Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman publicly supports the police, but a bombshell Wall Street Journal report shows he bailed on a funeral for three officers killed in the line of duty near York, Pennsylvania—his hometown—because the ceremony was too long. According to text messages reviewed by the Journal, when an aide told Fetterman the funeral would last about three hours, Fetterman responded incredulously before writing, “This may be a nonstarter.”
This isn’t just a bad look—it’s the kind of moment that can crater a political career in real time. The three officers were Detective Sergeant Cody Becker, Detective Mark Baker, and Detective Isaiah Emenheiser, killed in York County while serving a warrant. The ceremony required seating by 11 a.m., a noon start, and formal dress. One aide characterized the whole thing as “the equivalent of 3 separate funerals.” Fetterman’s response? “This may be a nonstarter.” In other words: too much trouble.
But here’s where it gets worse for Fetterman. The Wall Street Journal article showed him shirking his committee duties and dodging face time with constituents, citing more than a dozen of his former aides and colleagues who accuse the Pennsylvania senator of shirking his congressional duties. The funeral story is just the hook—the whole piece paints a portrait of a U.S. Senator who doesn’t want to do his job. Fetterman schedules very few meetings and is likely to cancel when he does. Former staffers told the Journal he’s taken to ducking his head into committee meetings to be marked as “present” before leaving after a minute or so. He officially attended 26 of 31 committee hearings this year, though transcripts show he didn’t speak in 20 of them. That’s not service—that’s phoning it in.
The response from his own party was swift and brutal. Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pennsylvania) wrote on X: “John Fetterman is a disgrace. Our state deserves better than a lazy trust fund baby who is too lazy to do the job.” Other members of the Pennsylvania delegation denounced the behavior, with some promising to oust Fetterman if he decides to run for reelection in 2028. That’s not opposition—that’s mutiny from his own side.
There’s also the bizarre timing of all this. In June, three paralyzed military veterans traveled from rural Pennsylvania to meet with Fetterman about health care legislation, but the senator canceled on them, instructing staff to say he had a stomach bug, before appearing for a live interview on Fox News that day. So he was sick for disabled vets but healthy enough for cable news? And last September, he reportedly dismissed children’s hospital officials who were visiting D.C. to discuss vaccines and Medicaid cuts, quipping that they just wanted “free trips” to the capital. That’s not leadership—that’s contempt for the people who elected him.
The bigger picture: Fetterman once marketed himself as different. The hoodie-wearing populist. The guy who came up as a working-class mayor. Once touted by progressives as a hoodie-wearing populist darling, Fetterman’s popularity with Democrats has soured this year, particularly after he joined Republicans on Iran war powers votes and indicated he could leave the party if leadership makes opposition to Israel central to its platform. So the transformation from “one of us” to “I can’t be bothered with a three-hour funeral for cops in my hometown” tells you everything about what happens when populists get comfortable in DC.
The 16BARS take: Fetterman didn’t just skip a cop funeral—he got caught on texts not giving a damn, then his own party threw him under the bus. When Brendan Boyle is calling you a disgrace and talking about primary challenges, you’re not having a bad week. You’re having a career-ending one.
