Former Republican Senator Ben Sasse announced Tuesday that he has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, calling the diagnosis “a death sentence.”
“This is a tough note to write, but since a bunch of you have started to suspect something, I’ll cut to the chase: Last week I was diagnosed with metastasized, stage-four pancreatic cancer, and am gonna die,” Sasse wrote in a post on X.
Sasse served as a senator for Nebraska from 2015 to 2023, when he resigned to become the president of the University of Florida, serving in that post from February 2023 to July 2024. He was born in Plainview, Neb., and studied at Harvard University, St. John’s College, and Yale.
Sasse is a husband to his wife, Melissa, and father to three children, Corrie, Alex, and Breck.
“A well-lived life demands more reality — stiffer stuff. That’s why, during advent, even while still walking in darkness, we shout our hope — often properly with a gravelly voice soldiering through tears,” Sasse wrote.
Well wishes flooded the comment section under Sasse’s post, sending the former senator and his family thoughts and prayers during this time. Vice President JD Vance sent the Sasse family a message, writing, “I’m very sorry to hear this Ben. May God bless you and your family.”
“But for now, as our family faces the reality of treatments, but more importantly as we celebrate Christmas, we wish you peace: “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned….For to us a son is given” (Isaiah 9),” Sasse wrote.
When Sasse ran for a vacant Senate seat in Nebraska in 2014, he won 92 of the state’s 93 counties, beating his Democratic opponent with 65 percent of the vote to David Domina’s 31 percent.
Sasse was one of seven Republicans who voted to convict President Donald Trump of incitement of insurrection following the January 6 Capitol riot, just weeks after he was reelected to his second term in the Senate.
In 2023, Sasse resigned from his post to take over as president of the University of Florida, facing stark opposition from the university’s student body and faculty — Sasse is outspokenly against same sex marriage and maintains other strong conservative views.
His tenure at the University of Florida was short-lived, as Sasse unexpectedly resigned in July 2024 to care for his wife, who suffers from epilepsy.
“I’ll have more to say. I’m not going down without a fight. One sub-part of God’s grace is found in the jawdropping advances science has made the past few years in immunotherapy and more,” Sasse wrote. “Death and dying aren’t the same — the process of dying is still something to be lived. We’re zealously embracing a lot of gallows humor in our house, and I’ve pledged to do my part to run through the irreverent tape.”