Last week, Senator John Fetterman held what would normally be a friendly meeting with Pennsylvania’s largest teachers’ union.

Representatives from the Pennsylvania State Education Association and the National Education Association praised Fetterman for defending public education. But when the subject turned to asking Fetterman to take stronger actions against the Trump administration’s education cuts, the senator’s mood took a turn.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that Fetterman started yelling and banging his fists on a desk at the five union representatives before him, asking them what they wanted from him. He shouted, “Everybody is mad at me,” “Why does everyone hate me?” and “What did I ever do?” beginning to repeat himself.

The meeting quickly fell apart, with a staffer for the senator ushering the representatives into the hallway before she broke down in tears. The outburst from Fetterman seemed to show a disturbing pattern in the senator’s mental health, especially as just one day later, a story was published by New York magazine painting a picture of Fetterman as unrecognizable to his own staff following a 2022 stroke.

In a statement to the Inquirer, Fetterman defended the meeting as “a spirited conversation about our collective frustration with the Trump administration’s cuts to our education system.

“As a proud product of PSEA, I will always support our teachers, and I will always reject anyone’s attempt to turn Pennsylvania’s public schools into a voucher program,” the statement read.

The Inquirer spoke to several former Fetterman staffers anonymously who said that Fetterman wasn’t living up to his duties as a senator. His sharp, zero-sum advocacy for Israel and antipathy toward Palestinians amid Israel’s war on Gaza has alienated staff and constituents. He frequently misses meetings and votes, avoids colleagues, and spends many hours on Capitol Hill alone in his office.

“It’s pretty impossible to overstate how disengaged he is,” said one former Fetterman staffer. “He doesn’t read memos, he’s taking very few meetings.… The job is just a platform for him to run for president; that’s all he cares about.”

Fetterman has the third-worst voting attendance record in the Senate this year, missing 29 of 236 votes, and in the past two years, he has the lowest voting attendance record of any senator. He’s only made one public appearance in Pennsylvania since August. It’s a shocking turn for a man who started his political career as the mayor of Braddock, Pennsylvania, helping to rebuild the Rust Belt town. Now, it seems that he ought to leave politics and focus on his health and well-being.

Trump’s nominee for U.S. surgeon general is beyond unqualified. The president has selected Casey Means, a self-described “wellness influencer” from the Make America Healthy Again ranks, to serve as highest public health official in the land.

“I am pleased to announce that Dr. Casey Means, will be nominated as our next Surgeon General of the United States of America,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Wednesday. “Casey has impeccable ‘MAHA’ credentials, and will work closely with our wonderful Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to ensure a successful implementation of our Agenda in order to reverse the Chronic Disease Epidemic, and ensure Great Health, in the future, for ALL Americans. Her academic achievements, together with her life’s work, are absolutely outstanding. Dr. Casey Means has the potential to be one of the finest Surgeon Generals in United States History. Congratulations to Casey!”

Trump’s original nominee, Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, was axed for not being sufficiently kooky enough for the likes of Laura Loomer.

“[Nesheiwat] used her access to Fox News to promote the dangerous Covid vaccine, which is now killing millions of people,” Loomer wrote on X this week. “She tried to shame people who didn’t take the vaccine by calling them global health threats. Vaccines are a matter of PERSONAL HEALTH FREEDOM.”

Means has no active medical license, as she dropped out of her residency after becoming “disillusioned” with basic medicine. She instead decided to commit herself to alternative medicine.

She also has unsurprisingly controversial views on vaccination.

“I have said innumerable times publicly I think vaccine mandates are criminal. I think corruption in the FDA is overwhelming. I think RFK is doing God’s work in calling all this out,” Means wrote on X last November.

“There is no benefit to the baby or the wider population for a child to get this vaccine who is not at risk for sexual or IV transmission. There is only risk. Kids who don’t have this unnecessary pharmaceutical can’t go to school in many states,” she wrote in August, referring to the hepatitis B vaccine. “EVERYONE should become curious about why these interventions are institutionally jammed down our throats and people are made to be heretical whackos for questioning it.”

Actual medical professionals raised immediate alarm after news of Means’s nomination broke.

“Casey Means is a grifter who dropped out of ENT residency & start a company selling glucose monitors & health all to non-diabetics. She doesn’t know basic science, yet claims she’s a metabolism expert,” scientist Dr. Andrea Love wrote on X. “Incomplete ENT residency ≠ expert. Of course she’s up for Surgeon General.”

More information about Means’s confirmation hearing schedule is expected in the coming weeks.

Jerome Powell has once again said what everyone except Trump seems to already know: Lowering inflation while enacting staggering tariffs is virtually impossible.

“If the large increases in tariffs that have been announced are sustained, they’re likely to generate a rise in inflation, a slowdown in economic growth, and an increase in unemployment,” the Federal Reserve chair

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