Senator John Fetterman is once again breaking with his own party, and this time he is not mincing words.
After Senate Democrats, with the lone exception of Fetterman, refused to back a funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security, a partial government shutdown began at midnight Friday. Under a deal brokered in part by the White House, Congress passed legislation to fund the rest of the federal government through the end of the fiscal year, but DHS was left out.
That decision has real world consequences.
Roughly 270,000 government employees tied to DHS agencies are now facing delayed paychecks. That includes workers at the Transportation Security Administration, which could mean air travel delays as employees report to work without pay. The shutdown also affects FEMA, the U.S. Coast Guard, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and other national security entities.
Fetterman made clear he thinks his party made the wrong call.
“Well, my issue is like, hey, I stand with all the 270,000 government workers that are not going to get paid again, again,” he told Fox News. He reminded viewers that this is the second shutdown in recent memory led by Democrats.
The irony is hard to ignore. Democrats framed the standoff as leverage for anti ICE “reforms.” But as Fetterman pointed out, shutting down DHS does nothing to impact ICE operations. Funding for ICE and Customs and Border Protection was already secured through last year’s Big Beautiful Bill spending package.
“We, every Democrat, know that shutting DHS down will not have no impact on ICE,” Fetterman said. He added that even the agency’s director confirmed as much during a hearing, explaining that ICE funding remains intact.
In other words, the shutdown does not accomplish the stated goal. It does, however, sideline FEMA during hurricane season, disrupt TSA operations, and create uncertainty for Coast Guard missions.
Fetterman did not hide the political tension. “Now why are all the Democrats going to shut down our entire DHS where FEMA and the Coast Guard and our cyber security agency when we all know that it has no impact on ICE,” he asked.
He made clear he supports immigration reform in principle. What he opposes is using federal workers as leverage. “So now why can’t we just explain to our base and say, ‘look we could have had another two weeks for more kinds of negotiations, we just shut it down’ and I refuse to do that,” he said. “It’s wrong to shut our government down, and especially for the things that we want, those kinds of reforms.”
Fetterman’s bluntness underscores a growing divide. Even within Democratic ranks, some are questioning whether symbolic shutdowns are worth the economic and national security fallout.