Thursday alone, Fetterman met with three Trump selections, including Bondi as well as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be America's top health official and South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem to serve as secretary of homeland security.

In his sitdown with Bondi, Fetterman said he found common ground with the former Florida attorney general over the idea that federal prosecutions had targeted political opponents, an idea other Democrats have long portrayed as baseless Republican spin to defend Trump.

"We can't weaponize our judicial system for political gain, which both sides have engaged in," the 6-foot-8-inch Fetterman said, citing both the case against Trump for paying hush money to a porn star and separate cases against President Biden's son Hunter on tax and gun charges.

"Our collective trust in the system has already suffered." Fetterman has been charting his own course since taking office in 2023, a period marked by hospitalization tied to a stroke and depression. He sided with more-hawkish Republicans on America's stance toward aid for Israel in the midst of concern about civilian deaths in Gaza-marking a break with progressives that has since widened.

In the new Congress, Fetterman was the first of two Democrats toco-sponsor the immigration bill known as the Laken Riley Actnamed for a 22-year-old nursing student in Athens, Ga., who was murdered by a Venezuelan national living in the U.S. unlawfully.

That bill is providing an early sign that Democrats are reconsidering their stances.

Last Thursday, the Senate voted 84-9 to open debate on the bill, with the support of 33 members of the Senate Democratic caucus, including Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

Some Democrats said they want amendments to the legislation, airing concern over due process and protecting the socalled Dreamers who came to the U.S. as children without authorized status, so passage remains uncertain, given the chamber's 60-vote threshold for most legislation.

"There was a blinding flash of common sense," Fetterman told reporters when asked to account for the shift among Democrats, drawing a cheer of support from a nearby Senate Republican. Last year Schumer declined to bring the same measure up in the Senate after it passed the House.

Some Democrats said there should be limits to how far the party should go.

"If we don't think about the consequences of the bills that we're sponsoring, that is not the kind of shift that I can support," said Sen. Mazie Hirono (D., Hawaii), who voted no on the immigration bill. She cited language that would require the Homeland Security Department to detain certain people without the legal right to be in the U.S. when they have been arrested for-but not convicted of burglary, theft, larceny or shoplifting. Such detentions can be a precursor to deportation.

Fetterman said he sees policy regarding Israel, China and the borders as areas where he might be able to work with Trump. Fetterman cited his own wife's background as a Dreamer, but also his concern about the number of migrants who have entered the U.S. illegally. His wife is now a citizen.

"Being pro-immigration doesn't mean you're pro for every migrant, and we have to have judgment on who should belong," he said.

Fetterman has a solidly Democratic voting record. He introduced 35 bills last Congress, when Democrats were in control, but only one-to name a post office-became law, according to the Center for Effective Lawmaking.