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The 'Primary Fetterman' Website Is Now Live
"People across Pennsylvania did not put time, money, and energy into supporting his campaign just to elect a Democrat who votes against our interests time and time again," said a campaigner for the Working Families Party.
Jan 16, 2026
The Pennsylvania Working Families Party rolled out an online "hub" on Friday to support a primary challenger to the state's US senator, John Fetterman.
The WFP, an independent party that often supports Democrats with a populist economic agenda, backed Fetterman's 2022 Senate bid when he ran in the general election as a champion of many progressive causes. But the group now says he "sold out working Pennsylvanians" after pivoting hard to the right on key issues.
It launched the campaign to oust him in November after he voted with Republicans to reopen the government without an extension of Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies, which is expected to spike health insurance premiums for over 22 million Americans this year.
“While Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) is supporting Trump’s use of American tax dollars to ‘run’ Venezuela or buy Greenland, 500,000 Pennsylvanians are about to see their healthcare premiums rise because of the Republican budget bill he supported,” said Nick Gavio, mid-Atlantic communications director for the Working Families Party and a former Fetterman staffer. “People across Pennsylvania did not put time, money, and energy into supporting his campaign just to elect a Democrat who votes against our interests time and time again. We need new leadership.”
The website provides past Fetterman donors who feel betrayed by the senator with a form letter to "request a refund" of past contributions from the campaign. It also contains a "Sell-out Tracker," which seeks to "track every bad position" he has taken.
In addition to his vote to reopen the government, the group notes that Fetterman has voted to confirm 50% of Trump's Cabinet picks. He was the only Democrat who voted to confirm Attorney General Pam Bondi and Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, and one of the very few to vote in favor of Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem.
It also accuses him of "betraying vulnerable people" by supporting Republican legislation that eliminates due process for undocumented immigrants, cheering US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) amid its mass deportation crusade, and giving full-throated support to Israel's genocidal war in Gaza and Trump's strikes on Iran.
The site also highlights Fetterman's tendency to neglect the basic duties of his job as a senator, which he has admitted he skips to spend more time with his family and because he finds them “overwhelmingly procedural.”
Fetterman has one of the worst attendance records in the Senate, having missed over 100 votes since April 2024 and skipped 44 out of 45 meetings for committees he was assigned to between January and May 2025.
He has also said he hosts very few town halls in order to avoid protesters, who have shown up to voice their discontent with his support for Israel, among other controversial positions.
As the site points out, while some other Democrats fought tooth and nail in a losing effort to stop Republicans from passing massive safety-net cuts in this summer's budget reconciliation package, Fetterman told Politico, "I just want to go home" and complained that he'd missed his family's trip to the beach.
So far, no prominent Pennsylvania Democrats have offered themselves up as potential primary challengers for Fetterman, who comes up for reelection in 2028.
Top names, including former Rep. Conor Lamb, who ran against Fetterman in the 2022 Democratic primary, and Philadelphia area Rep. Madeleine Dean have said they would not challenge Fetterman if he ran for another term.
Meanwhile, Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), who called Fetterman "Trump's favorite Democrat" last year, told NOTUS he'd be open to running against him.
The Pennsylvania Working Families Party said it is collecting donations that it will use to help "identify, recruit, and elect a real working class champion to replace Fetterman in the US Senate."
The group told NBC News that it has already amassed more than 425 people interested in either running against Fetterman themselves or volunteering their time or donating to help the effort to unseat him.
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Working Families Party Seeks Banner Year as Trump-Led GOP Appears Poised for ‘Landslide Electoral Defeat’
"I don't think there’s been a better and more right time for a third party to emerge in this country that speaks to the interest of everyday working people," said Maurice Mitchell, national director of the Working Families Party.
Dec 29, 2025
The Working Families Party is gearing up to have a banner year in the 2026 midterms at a time when political trends show the Republican Party led by President Donald Trump heading for a major loss.
The party, which is now active in 18 states, is preparing to "ramp up its involvement in primary elections, supporting candidates that emphasize working-class politics and seek to disrupt the political status quo," according to a Monday report in the Guardian.
The Working Families Party (WFP) had a number of victories in 2025, highlighted by its election of democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York City.
Maurice Mitchell, national director of the WFP, told the Guardian that he thinks now is the right time for a populist progressive insurgency given that both Democrats' and Republicans' brands are underwater with US voters.
"Less and less people are identifying as being a Democrat or Republican," he said. "I don't think there’s been a better and more right time for a third party to emerge in this country that speaks to the interest of everyday working people. I believe that our time has come."
Although the WFP has traditionally worked within the confines of Democratic Party primary politics, the party this year elected some candidates in the New Jersey General Assembly that lacked backing from state Democratic Party bigwigs.
"This is really the first time that there’s been Working Families candidates that ran outside of the Democratic Party structure, and so we’re building what that future looks like and what it means," Katie Brennan, a New Jersey assemblywoman-elect endorsed by the WFP who won without official Democratic Party backing, told the Guardian. “They've grown and have been making progress year in and year out, and this next year will be big for us. Now we’re in the statehouse, and what does that mean? I think it’ll continue to bring attention to the Working Families party."
One issue that the WFP hopes will propel its candidates to victory in 2026 is the nationwide backlash to artificial intelligence data centers.
In an announcement made earlier this month, the WFP said it is recruiting candidates to run against building AI data centers, which have been blamed for spiking utility bills and draining water resources, in their local communities.
“Billionaires are getting richer from data centers, while working people see their electricity and water bills go through the roof,” said Ravi Mangla, national press secretary for the WFP. "Fortunately, regular people are joining with their neighbors to push back against these big tech takeovers. We’re inviting local leaders who are fighting back to consider running for the seats where decisions about data centers are being made.”
Another reason the party may sense an opportunity is that the Trump-led GOP appears headed for brutal elections in 2026.
Polling expert G. Elliot Morris published an analysis on Monday showing that Trump's current net approval rating of -16 percentage points will likely translate into a "landslide electoral defeat" for Republicans next year.
Morris added that Trump's approval on the issue of inflation was "downright catastrophic," and noted that the president has been bleeding support even in states that voted for him by decisive margins last year.
"Trump’s approval rating is not just underwater because of Democratic resistance," he observed. "Lots of independents and Republicans disapprove of how he’s running the country, too. In fact, the decline from Trump’s vote margin in 2024 is steeper in redder parts of the country."
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White House Working to Criminalize Left-Wing Dissent as 'Domestic Terror' in Wake of Kirk Murder
"We must end any form of political violence—and reject those who try to exploit it," one Democratic congresswoman asserted.
Sep 15, 2025
Senior Trump administration officials on Monday made fresh threats to crack down on a nonexistent left-wing "domestic terror movement" following last week's assassination of Charlie Kirk—a move that critics called an attempt to exploit the far-right firebrand's murder to advance an authoritarian agenda targeting nonviolent opposition.
Even as investigators work to determine the motive of Kirk's killer, members of Trump's inner circle and supporters have amplified an unfounded narrative of a coordinated leftist movement targeting conservatives.
According to The New York Times:
On Monday, two senior administration officials, who spoke anonymously to describe the internal planning, said that Cabinet secretaries and federal department heads were working to identify organizations that funded or supported violence against conservatives. The goal, they said, was to categorize left-wing activity that led to violence as domestic terrorism, an escalation that critics said could lay the groundwork for crushing anti-conservative dissent more broadly.
Appearing on the latest episode of "The Charlie Kirk Show" podcast—which was guest hosted by US Vice President JD Vance—White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said that "we are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security, and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle, and destroy these networks and make America safe again for the American people."
"It will happen, and we will do it in Charlie’s name," Miller vowed.
Vance said during the podcast that he wanted to explore “all of the ways that we’re trying to figure out how to prevent this festering violence that you see on the far left from becoming even more and more mainstream."
“You have the crazies on the far left who are saying, ‘Oh, Stephen Miller and JD Vance, they’re going to go after constitutionally protected speech,'” the vice president said. “We’re going to go after the network that foments, facilitates, and engages in violence."
Vance, who like Trump and numerous supporters claim to champion free speech, also took aim at "people who are celebrating" Kirk's killing.
Another unnamed administration official told the Times Monday that government agencies would be investigating people, including those accused of vandalizing Tesla electric vehicles and dealerships and allegedly assaulting federal immigration agents, in an effort to implicate US leftists in political violence.
Vance and Miller's threats ignored right-wing violence—which statistically outpaces left-wing attacks—including the recent assassinations of Democratic Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark Hortman, who were murdered in June by a right-wing masked gunman disguised as a police officer.
Investigative reporter Jason Paladino reported last week that the US Department of Justice apparently removed an academic study previously published on the National Institute for Justice's online library showing that "since 1990, far-right extremists have committed far more ideologically motivated homicides than far-left or radical Islamist extremists, including 227 events that took more than 520 lives" versus "42 ideologically motivated attacks that took 78 lives" committed by "far-left extremists."
“Militant, nationalistic, white supremacist violent extremism has increased in the United States. In fact, the number of far-right attacks continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism.”The Trump DOJ scrubbed this study from their website.
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— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan.bsky.social) September 12, 2025 at 6:43 PM
Responding to Miller's remarks, New Republic staff writer Greg Sargent noted on social media that "Stephen Miller was directly involved in one of the largest acts of organized domestic political violence the United States has seen in modern times, the January 6 [2021] insurrection."
Congresswoman Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) weighed in Monday on Miller's attempt to exploit Kirk's murder, writing on the social media site Bluesky that "it's never acceptable to kill someone for their political beliefs. But the Trump [administration] exploiting the shooting of Charlie Kirk to follow their authoritarian instincts and crack down on the left is incredibly disturbing."
"We must end any form of political violence—and reject those who try to exploit it," she added.
Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom noted Monday on social media that Miller "has already publicly labeled the Democratic Party as a terrorist organization."
"This isn’t about crime and safety," Newsom added. "It’s about dismantling our democratic institutions. We cannot allow acts of political violence to be weaponized and used to threaten tens of millions of Americans."
The progressive Working Families Party (WFP) said Monday on social media that "JD Vance and Stephen Miller want to use the horrifying murder of Charlie Kirk to target and dismantle pro-democracy groups."
"Their comments call to mind some of the darkest periods in US history," WFP continued. "They're dividing people based on what box we ticked on our voter registration."
Vance and Miller "want to stoke fear and resentment to justify their un-American crackdowns on free speech, mass abductions of working people, and military takeovers of our cities," WFP added. "This isn't going to fly. We’ve survived crises like this before as a country, and we can choose to live in a place where our political freedoms are protected, where we settle disagreements with words not weapons, and where no one has to fear losing a loved one to gun violence."
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