THE NEW YORK TIMES – When Senator John Fetterman, Democrat of Pennsylvania, showed up at a hearing on May 8 with Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, his colleagues were surprised to see him.
Until then, his chair on the dais of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee had sat empty all year.
But under intense scrutiny about his mental health and his ability to function in his job, Mr. Fetterman has been in damage control mode, attending hearings and votes that he had been routinely skipping over the past year.
His colleagues, some of whom have privately described him as absent from the Senate and troubled when he is there, are trying to be supportive.
“Good thoughts, Senator Fetterman,” Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota, said encouragingly after Mr. Fetterman finished his turn questioning Mr. Altman.
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Mr. Fetterman does not enjoy participating in these hearings that he has sat through in recent weeks as he seeks to prove that he is capable of performing the job he was elected to do until 2028.
In fact, at a critical moment for the country, he appears to have little interest in the day-to-day work of serving in the United States Senate.
In an interview, Mr. Fetterman, who represents 13 million people, said he felt he had been unfairly shamed into fulfilling senatorial duties, such as participating in committee work and casting procedural votes on the floor, dismissing them as a “performative” waste of time.
Instead, he said he was “showing up because people in the media have weaponized” his absenteeism on Capitol Hill to portray him as mentally unfit, when in fact it is a product of a decision to spend more time at home and less on the mundane tasks of being a senator …