Ben Sasse, Former Nebraska Senator, Shares Terminal Pancreatic Cancer Diagnosis

Mr. Sasse, a former senator from Nebraska, wrote on social media that he had received a diagnosis last week for Stage 4 pancreatic cancer.

Ben Sasse, a Republican former senator from Nebraska and a former president of the University of Florida, announced on 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,” Mr. Sasse, 53, wrote in a long message on X. “Last week I was diagnosed with metastasized, stage-four pancreatic cancer, and am gonna die.”

Mr. Sasse, who has degrees from Harvard, St. John’s College and Yale, was a U.S. senator from Nebraska from 2015 to 2023. Mr. Sasse was appointed president of the University of Florida in November 2022.

Mr. 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, Mr. Sasse was reliably conservative but also a critic of President Trump. In February 2021, Mr. Sasse was one of only seven Republicans in the Senate who voted to convict Mr. Trump on a charge of incitement of insurrection in his second impeachment trial. Mr. Trump was acquitted by the Senate.

A year earlier, Mr. Sasse had joined almost all of the Republican senators in voting to acquit Mr. Trump during his first impeachment trial.

This is a developing story.

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