Headline Roundup • May 10th, 2025
John Fetterman: Politically Inconvenient or Unfit to Serve?
Summary from the AllSides News Team
Reports from New York Magazine (Left bias) and the Associated Press (Left) led some to question if Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) is in good health.
The Details: Last week, New York Magazine published a piece that said Fetterman's staffers did not believe he was mentally healthy. Fetterman called the piece a “one-source hit piece and some anonymous sources, so there’s nothing new.” On Thursday, the Associated Press said Fetterman raised alarms with an outburst at a union meeting. It read, "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."
From the Right: Voices on the right noted that Fetterman has been a renegade in the Democratic Party, including defending Israel's actions in Gaza. One Wall Street Journal opinion (Lean Right) said, "It’s striking how few anonymous staff concerns about him were aired in the media during that period when the team needed him to be the 51st vote." Others on the right echoed the sentiment that he has been treated for depression and there is no reason to believe he's unfit to serve other than political inconvenience for the Democrats.
From the Left: In contrast, a piece in the Atlantic (Left) argued, "Conservatives are now doing the exact same thing that the Biden defenders did: denying the obvious unfitness of a politician because he’s politically useful." Adding that while writers in The Daily Wire (Right), Washington Examiner (Lean Right), and National Review (Right) have defended Fetterman's politics, "None of these articles acknowledges, let alone attempts to rebut, Terris’s extensive account of Fetterman’s erratic behavior, which is at least as clear as the evidence of Biden’s infirmity."
Written by the AllSides staff (of humans). Learn more. Support our mission. Suggest an improvement to this summary.
Featured Coverage of this Story

Matt Rourke / AP
Remember the days after President Joe Biden’s barely coherent debate performance, when Democratic dead-enders insisted that nothing was the matter? That was embarrassing. But apparently it wasn’t so embarrassing that everybody took away the correct lesson, because something similar is now happening between Senator John Fetterman and a coterie of admirers on the right. Conservatives are now doing the exact same thing that the Biden defenders did: denying the obvious unfitness of a politician because he’s politically useful.
Fetterman is the subject of a devastating new profile in New York magazine (my former employer)....
Now that there’s no longer any chance that Sen. John Fetterman (D., Pa.) will be needed to confirm a Biden judicial appointee, some Democrats have begun to suspect there’s something a little off about this guy.
A stroke and a hospitalization for depression never shook the publicly expressed conviction of many party colleagues that he was healthy enough to serve as the reliable and indispensable 51st vote in a Democratic majority. Now Mr. Fetterman seems to be a more open-minded member of a Senate minority, and some in his party are very...
AllSides Picks
Headline Roundup
WaPo Report Suggests Tulsi Gabbard Relied Heavily on Mentors, Outside Messaging; Gabbard's Team Pushes Back
June 22nd, 2026