Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Nebraska.) fights back tears after listening to the opening statement by Christine Blasey Ford at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in Washington, Thursday, Sept. 27, 2018. (Erin Schaff/The New York Times/File)
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Ben Sasse, a Republican former senator from Nebraska and a former president of the University of Florida, announced Tuesday that he had received a diagnosis of terminal Stage 4 pancreatic cancer.
“Since a bunch of you have started to suspect something, I’ll cut to the chase,” Sasse, 53, wrote in a long message on the social platform X. “Last week I was diagnosed with metastasized, stage-four pancreatic cancer, and am gonna die.”
Sasse, who has degrees from Harvard University, St. John’s College and Yale University, was a U.S. senator from Nebraska from 2015 to 2023. Sasse was appointed president of the University of Florida in November 2022.
Sasse stepped down last year as Florida’s president, citing the health of his wife, Melissa, who had an aneurysm and a series of strokes in 2007, and had just been diagnosed with epilepsy.
In the Senate, Sasse was reliably conservative but also a critic of President Donald Trump. In February 2021, Sasse was one of only seven Republicans in the Senate who voted to convict Trump on a charge of incitement of insurrection in his second impeachment trial. Trump was acquitted by the Senate.
A year earlier, Sasse had joined almost all of the Republican senators in voting to acquit Trump during his first impeachment trial.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
By Adeel Hassan/Erin Schaff
c.2025 The New York Times Company
