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Tag: Working Families Party

  • Pennsylvania’s Working Families Party pledges to support a primary challenger against Sen. John Fetterman

    Pennsylvania’s Working Families Party pledges to support a primary challenger against Sen. John Fetterman

    Pennsylvania’s Working Families Party is recruiting candidates to run against Pennsylvania’s Democratic senator, John Fetterman.

    Fetterman has not announced whether he will run for reelection in 2028, but the progressive party put out a public declaration Tuesday pledging to endorse — and, if necessary, recruit and train — a challenger.

    The announcement, first reported by The Inquirer, is a remarkable step for the left-leaning organization to take more than two years before an election and speaks to the degree of frustration with Fetterman among progressives.

    “At a time when Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress are doing everything they can to make life harder for working people, we need real leaders in the Senate who are willing to fight for the working class,” Shoshanna Israel, Mid-Atlantic political director for the Working Families Party, said in a statement.

    “Senator Fetterman has sold us out, and that’s why the Pennsylvania Working Families Party is committed to recruiting and supporting a primary challenge to him in 2028.”

    Fetterman did not immediately return a request for comment about the Working Families Party’s announcement.

    The Working Families Party is a progressive, grassroots political party that is independent from the Democratic Party, but it often endorses and supports Democratic candidates.

    Israel noted in her statement that Fetterman voted last week in support of the Republican plan to end the government shutdown — along with seven other Senate Democratic caucus members who crossed the aisle.

    Democratic lawmakers in the House, including several from Pennsylvania’s delegation, railed against the decision as caving to the GOP and President Donald Trump without any substantive wins on healthcare, rendering a 35-day shutdown pointless.

    Though he supports extending federal healthcare subsidies, Fetterman has long said he is against government shutdowns as a negotiating tactic and will always vote to get federal coffers flowing and federal employees paid.

    “I’m sorry to our military, SNAP recipients, gov workers, and Capitol Police who haven’t been paid in weeks,” Fetterman said in a post on X after the vote. “It should’ve never come to this. This was a failure.”

    Already one of the most well-known and scrutinized senators in Washington, Fetterman was back in the spotlight this week as he returns to work following a hospitalization after a fall near his home in Braddock. His staff said he suffered a “ventricular fibrillation flare-up” and hit his face, sustaining “minor injuries.”

    Ventricular fibrillation is the most severe form of arrhythmia — an abnormal heart rhythm — and the most common cause of sudden cardiac death.

    It’s the latest in a string of serious health incidents that have marked the Democratic senator’s time in the public eye. The fall comes three years after he recovered from a near-fatal stroke just days before he won the 2022 Senate primary, which was caused by a blood clot that had blocked a major artery in his brain.

    He spent Thursday and Friday in the hospital and was released Saturday, saying he was feeling good and grateful for his care with plans to be back in the Senate this week.

    Working Families on the offensive

    Israel said in addition to the online portal, the party will hold a number of recruitment events across Pennsylvania in the coming months to train candidates and campaign staff on the basics of running for office and managing a campaign with hopes of finding quality candidates for a variety of races ahead of 2028.

    The party is also pledging a robust ground game and fundraising for a potential challenger it supports.

    It wouldn’t be the first time the Working Families Party has opposed Fetterman. In the 2022 Democratic Senate primary, WFP endorsed State Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta (D., Philadelphia) over Fetterman, who was lieutenant governor at the time.

    The Working Families Party has grown its influence in the region since then. In 2023, WFP became the minority party on Philadelphia’s City Council, defeating Republicans in seats the party had held for over 70 years by electing Councilmembers Kendra Brooks and Nicolas O’Rourke.

    Fetterman has been promoting his book, Unfettered, recounting his stroke during the 2022 Senate run, subsequent struggles with depression, and adjustment to life in the U.S. Senate.

    The book makes no mention of a reelection bid but laments the ugly politics he experienced in both the Democratic primary and his general election race against Mehmet Oz.

    Fetterman said in the book that Oz’s attacks during his rehabilitation from his stroke became so mentally crushing he felt he should have quit the race.

    And he grapples with criticism he faced during the primary surrounding a 2013 incident in which he wielded a shotgun and apprehended a Black jogger he suspected of a shooting. Fetterman calls the backlash an early trigger of his depression.

    Fetterman has said he will remain a Democrat even as Republicans have lauded his independent streak and willingness to work with the GOP.

    Earlier this year, Fetterman was the first Senate Democrat to support the Laken Riley Act, a Republican immigration bill that requires U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to detain and take into custody individuals who have been charged with theft-related offenses, even without a conviction. Critics of the law say it severely cracks down on due process for immigrants.

    Fetterman was the sole Senate Democrat to vote to confirm Attorney General Pam Bondi, who was one of Trump’s attorneys when he tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

    And he has been the Senate’s most outspoken defender of Israel during its war in Gaza, sponsoring a resolution with Sen. Dave McCormick (R., Pa.) against antisemitism and appearing for the first time since his fall at an event hosted by the Jewish Federations of North America in Washington on Monday.

    He also received recognition from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who called him the country’s “best friend” and gifted him a silver pager inspired by Israel’s attack on Hezbollah in Lebanon that exploded pagers.

    “He has repeatedly shown disregard for the rights of Palestinians,” the Working Families Party release said. “Refusing to support a two-state solution and breaking with the rest of the Democratic caucus on Israel’s illegal annexation of the West Bank.”

    Staff writer Aliya Schneider contributed to this article.

  • Philly has had a ‘soda tax’ since 2017. One lawmaker wants the city to consider repealing it.

    Philly has had a ‘soda tax’ since 2017. One lawmaker wants the city to consider repealing it.

    City Councilmember Jimmy Harrity wants to revisit the contentious debate that led to the 2017 creation of Philadelphia’s sweetened beverage tax, arguing that the levy has cost the city jobs and will eventually prove insufficient to pay for the programs it was enacted to support, such as subsidized prekindergarten.

    “We‘re going to keep on pulling more money out of the general fund each year, taking away from other programs,” Harrity, a Democrat, said Monday at a hearing of Council’s Labor and Civil Service Committee, which he chairs. “If we were in business and these numbers were the numbers of the business, we wouldn’t be in business long.”

    The tax, which is paid by distributors of sweetened beverages sold in Philadelphia, is 1.5 cents per ounce. Council approved it in 2016 despite vociferous opposition from the beverage industry and Teamsters Local 830, which testified Monday the tax has led to 1,000 of its members who drove trucks for distributors losing work.

    Harrity, an ally of the Teamsters, noted that revenue from the tax has declined as Philadelphians either drink fewer sweetened beverages or find ways to purchase them outside the city. The tax produced about $73.4 million in the 2023 fiscal year, but only $64.4 million last year, he said.

    How Mayor Kenney’s soda tax ignited controversy and impacted Philadelphia
    A Council staffer arranges a table of sugary drinks before Councilmember Jimmy Harrity (not shown) holds a hearing in City Council Monday, Oct. 27, 2025 on former Mayor Jim Kenney’s tax on sweetened beverages.

    For Harrity, that means that the city should consider eliminating the “soda tax,” as it is widely known, in favor of a more “sustainable” funding stream. He did not offer any alternatives.

    But based on his colleagues’ reactions, it is unlikely the tax will be reconsidered in a serious way any time soon.

    Several Council members, public health advocates, and childcare industry representatives defended the tax, which was championed by former Mayor Jim Kenney. They noted that research by the University of Pennsylvania indicates it has been a public health success story that has helped to keep down obesity rates.

    Philly’s soda tax had an impact on health in the city, new research finds
    Marcy Boroff with Children First dresses as a coke can for a City Council hearing Monday, Oct. 27, 2025 on former Mayor Jim Kenney’s tax on sweetened beverages. She was there to support the tax. Children First advocates for policy changes to improve child health, education, and welfare, especially for low-income children. .

    And they stressed its critical role in paying for the three initiatives that Kenney launched alongside the tax: PHL Pre-K, which provides free childcare to 5,250 kids; community schools, which offer a multitude of services to families in 20 Philly schools; and the Rebuild program, which renovates and improves recreation centers and playgrounds.

    “We have to make tough decisions that will actually benefit the greater good, and that’s what we did here,” Democratic Councilmember Rue Landau said during the hearing, adding that “the majority of us up here on this panel think this is a great investment.”

    ‘What we always intended’

    Mayor Cherelle L. Parker, a Democrat who voted for the tax as a Council member, also remains supportive of it.

    “We would not have been able to fund these programs without that beverage tax money,” said city Finance Director Rob Dubow, who has held his role under Parker, Kenney, and former Mayor Michael A. Nutter. Nutter twice tried unsuccessfully to implement a “soda tax” before Kenney succeeded.

    Dubow told lawmakers that the decline in the tax’s revenue over time was always part of the plan and that city leaders intended for the regular city budget to make up the difference for funding Rebuild, pre-K, and community schools when they created the tax. The moment when the soda tax began taking in less money than the city pays out for the three programs it helped launch was the 2024 fiscal year, he said.

    “We pay for it out of the general fund, which is what we always intended we would do,” Dubow said.

    This year, Rebuild, pre-K, and community schools are projected to cost $110 million, Dubow said. Of that, $73 million pays for the 5,250 slots in the city’s pre-K program.

    Preschoolers and their caregivers attend a City Council hearing held by Councilmember Jimmy Harrity Monday, Oct. 27, 2025 on former Mayor Jim Kenney’s tax on sweetened beverages. The tax funds the city’s universal pre-kindergarten program

    ‘Why not Taj Mahals?’

    Councilmember Brian O’Neill was the only other Council member besides Harrity to vocally criticize the tax at Monday’s hearing.

    O’Neill, Council’s lone Republican, noted that Council members have traditionally had control over capital funding for Philadelphia Parks and Recreation projects in their districts. That money, he noted, is split evenly among the 10 district Council members.

    Rebuild, he lamented, instead gives the power to decide which projects move forward to the mayor’s administration. Consequently, he said, the program has produced uneven results and overbudget and unnecessarily ambitious playground and recreation center renovations.

    “This program — Rebuild, they call it — they didn’t decide to bring playgrounds up to some minimum level where people over the years may not have spent their money well,” O’Neill said. “They decided to build Taj Mahals in many cases. … You know what happens when you build a playground and spend tons of money on it? … All the playgrounds around it look terrible.“

    Councilmember Brian J. O’Neill (center) speaks during a hearing in City Council Monday, Oct. 27, 2025 on former Mayor Jim Kenney’s tax on sweetened beverages. Behind him, front to rear, are: Councilmembers Kendra Brooks, Jimmy Harrity, Nina Ahmad, and Rue Landau.

    That comment did not go over well with some of his colleagues.

    “My community benefited from a rec center that was through the Rebuild program,” said Councilmember Kendra Brooks, a member of the progressive Working Families Party who lives in Nicetown. “It’s not a Taj Mahal. It’s a quality rec center in the middle of North Philadelphia. It does not have everything, because I personally went and bought a refrigerator.”

    And Councilmember Nina Ahmad, a Democrat, questioned why building grandiose rec centers would be a problem in the first place.

    “Why not Taj Mahals for all our folks? Why not have the best-quality rec centers so our children want to go there, our children want to spend time there?” Ahmad said. “We live in a first-world country and yet we are begging for scraps for our youngest citizens.”