Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) reportedly canceled a meeting with three disabled veterans almost a year after he dismissed concerns about funding for a children’s hospital. The Wall Street Journal published a report Wednesday that alleged the first-term senator faked an illness to avoid meeting with the veterans, later opting to do an…
Page A2From§Eachthe noon edition — 4 September 2026
Fetterman cancels disabled veterans meeting for Fox hit on Israel, months after dismissing a children's hospital
As it ran on the front
I spent forty minutes this morning trying to reach the county about a parking placard — not mine, my neighbor's, the disabled one, the blue plate that keeps him from getting ticketed on Foster Street. The recording sent me to a department that doesn't exist anymore, twice. I finally used the number printed on the card itself and got a person in about ten minutes. I only bring this up because I was still holding when the radio mentioned a name I recognized, and the story wasn't about a form at all.
Senator Fetterman had a meeting on his calendar with three disabled veterans. The report — Wall Street Journal, picked up everywhere since — says he canceled it, that he told his office he wasn't feeling well, and that in that same window he sat for a Fox interview about Israel. I don't know what was wrong with him that morning. I know what was on the two schedules. One had veterans on it. One had a studio on it. Only one of the two happened.…
…(cont) I remembered reading, back closer to a year ago, that there'd been a children's hospital with funding concerns, and that those concerns got waved off too. Different building, different kind of urgent, same senator, same motion of the hand.
Here's where the toll plaza comes into it. My E-ZPass runs on a family plan I share with my brother-in-law — one account, one bill, split between us. Last spring his tire caught a pothole out past exit 14, and he called wanting to know if the plan covered the damage. It's a toll plan. It pays for the road. What the road does to your tire isn't in the agreement, and neither of us needed the fine print explained twice once we found it in the paperwork. The car — mine still needs a fan belt, I haven't gotten to it — sat in the garage a few extra days while that got sorted. It got sorted the way you'd expect: he covered his own tire.
I mention the toll plaza because there's a bill in Congress right now, reported the first of this month, that would have disabled veterans covering the cost of each other's injuries. I want to say that again slowly, because I read it twice myself before I believed I had it right: not the government's plan covering the injury. Each other. So a veteran hurt in one place would be looking, in part, at what a different veteran's care costs, the way my brother-in-law's tire was his own bill and not the plan's — except a tire is a tire, and this is a man's leg, or his hearing, or whatever got left overseas.
I don't know how that bill fares. I know what the text says, because I looked it up the way I look most things up, which is slowly, and usually after the fact.
Which gets me back to my morning, and the department that didn't exist, and the number that turned out to be printed right there on the card the whole time, if anyone had thought to read it. Say — one more thing, before I let this go. The report says the meeting with the disabled veterans was canceled. It doesn't say anywhere that it was ever put back on the calendar. Was it?
“The senator cancels on three disabled veterans, claims he's sick, then finds the energy for a Fox hit on Israel the same day — the illness only shows up when the cameras don't. Less than a year earlier he waved off a children's hospital's funding worries, so this isn't a bad morning, it's where his calendar goes off camera. Now Congress floats making disabled veterans split each other's medical bills, so the money that's supposed to cover them keeps finding someplace else to be.”
“The Senator's office said he wasn't feeling well that day, and people get sick, that's just — okay, it's a coincidence the illness cleared up in time for a Fox hit on Israel that same afternoon. As for veterans covering each other's injury costs, that's just Congress finding a fiscally responsible way to manage the budget, which is not the same as asking a veteran to pay for a veteran — although, rereading the bill, it is exactly that.”
The receipts
‘I’m convinced they just want free trips to DC’
· Congress wants to make disabled veterans pay for each other’s injuries from the morgue, 1 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.