Fetterman Returning To U.S. Senate After Depression Battle

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Sen. John Fetterman is poised to make his return to the Senate on Monday after being hospitalized for six weeks for depression.

Fetterman will hit the ground running almost immediately by chairing a Senate Subcommittee on Food and Nutrition, Specialty Crops, Organics and Research hearing. The session on Wednesday will deal with SNAP and other nutrition assistance in the Senate farm bill.

"The news is out!" Fetterman stated in a tweet this week. "I'm very excited to chair my first subcommittee hearing."

Fetterman has been absent from the Senate since Feb. 15, when he checked himself into Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, MD to be treated for clinical depression. He was released from the hospital two weeks ago.

Since then, he has spent the Senate's two-week spring recess at his home in Braddock, a small town near Pittsburgh where he served as mayor before becoming the state's lieutenant governor and then being elected to the Senate last year.

Fetterman has become increasingly active during the Senate hiatus. He and fellow Sen. Bob Casey condemned a federal judge's ruling suspending the federal Food & Drug Administrations approval of the nation's most widely-used pregnancy termination method. The Justice Department said Thursday it will go to the Supreme Court to fight the judicial edict.

On Thursday, Fetterman visited Beaver and Lawrence counties to talk to farmers who were impacted by the recent toxic train derailment just over the state border in East Palestine, Ohio.

He also met with people the Mohawk Coffee House in Bessemer and raved about the coffee shop's offerings.

"One of the best iced mochas I've ever had," he tweeted.