Inside Sen. John Fetterman’s office: canceled meetings, skipped votes and an outburst with Pa. teachers

The meeting started off normally enough, with representatives from Pennsylvania’s largest teachers union thanking Sen. John Fetterman for defending public education.

But as the teachers from the Pennsylvania State Education Association and the National Education Association pressed Fetterman to do more to push back on federal education cuts, he grew frustrated and his tone shifted, according to two sources familiar with the May 1 conversation. Fetterman, a 6-foot-8 former college offensive tackle, started yelling at the group of five union representatives, asking what they wanted from him as he banged his fists on the table.

The next day, an extensive New York Magazine article would come out in which former staffers, including Fetterman’s former chief of staff, Adam Jentleson, shared concerns about the Democratic senator’s mental health, whether he was taking necessary medication, and questioned his ability to do his job.

Fetterman told New York Magazine that he’s never felt better. On Tuesday, Fetterman called the story a “hit piece,” in an interview with CNN. “It involved maybe two or three and anonymous disgruntled staffers saying just absolute false things,” he said.

» READ MORE: Staffers allege a regression in Sen. John Fetterman’s recovery, tension with wife Gisele in NYMag report

Fetterman also dismissed Jentleson’s concerns about his health and told CNN’s Manu Raju that he was adhering to a strict protocol from his doctors following his treatment for clinical depression in 2023 and a stroke in 2022.

Now, as the fallout from the story continues, some of Fetterman’s behaviors once dismissed as typical of an unconventional and often introverted lawmaker are being revisited. And behind the scenes, former staffers say the teachers’ union meeting is emblematic of Fetterman’s unpredictable and inconsistent conduct across a tumultuous first few years in office.

» READ MORE: Josh Shapiro: Fetterman is best judge of his own health, ability to do his job

Half a dozen former Fetterman staffers who spoke to The Inquirer on the condition of anonymity, for fear of career repercussions working in Democratic politics, said Fetterman isn’t doing the basic job of a U.S. senator. The former staffers described a frequently absent senator, spending many hours on the Hill alone in his office, avoiding colleagues or meetings.

“It’s pretty impossible to overstate how disengaged he is,” a recently departed staffer said. “He doesn’t read memos, he’s taking very few meetings … the job is just a platform for him to run for president, that’s all he cares about.”

Months before the New York Magazine story was published, some Pennsylvania constituents and elected Democrats had complained about Fetterman’s absenteeism in the state.

» READ MORE: A viral video shows John Fetterman getting into an argument with airplane crew on flight to Pittsburgh

Fetterman has missed 29 of 236 votes since January, according to data compiled by GovTrack.us, the third worst record in the Senate. In his first two years in office, he had the lowest vote attendance record of any Senate Democrat, though that period included six weeks in 2023 when he was hospitalized and treated for depression. Among the votes he missed overall, few were very close and there were none in which he would have been the decider.

Most skipped votes were on Mondays or Thursdays, which are sometimes travel days for senators commuting to and from Washington.

Public appearances have been rare for the senior senator from Pennsylvania. Since August, he’s appeared publicly only once in the state on a visit to the Pennsylvania Farm Show in January. His visits to Philadelphia, the largest city in the commonwealth, on official Senate business have been even more rare.

Fetterman did not respond to the former staffers’ concerns that he’s not doing the job.

He defended the meeting with the PSEA as “spirited.”

“Here’s what is true: We had a spirited conversation about our collective frustration with the Trump administration’s cuts to our education system,” Fetterman said in a statement to The Inquirer. “As a proud product of PSEA, I will always support our teachers, and I will always reject anyone’s attempt to turn Pennsylvania’s public schools into a voucher program.”

Much of the New York Magazine story focused on Jentleson’s memo to Fetterman’s doctor detailing a litany of concerns that the senator wasn’t following his recovery plan, which Fetterman has since denied. It appeared to Jentleson, in the memo obtained by The Inquirer, that Fetterman had stopped going to his cardiologist and skipped getting blood work, which doctors said, according to Jentleson, was necessary to monitor his recovery.

There were other behaviors or actions that the doctor warned about that Jentleson flagged in the memo, including unhealthy eating habits, the purchase of a gun, and reckless driving.

Former staffers interviewed by The Inquirer said they had no direct knowledge of Fetterman’s medication routine, but were struck by how these behaviors were impacting his ability to do his job. They pointed to a lack of meetings, public events, and engagement on the Hill.

“It does not make me happy to say this about him, but he’s not doing the job,” one former staffer said. “And there’s not really an aspect of his job where I can point to to say, ‘He’s trying here.’”

Fetterman’s schedule — which is not public — is sparse, former staffers say.

Each week on the Hill ranges for senators in Washington, and it is not uncommon for staffers to handle most meetings with interested groups. But Fetterman spends very little time in meetings himself — about two hours in total during an average week, two former staffers said.

A spokesperson disputed that total and said that Fetterman is in “well over two hours of meetings on any given day when he’s in D.C.”

Several former staffers said Fetterman would often cancel meetings last minute, only to sit on his office couch on his phone while the meeting proceeded nearby without him.

Jentleson noted the long periods Fetterman spends scrolling on his phone in his March 2024 memo to doctors, whom the memo states had cautioned against regular social media usage.

“He is on his phone constantly and spends more time scrolling and coming up with tweets than any other activity,” Jentleson wrote in March 2024.

Much of the Senate’s work actually happens in committees, but Fetterman’s attendance at hearings is sporadic, former staffers said.

Fetterman did not attend a Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee hearing Tuesday morning about live sports streaming or an afternoon Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee hearing about forest management. Neither committee hearing had anywhere close to full member attendance.

Fetterman’s relationships on the Hill have also suffered, according to Jentleson’s memo and several former staffers. One notable friendship that deteriorated was with Sen. Bob Casey, the three-term Pennsylvania Democrat whose final two years in the chamber overlapped with Fetterman.

“He is isolated and has damaged his personal relationships,” Jentleson wrote of Fetterman. “He comes up with reasons why they are all out to get him or secretly hate him, and will launch into endless tirades about why they are all terrible and he is the only sane person.”

Asked about the claim that his relationship with Fetterman had deteriorated, Casey, in a statement to The Inquirer, said “John and I have always had different styles and approaches to the job, but we had a strong relationship while I was in the Senate.”

One former staffer said that depending on Fetterman’s mood, there has been a reticence to push him to take meetings, given that he can be prone to outbursts.

“I think this is a guy who’s struggling, and I think there are days when it’s like he feels like he’s got a handle on stuff, and other days when there’s an article mention where he’s just holed up in his office and the day basically stops,” the former staffer said.

Pennsylvanians looking to speak to Fetterman directly report mixed experiences.

The PSEA declined to comment on conversations during its private meeting last week. The union had recommended Fetterman in his 2022 Senate run.

Phil Glover, national vice president of AFGE District 3, which represents federal employees in Philadelphia, said his group has met with the senator’s staff but never Fetterman, as federal cuts have affected his members in the Philadelphia region in recent months.

“We have not been able to meet with him and he hasn’t shown up to any events in the state,” Glover said.

Chester County officials reached out to Fetterman’s office for joint meetings with officials from all four Philadelphia collar counties in early March to discuss concerns about federal funding cuts. They were told an audience with Fetterman wouldn’t be possible, but that they could meet with his staff, according to emails obtained through a records request.

In the time since, Monica Taylor, the chair of the Delaware County Council, said Fetterman’s staff has held regional meetings to answer questions from local officials. Chester County CEO David Byerman and Josh Maxwell, the chair of the county board of commissioners, traveled to Washington last week to advocate for the county’s federal dollars and met with Fetterman’s senior staff, according to a press release. Bucks County officials said they have also met with Fetterman’s staff, but not with him.

State Sen. Anthony Hardy Williams (D., Philadelphia) took a group of 15 residents from Eastwick to Washington on April 29 and met with Democratic Reps. Mary Gay Scanlon, Dwight Evans, and Republican Sen. Dave McCormick. Williams said he was told Fetterman was not available to meet with them.

The group wanted to talk to lawmakers about the termination of a $1 million grant intended to address flooding and environmental injustice in the flood-prone neighborhood.

“Somehow this guy gets on a plane to Mar-a-Lago but can’t see constituents who were his base support to get him to the Senate?” said Williams, who has criticized Fetterman’s absence in the past. “I think that’s very disrespectful to them, forget about me.”

Other local officials reported having direct access to the senator.

Neil Makhija, chair of the Montgomery County Board of Commissioners and a longtime ally of Fetterman, said he spoke directly with Fetterman after the federal government appeared to freeze $5 million in housing funds in the county in late February.

“He was immediately interested in helping us in Montco. It was a team effort, and the funds have since been released,” Makhija said.

Last month, the Arc of Pennsylvania — which advocates for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities — brought about 15 people to Fetterman’s office in Washington as part of an annual meeting during their disability policy summit. Members thanked him for his resistance to potential Medicaid cuts that would put the state’s most vulnerable people at risk, said Sherri Landis, the executive director.

“Fetterman was amazing. He really listened to the self-advocates, as well as the parents, around the impact on Medicaid. He remains very supportive,” Landis added.

Landis noted that Fetterman recently sponsored a bill for the government to fully fund its share of special education costs, an issue that Casey also supported.

Fetterman has sponsored 14 bills so far in this Congress and sponsored 36 in the last session, ranking toward the lower-middle of the pack among his Senate colleagues in both sessions, according to congressional records.

Fetterman built a brand on being an atypical politician, not one for glad-handing or traditional political decorum.

But his lack of public events is in stark contrast to his aggressive “every county, every vote,” campaign during the Democratic Senate primary in 2022, when Fetterman went into deep-red pockets of Pennsylvania.

“People pointed to it as the very model of courageous campaigning, so to retreat from that kind of behavior to making very few appearances is a troubling development,” said Ross Baker, a Senate historian and professor emeritus at Rutgers University.

There was a brief period when Fetterman traveled around the state. In the spring and summer of 2023, shortly after he was released from Walter Reed hospital, Fetterman toured a Luzerne County apple orchard and talked to mayors from around the country at a gathering in Scranton.

But since the fall of 2023, in-state visits have been scarce. The Farm Show appearance in January stands as the only public appearance he’s made in Pennsylvania in 2025.

His official Senate visits to Southeastern Pennsylvania and Philadelphia have been even more uncommon. Fetterman, who lives in Braddock, near Pittsburgh, has not had a public event in Philadelphia since campaigning for Vice President Kamala Harris here last summer.

According to several former staff members, Fetterman worried, after becoming an outspoken defender of Israel, that he’d draw protests in the progressive city.

“He didn’t want to hear any opposing viewpoints. He doesn’t want any opposition in a room with him,” a former staffer said.

Another former staffer said Fetterman has expressed indifference to the city.

“He doesn’t care to go to Philly,” the former staffer said. “If he cared at all, he would do one trip a year. He would do enough to pretend.”

Two former staff members recalled that Fetterman, in conversations with staff and in a meeting with a constituent group shortly after the fatal Northeast Philadelphia plane crash, reacted unusually apathetically to the tragedy.

“A plane went down in the middle of the street and he basically shrugged it off and could not understand why people would be freaking out,” one former staffer said.

Fetterman told The Inquirer Wednesday: “Everyone agrees this was an absolute tragedy.” A spokesperson said he immediately engaged with Mayor Cherelle L. Parker after the incident to offer assistance and shared resources for those affected on social media.

As he considers a possible 2028 presidential run, Fetterman’s travel has been focused on building a national profile. He spoke at the annual Iowa Democrats’ Liberty and Justice Celebration in 2023 and he made two trips to Israel in June 2024 and March 2025, when he and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu exchanged gifts.

Constituents, including many Democrats frustrated with Fetterman’s rightward political shift over the last year, have condemned his public absence.

Cumberland County Democratic Chair Matt Roan called for Fetterman to resign in March, blasting the senator for his lack of public town halls.

“Enough is enough. Fetterman no longer represents the interests of those who elected him,” Roan said in a PennLive op-ed. “He seems disinterested in serving in this important position.”

“Fridays without Fetterman,” a group organized by Indivisible Philadelphia, protests regularly outside of his Philadelphia office. And in March, former Democratic primary rival Conor Lamb criticized Fetterman’s decision to help promote McCormick’s book tour ahead of doing any public town halls himself. The joint book event was canceled “due to an unforeseen logistical issue” after activists threatened to protest.

Fetterman’s public appearances are in contrast to Casey, who, over 18 years in the Senate, became a habitual traveler around Pennsylvania. Newcomer McCormick also frequently posts about meetings in Pennsylvania and hosts weekly coffees with constituents on the Hill.

A subtle response to some of the criticism came toward the end of March when Fetterman held an Instagram Q&A, answering selected questions on video as he walked around the Capitol. It was a rare direct line to the senator.

“When are you leaving the Democratic Party for the independent party?” one person asked on the Q&A.

“I’ll respond to these kind of weird kinds of rumors and things,” Fetterman said. “I’m a committed lifelong Democrat and that’s not gonna change.”

It’s unclear whether Pennsylvania voters more broadly have soured on the man they overwhelmingly elected in 2022 amid the public scrutiny.

“In 2016 we used to hammer [former Republican Sen.] Pat Toomey because he did so few public events,” said Sean Coit, a Pennsylvania-based Democratic consultant who previously worked for Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware. “So I guess on one hand, like yeah, Pennsylvanians never hear from him. But I think the opposite is true. I think Pennsylvanians are probably like, ‘I hear about him on cable and social media and on the news all the time.’”

Average voters aren’t paying much attention to vote records or committee hearing attendance, Coit noted.

And Fetterman, who isn’t up for reelection until 2028 when the White House is also up for grabs, has a well-developed brand. He’s survived a lot personally and politically. So far, Democrats have largely come to his defense amid his former staffers’ recent concerns.

“I think reports of his political demise are premature,” Coit said, especially in a moment when the Democratic Party is unpopular. “Voters want to see you’re willing to stand up and piss off your own party. And God knows Fetterman has done that.”

This story has been updated to include a comment from State Sen. Anthony Hardy Williams.

Staff writers Katie Bernard, Gillian McGoldrick, Joe Yerardi, and Fallon Roth contributed to this article.