8 May 2025

Sen. John Fetterman raises alarms with outburst at meeting with union officials, AP sources say

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By MARC LEVY

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania was meeting last week with representatives from a teachers union in his home state when things quickly devolved.

Before long, Fetterman began repeating himself, shouting and questioning why “everybody is mad at me,” “why does everyone hate me, what did I ever do” and slamming his hands on a desk, according to one person who was briefed on what occurred.

As the meeting deteriorated, a staff member moved to end it and ushered the visitors into the hallway, where she broke down crying. The staffer was comforted by the teachers who were themselves rattled by Fetterman’s behavior, according to a second person who was briefed separately on the meeting.

The interaction at Fetterman’s Washington office, described to The Associated Press by the two people who spoke about it on the condition of anonymity, came the day before New York Magazine published a story in which former staff and political advisers to Fetterman aired concerns about the senator’s mental health.

That story included a 2024 letter, also obtained by the AP, in which Fetterman’s one-time chief of staff Adam Jentleson told a neuropsychiatrist who had treated Fetterman for depression that the senator appeared to be off his recovery plan and was exhibiting alarming behavior, including a tendency toward “long, rambling, repetitive and self-centered monologues.”

Asked about the meeting with teachers union representatives, Fetterman said in a statement through his office that they “had a spirited conversation about our collective frustration with the Trump administration’s cuts to our education system.” He also said he “will always support our teachers, and I will always reject anyone’s attempt to turn Pennsylvania’s public schools into a voucher program.”

Fetterman earlier this week brushed off the New York Magazine story as a “one-source hit piece and some anonymous sources, so there’s nothing new.” Asked by a reporter in a Senate corridor what he would say to people who are concerned about him, Fetterman said: “They’re not. They’re actually not concerned. It’s a hit piece. There’s no news.”

Reached by telephone, Aaron Chapin, the president of the Pennsylvania State Education Association who was in the meeting with Fetterman, said he didn’t want to discuss what was a private conversation.

Surviving a stroke, battling depression

The teachers union encounter adds to the questions being raised about Fetterman’s mental health and behavior barely three years after he survived a stroke on the 2022 campaign trail that he said almost killed him. That was followed by a bout with depression that landed him in Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for six weeks, barely a month after he was sworn into the Senate.

The scrutiny also comes at a time when Fetterman, now serving third year of his term, is being criticized by many rank-and-file Democrats in his home state for being willing to cooperate with President Donald Trump, amid Democrats’ growing alarm over Trump’s actions and agenda.

Fetterman — who has been diagnosed with cardiomyopathy, in which the heart muscle becomes weakened and enlarged, and auditory processing disorder, a complication from the stroke — has talked openly about his struggle with depression and urged people to get help.

In November, he told podcast host Joe Rogan that he had recovered and fended off thoughts of harming himself.

“I was at the point where I was really, you know, in a very dark place. And I stayed in that game and I am staying in front of you right now and having this conversation,” Fetterman said.

But some who have worked closely with Fetterman question whether his recovery is complete.

In the 2024 letter to Dr. David Williamson, Jentleson warned that Fetterman was not seeing his doctors, had pushed out the people who were supposed to help him stay on his recovery plan and might not be taking his prescribed medications. Jentleson also said Fetterman had been driving recklessly and exhibiting paranoia, isolating him from colleagues.

“Overall, over the last nine months or so, John has dismantled the early-warning system we all agreed upon when he was released,” Jentleson wrote. “He has picked fights with each person involved in that system and used those fights as excuses to push them out and cut them off from any knowledge about his health situation.”

Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, where Williamson works, declined to make him available for an interview, citing privacy and confidentiality laws protecting patient medical information.

A lone wolf in the Senate

Fetterman has long been a wild card in the political realm, forging a career largely on his own, independently from the Democratic Party.

As a small-town mayor in Braddock, the plainspoken Fetterman became a minor celebrity for his bare-knuckled progressive politics, his looks — he’s 6-foot-8 and tattooed with a shaved head — and his unconventional efforts to put the depressed former steel town back on the map.

He endorsed the insurgent Democrat Bernie Sanders in 2016’s presidential primary and ran from the left against the party-backed Democrat in 2016’s Senate primary. In 2020, when he was lieutenant governor, he became a top surrogate on cable TV news shows for Joe Biden’s presidential bid and gathered a national political following that made him a strong small-dollar fundraiser.

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Elected to the Senate in 2022, he has made waves with his casual dress — hoodies and gym shorts — at work and at formal events and his willingness to chastise other Democrats.

Fetterman returned to the Senate after his hospitalization in 2023 a much more outgoing lawmaker, frequently joking with his fellow senators and engaging with reporters in the hallways with the assistance of an iPad or iPhone that transcribes conversations in real time.

Yet two years later, Fetterman is still something of a loner in the Senate.

He has separated himself from many of his fellow Democrats on Israel policy and argued at times that his party needs to work with, not against, Trump. He met with Trump and Trump’s nominees — and voted for some — when other Democrats wouldn’t.

He has stood firmly with Democrats in other cases and criticized Trump on some issues, such as trade and food aid.

One particularly head-scratching video of Fetterman emerged earlier this year in which he was on a flight to Pittsburgh apparently arguing with a pilot over his seatbelt.

Despite fallout with progressives over his staunch support of Israel in its war in Gaza, Fetterman was still an in-demand personality last year to campaign in the battleground state of Pennsylvania for Biden and, after Biden dropped his reelection bid, Vice President Kamala Harris.

Since Trump won November’s election — and Pennsylvania — things have changed. Many one-time supporters have turned on Fetterman over his softer approach to Trump and his willingness to criticize fellow Democrats for raising alarm bells.

It nevertheless brought Fetterman plaudits.

Bill Maher, host of the political talk show “Real Time with Bill Maher,” suggested that Fetterman should run for president in 2028. Conservatives — who had long made Fetterman a target for his progressive politics — have sprung to Fetterman’s defense.

Still, Democrats in Pennsylvania say they are hearing from people worried about him.

“People are concerned about his health,” said Sharif Street, the state’s Democratic Party chairman. “They want to make sure he’s OK. People care about him. There’s a lot of love for him out there.”

Associated Press reporter Mary Clare Jalonick in Washington contributed to this report. 

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8 May 2025

The Perils of Offshoring Justice

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President Donald Trump’s recent Oval Office photo-op with El Salvador  President Nayib Bukele, who calls himself the “world’s coolest dictator”, was staged to unveil a shiny new “alliance” against crime. Both leaders congratulated each other for achieving something U.S. courts forbid at home: rounding up alleged gang members (including longtime U.S. residents with pending protection orders) and locking them away offshore. When pressed about a Maryland man who had been deported in defiance of a court ruling, Bukele shrugged off the case, implying he couldn’t risk letting a “terrorist” back into the United States—and Trump nodded in approval. The exchange distilled a stark message: human rights are expendable when the political spectacle is good television.

Since March 2022, El Salvador has operated under a rolling “state of exception” that suspends basic constitutional rights. In just three years, more than 110,000 Salvadorans—nearly 2 percent of the country’s population—have been put behind bars. This draconian crackdown gives El Salvador the highest incarceration rate in the world. Official homicide rates have indeed plummeted by over 80 percent under Bukele’s campaign, but that drop has come in tandem with the collapse of due process. Mass arrests are often indiscriminate, mass hearings process hundreds of defendants at once, and detainees meet lawyers only fleetingly, if at all. At least 261 prisoners perished inside Salvadoran prisons during the crackdown, according to the human rights group Cristosal. Reports have emerged of abuse, torture, and medical neglect for those swept up in Bukele’s anti-gang dragnet. 

El Salvador’s flagship “mega-prison,” the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), epitomizes President Bukele’s hardline approach. Built to hold 40,000 inmates in eight fortress-like pavilions, CECOT keeps prisoners in near-total isolation. Inmates receive no family visits and are never allowed outdoors; there are no workshops or educational programs to rehabilitate offenders. Bukele’s own justice minister once remarked that those sent to CECOT will never return to their communities – that the only way out is in a coffin. Harsh images of tattooed prisoners hunched together, shuffling in shackles, are routinely broadcast on government social media. These dystopian visuals have become Bukele’s calling card in the name of “security.”

What began as a Salvadoran experiment in iron-fisted policing has now mutated into a formal bilateral program. The U.S. government is actively funding and facilitating the offshoring of detainees to Bukele’s prison state. U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen, who recently visited the country,that the Trump administration had quietly offered to wire about $15 million to El Salvador to underwrite the costs of warehousing U.S. deportees (with at least $4 million already spent). News reports have also confirmed an initial $6 million agreement for the first year of this arrangement. Custody of detainees effectively shifts the instant a charter plane lifts off U.S. soil—once airborne, shackled migrants become Bukele’s prisoners, placed beyond the reach of American courts or oversight.

Bukele’s “iron fist” security model is not contained to El Salvador—it’s becoming a regional export. Honduras has announced plans to build a 20,000-bed mega-prison of its own, explicitly citing Bukele’s success as inspiration. In Ecuador, President Daniel Noboa boasts that mirroring Salvadoran tactics (mass detentions and emergency measures) helped shave dozens of percentage points off the murder rate in Guayaquil, and arguably helped him secure reelection. Analysts at the International Institute for Strategic Studies warned of a “due process contagion.” Once mass incarceration and militarized crackdowns become the go-to metric for public safety, governments across the region begin normalizing states of exception, purging high courts, and erasing judicial oversight in the name of fighting crime. In other words, democratic erosion becomes contagious.

Far from acting as a brake on this trend, the United States has become an accelerant. By bankrolling El Salvador’s excesses and broadcasting the dramatic footage for domestic political gain, Washington is sending a signal that rights-free “security” can be not only tolerated but internationally legitimized. Each cash transfer tells regional leaders that outsourcing mass detention is a billable service; each made-for-TV deportation convoy gives authoritarians a propaganda boost. This feedback loop reinforces ever-harsher tactics and sidelines voices (judges, journalists, human rights defenders) that insist on constitutional limits. American credibility on the rule of law erodes when taxpayer dollars subsidize abuses that even the U.S. State Department has condemned. 

This extraordinary deportation-to-CECOT pipeline might sound like a distant foreign affair, but Texas is directly entangled in its operation and stands to bear some of the fallout. The logistics of these renditions run straight through the Lone Star State. In mid-March, immigration officials quietly shuttled hundreds of detainees from across the country to a small airport in Harlingen, Texas, as part of the first mass transfer to El Salvador. Charter flights carrying Venezuelan and Central American migrants departed from Dallas, El Paso, Phoenix, and other cities, all converging on Harlingen as a staging ground. Within 24 hours, multiple jets then took off from the Texas border city to  El Salvador, delivering planeloads of shackled men into Bukele’s custody. Such Saturday deportation flights are highly unusual, as is the covert route through Harlingen, according to a watchdog advocacy group that tracks ICE Air charters.

On the ground, Texas families are feeling the human toll. Many of those swept up have deep roots in U.S. communities, and their sudden removal leaves broken homes behind. Children come home from school to find a parent gone, with no prospect of visitation, given that their loved one is now locked in a foreign prison thousands of miles away. Families and legal advocates are left scrambling, often with scant information—the detainees essentially disappear into CECOT, their fate largely in the hands of Salvadoran guards. 

There are tangible economic stakes for Texas. Our state hosts one of the country’s largest Salvadoran communities—roughly 15 percent of the entire U.S.-Salvadoran diaspora—and their Texas paychecks flow south week after week. In 2023, Salvadorans living abroad sent a record $8.18 billion home—about 24 percent of El Salvador’s GDP—and an estimated $1.1 billion of that originated in Texas alone, largely from the Houston and Dallas–Fort Worth metropolitan areas. Those Texas-earned dollars stock neighborhood tiendas, pay school fees, and keep household budgets afloat from San Salvador to La Unión. When breadwinners in Houston’s Gulfton district or Dallas’s Oak Cliff are yanked from their jobs and diverted to a Salvadoran cell, that lifeline snaps—impoverishing relatives abroad while simultaneously draining spending power and local tax revenue from communities across Harris, Dallas, and Hidalgo counties.

Texans should understand that this isn’t just someone else’s problem. Our state has a stake in this drama. It’s our tax dollars helping pay for secret flights out of our airports, our neighbors and coworkers who are disappearing into overseas prisons, and our nation’s credibility on the line. We know from history that democracies endure by rejecting the false choice between security and freedom. A durable social contract protects both. 

By contrast, outsourcing constitutional constraints for short-term optics is a tempting shortcut – but one whose costs will boomerang. The longer the U.S. bankrolls and applauds this “iron fist” illusion, the faster that illusion will spread across a region already battered by insecurity and disillusionment with democracy. Ultimately, sacrificing the rule of law for a made-for-TV spectacle is a devil’s bargain. It may offer momentary political gain, but it leaves behind broken families, weakened institutions, and a more dangerous hemisphere for everyone, including here in Texas. 

The post The Perils of Offshoring Justice appeared first on The Texas Observer.

8 May 2025

Judge temporarily blocks Trump administration’s new transit and homelessness grant conditions

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By GENE JOHNSON, Associated Press

SEATTLE (AP) — A federal judge on Wednesday temporarily blocked the Trump administration from imposing new conditions on hundreds of millions of dollars worth of mass transit grants for the Seattle area or homelessness services grants for Boston, New York, San Francisco and other local governments.

The new conditions were designed to further President Donald Trump’s efforts to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion policies; coerce local officials into assisting with the administration’s mass deportation efforts; and cut off information about lawful abortions, according to the lawsuit filed last week by eight cities and counties.

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The administration argued that Senior U.S. District Judge Barbara Rothstein in Seattle did not have jurisdiction over the lawsuit because it was essentially a contract dispute that should have been brought in the Court of Federal Claims — an argument the judge rejected.

Rothstein wrote that the local governments had shown they were likely to win the case, because the conditions being imposed on the grants had not been approved by Congress, were not closely related to the purposes of the grants and would not make the administration of the grants more efficient.

“Defendants have put Plaintiffs in the position of having to choose between accepting conditions that they believe are unconstitutional, and risking the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grant funding, including funding that they have already budgeted and are committed to spending,” Rothstein wrote.

Her order blocks U.S. Housing and Urban Development and the Federal Transportation Administration for 14 days from enforcing the new grant conditions or withholding or delaying funding awarded under the grants. The local jurisdictions said they would seek a longer-term block in the meantime.

The Trump administration did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

King County, which includes Seattle, sued over changes to grant conditions for homelessness services as well as mass transit funding that helps pay for maintenance of the region’s light rail system. Boston and New York, Pierce and Snohomish Counties in Washington, the city and county of San Francisco, and Santa Clara County in California all sued over the changes to homelessness services grants.

“Today’s ruling is a positive first step in our challenge to federal overreach,” King County Executive Shannon Braddock said in a statement. “We will continue to stand up against unlawful actions to protect our residents and the services they rely on.”

The conditions highlighted in the plaintiff’s restraining order motion included barring grant recipients from using the funding in a way that promotes “illegal immigration or abets policies that seek to shield illegal aliens from deportation.” Another condition bars them from using the funding to “promote elective abortions.”

AP reporter Hallie Golden in Seattle contributed to this report.

8 May 2025

Wall Street rises with hopes for trade deals that could forestall a recession

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By STAN CHOE, Associated Press Business Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks are rising Thursday after President Donald Trump said he was set to announce an agreement on trade with the United Kingdom, the first of what Wall Street hopes will be enough to keep a recession from hitting the economy.

The S&P 500 was 0.6% higher in early trading and on track for an 11th gain in the last 13 days. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 253 points, or 0.6%, as of 9:35 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.9% higher.

Stocks have been swinging for weeks with hopes that Trump could reach deals with other countries that would lower his tariffs, which many investors believe would cause a recession if left unchecked. Trump said Thursday that the U.K. agreement, which is set to be announced at 10 a.m. Eastern, is “a full and comprehensive one.”

“Many other deals, which are in serious stages of negotiation, to follow!” he added on his Truth Social account.

It could be an encouraging start, and analysts said they’re curious to see if it will affect the 10% tariffs that Trump placed on all imports coming into the United States on “Liberation Day.” But bigger trading partners could offer bigger hurdles, including China.

The world’s second-largest economy again on Thursday called on the United States to cancel its tariffs, ahead of high-level talks between the world’s two largest economies that could take place this weekend. That followed Trump’s saying on Wednesday that he wouldn’t reduce his 145% tariffs on Chinese goods as a condition for negotiations.

Besides hopes for deals on trade, strong profit reports from U.S. companies have also helped to drive the S&P 500 closer to its all-time high set in February.

Tapestry joined the list Thursday, and its stock climbed 5% after the company behind the Coach and Kate Spade brands reported better profit and revenue than expected. It credited new, younger customers in North America, among other things.

Molson Coors, though, described a different landscape when it released its latest quarterly results, which fell short of analysts’ expectations. Its stock fell 7.4%.

“The global macroeconomic environment is volatile,” CEO Gavin Hattersley said. “Uncertainty around the effects of geopolitical events and global trade policy, including the impacts on economic growth, consumer confidence and expectations around inflation, and currencies has pressured the beer industry and consumption trends.”

It became the latest company to either lower or pull its financial forecasts for 2025 given the uncertainty.

Krispy Kreme tumbled 24.3% after withdrawing its forecasts for the full year. The doughnut seller said it made the move in part because of “macroeconomic softness” and because it’s pausing the rollout of sales of its doughnuts at more McDonald’s restaurants.

The U.S. economy has remained OK so far, with the Federal Reserve saying Wednesday that it still looks to be running at a solid rate underneath the surface. But pessimism has soured sharply among U.S. households because of tariffs, and the fear is that all the uncertainty created by them could be enough to force the economy into a recession.

A couple mixed reports on the economy Thursday did little to clear the caution. One said slightly fewer U.S. workers applied for unemployment benefits last week. But another one said productivity for U.S. workers weakened by more than economists expected during the first three months of the year. That could keep upward pressure on inflation, when tariffs could be set to raise prices for all kinds of imported products.

Treasury yields rose following the reports, and the 10-year yield climbed to 4.29% from 4.26% late Wednesday.

In stock markets abroad, the FTSE 100 slipped 0.1% in London after the Bank of England cut its main interest rate by a quarter of a percentage point.

Indexes were modestly higher across much of the rest of Europe and Asia.

AP Business Writers Yuri Kageyama and Matt Ott contributed.