Ben Sasse announced Tuesday that he has stage four pancreatic cancer. The former Republican senator revealed his diagnosis in a post by Xcalling it a “death sentence.”
“Friends, this is a tough post, but since many of you are starting to get suspicious, I'll cut to the chase: Last week I was diagnosed with stage 4 metastatic pancreatic cancer and I'm going to die,” he wrote.
Sasse, 53, represented Nebraska in the U.S. Senate from 2015 to 2023. In 2021, he was among seven Republicans who voted to impeach Donald Trump after Capitol riot January 6. The Senate vote fell short of the two-thirds majority required for conviction.
A Nebraska native, the son of a schoolteacher and a football coach, Sass attended Harvard and Oxford universities before earning a doctorate in history from Yale.
In a remarkable farewell speech to the Senate before retiringSass denounced both the left and right extremes of the political spectrum. As for the left, he said: “Our history is entirely a history of sacrifice and a history of oppression. There can be no redemption, no progress, no hope.”
On the right, he said: “Victimization is the story we trumpet. Demagogues condemn the idea that there could be anything in America that can be saved. According to these fanatics, we have long lost the idea of America, and it is naive to think that it can be restored.”
In a statement Tuesday, Sasse said, “It’s hard to work and build a man, but it’s even harder to be a husband and father.” Sasse and his wife have three children.
“This is not the right time to tell your friends that you are now marching to the beat of a faster drummer—but the timing of it is not the worst,” Sass continued. “As a Christian, the weeks leading up to Christmas are a time to set our hearts toward the hope of what is to come.”
Each year, more than 67,000 Americans are diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and about 51,000 die. according to the American Cancer Society.
