Fain, joined by other UAW leaders, stressed that the union is not beholden to a single party in a Wednesday meeting with Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), according to the senator. Fain had a separate meeting on Capitol Hill with Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH), another Trump ally, on Thursday morning.

The visits mark a dramatic turnaround for Fain, who became the poster child for union resistance to Trump in the 2024 election. He famously railed against the president at the Democratic National Convention and spent months organizing on behalf of former President Joe Biden and later Vice President Kamala Harris.

Now, Fain is searching for MAGA allies where he can find them after Democrats were dealt a party-rattling loss that handed Congress and the White House to Republicans.

“My read on that is they don’t want to be shut out for the next four years,” Hawley said. “I think the UAW wants to be a player, and they want to get some stuff done for their workers.”

Trump was equally as confrontational with Fain, calling him a “stupid person” who should be fired, and there is no indication their relationship has been repaired. The UAW did not respond to a request for comment, but to this day, Fain has pinned on his X account a post calling Trump a “scab.”

But one knock-on effect of Trump’s election is a greater receptiveness to unions by his congressional allies, whose ranks have grown since the November election.

Moreno, who defeated three-term incumbent Sherrod Brown in Ohio, is one of those freshman lawmakers. He requested his meeting with Fain to discuss how Congress might grow car manufacturing in the United States.

“Look, he represents a lot of people in my state, right? He represents a lot of people who live and work and rely on UAW,” said Moreno, who owned a chain of luxury car dealerships before running for political office. “So, I wanted to make sure we had good cooperation, a good relationship.”

Hawley, who sat down at the request of Fain, discussed his own ideas for labor reform, laid out in a one-page framework he’s been sharing that focuses, among other things, on making it easier to unionize in the workplace.

The UAW leaders also discussed tariffs and how to bring auto jobs back from Mexico as Trump prepares to renegotiate a trade agreement from his first term.

Fain’s trips to Capitol Hill were not limited to Republicans. Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), elected to the Senate in auto-heavy Michigan in November, met with him on Tuesday, telling the Washington Examiner she encouraged Fain to extend her outreach as far as the White House.

The Teamsters union, which represents a diverse coalition of truckers and warehouse workers, was an early adopter of that philosophy. Its president, Sean O’Brien, spoke at the Republican National Convention and ultimately stayed neutral in the presidential race.

“There is no rational posture in just traditional Democratic groups only talking to Democrats. That’s not a strategy,” Slotkin said.

The overtures have created new alliances on Capitol Hill. O’Brien, working with Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), encouraged Trump to nominate Lori Chavez-DeRemer, a pro-union Republican, for labor secretary. 

Mullin and O’Brien almost came to blows at a Senate hearing in 2023 but are now on friendly terms.

O’Brien also sat down with a group of Trump-aligned senators that included Hawley and Moreno last week.

The Republican Party writ large is still skeptical of unions, dampening chances that labor leaders will see a meaningful shift in policy over the next four years. GOP senators are also skeptical of Chavez-DeRemer, formerly an Oregon congresswoman, due to her past support for the PRO Act, a flagship bill for the labor movement that expands collective bargaining rights and regulates the gig economy.

But Hawley described the meetings as part of a broader realignment, with Republicans and now Big Labor increasingly receptive to one another. Until recently, populist Republicans had courted rank-and-file union members while denouncing their leaders as beholden to the Democrats.

“So, you know, are they materially worse off now with this leadership than the last? I don’t know,” Hawley said, “and I think they want to see, is there some coalition out there? Can we build a bipartisan coalition to actually do something for labor? I think the answer to that is yes.”