Few politicians have managed to surprise the country the way Pennsylvania senator John Fetterman has in the past few months. Fetterman proclaimed on the campaign trail, while running against Republican Mehmet Oz, that he is not just a Democrat, but a “proud progressive”. The junior senator, though, insisted in an NBC News interview on Friday that he is not a progressive and that voters shouldn’t be surprised when he breaks from the party line. Indeed, he has recently taken several high-profile policy positions that suggest an independent streak that brings him closer to Senate colleagues Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin…

Few politicians have managed to surprise the country the way Pennsylvania senator John Fetterman has in the past few months. Fetterman proclaimed on the campaign trail, while running against Republican Mehmet Oz, that he is not just a Democrat, but a “proud progressive”. The junior senator, though, insisted in an NBC News interview on Friday that he is not a progressive and that voters shouldn’t be surprised when he breaks from the party line. Indeed, he has recently taken several high-profile policy positions that suggest an independent streak that brings him closer to Senate colleagues Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin than the left-wing “Squad”.

Fetterman has been unflinchingly supportive of Israel, rejecting calls for a ceasefire and even waving an Israel flag in the faces of pro-Palestine protesters who were arrested during a protest on Capitol grounds. He called for the United States to take back farmland that has been purchased by the Chinese and would work to block the sale of US Steel Corp. to a Japanese steelmaker. He accused California governor Gavin Newsom of not having the “guts” to admit he’s running a “shadow campaign” against Joe Biden. After George Santos was expelled from Congress, Fetterman said Democratic senator Bob Menendez, who is accused in an indictment of accepting bribes from the Egyptian government, should also be removed from office. He has urged Democrats to engage in a conversation about border security with Republicans, arguing it “isn’t xenophobic to be concerned about the border.” NBC News describes Fetterman as an “unorthodox brand of blue-collar liberalism, with a dash of outsider populism.”

Fetterman has been a pleasant surprise for his Republican colleagues and a thorn in the side of progressive Democrats, who have accused him of taking a jingoistic approach to the Israel-Palestine conflict and betraying his wife with his stance on immigration, as she was an illegal alien for years before receiving her green card and, eventually, her citizenship. Fetterman is still plenty in line with the left on social issues like abortion and transgenderism, but one still has to wonder if he might follow in Sinema’s footsteps and official extricate himself from the two-party system.

-Amber Duke

On our radar

CIVIL WAR MONUMENT SAFE… FOR NOW A federal judge issues a temporary restraining order on Monday barring the removal of a memorial to Confederate soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery. The memorial also serves as a grave marker for its famed artist, Moses Ezekiel.

‘YOU’RE READING THE WRONG POLLS” President Joe Biden rejected the recent slate of polls showing him losing to former President Donald Trump on Sunday, insisting that there are plenty of polls that have him ahead.

ROE IS ME Jeff Roe, the top strategist to Never Back Down PAC, announced he is leaving the pro-DeSantis group after a Washington Post article claimed several employees affiliated with Roe were fired for mismanagement and conduct issues.

UN Women fails women

One of the top officials at a United Nations entity that supposedly wants “every woman and girl [to live] up to her full potential” seems to think that Israeli women are exempt from her mission and has deactivated her social media accounts on Twitter and LinkedIn upon discovery of her litany of anti-Israel posts and likes.

Sarah Douglas, the Deputy Chief of Peace and Security at UN Women, liked over 150 tweets attacking Israel and Zionism — which a UN watchdog says likely violates the UN’s obligation to be impartial in international conflicts.

Douglas’s Twitter activity includes likes on posts from groups like the George Soros-backed IfNotNow that protests the alleged “mass murder of Palestinians” and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, an alleged Soviet Union-front group that accuses Israel of “apartheid.” Douglas also posted that one of her “sheroes” is Hanan Ashrawi, who repeatedly justified the October 7th terrorist attack and claimed allegations of rapes and beheadings on that day were “lies” and IDF propaganda.

Perhaps this helps explain why UN Women was absent in decrying the campaign of weaponized rape perpetrated by Hamas terrorists against Jewish victims. She and her Orwellianly-named organization were far from alone. Haley Strack at National Review has systematically documented how organizations that claim to advocate for women have been either conspicuously silent on Hamas’s savagery, in the case of Women for Women International, or outright supportive of the terrorist organization’s goals, in the case of the Third Wave Fund.

-Matthew Foldi

Secret service slammed

An alleged drunk driver crashed into President Joe Biden’s motorcade Sunday night in Wilmington, Delaware. Biden, who was on another one of his many weekends away from the White House, was not in the presidential limo when the accident occurred and was unharmed. However, many on social media are alleging that Biden’s secret service team was too slow to react to the incident, pointing out that they did not swarm him upon hearing the crash and took several seconds to make the decision to put him in his vehicle.

While some also speculated that Hunter Biden may have been the intoxicated driver, a different Wilmington native was arrested and charged with a DUI.

-Cockburn