"TRUMP'S FAVORITE DEMOCRAT❞

Grassroots progressives used to love John Fetterman. Now they wonder what happened to him.

- BY ABBY VESOULIS

IN EARLY APRIL, Tracy Baton helped organize a "Hands Off!" rally protesting President Donald Trump in downtown Pittsburgh that was attended by more than 6,000 people. But she wasn't just angry at the president-she was also incensed by her state's Democratic senator, John Fetterman. So was the crowd.

"Fetterman?" one speaker yelled from a stage near the steps of City Hall.

"Jagoff!" protesters shouted back in unison.

"Fetterman?" "Jagoff!" The term is Pittsburghese for "jerk." "It means you've broken the social contract," says Baton, a 62-year-old social worker. "It's a neighbor who you know won't give you a cup of sugar." Or, in Fetterman's case, it describes a politician who campaigned as a Bernie Sanders-loving populist and vowed to help Democrats advance their priorities past the party's two obstructionists, Sens. Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin-only to reprise their roles once in Congress and cozy up with Republicans.

"He ran in the 2022 primaries against Joe Manchin, and now he's become Joe Manchin," says Mike Mikus, a longtime Democratic operative in Pennsylvania.

"An unprincipled Manchin." He's sided with Republicans on denying immigrants due process, voted to confirm a 2020 election denier to lead the Department of Justice, and approved a Gor budget that freed Trump to slash spending without oversight.

His recent actions have enraged progressives, mystified colleagues, and alarmed former and current aides.

Even Conor Lamb, who ran to Fetterman's right in Pennsylvania's 2022 Democratic Senate primary, doesn't know what to make of the metamorphosis.

"John has changed who he was, and he's never really adequately explained that," the former congressman says.