{"id":15057,"date":"2025-12-24T05:06:49","date_gmt":"2025-12-24T05:06:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/?p=15057"},"modified":"2025-12-24T05:18:22","modified_gmt":"2025-12-24T05:18:22","slug":"former-senator-sasse-announces-terminal-cancer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/?p=15057","title":{"rendered":"Former Senator Sasse announces terminal cancer."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Ben Sasse, who I liked … a lot. Very solid, principled man who tangled with Trump. He is 53 and has stage 4 pancreatic cancer<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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. \u201cSince a bunch of you have started to suspect something, I\u2019ll cut to the chase,\u201d Mr. Sasse, 53, wrote in a heartfelt, nearly 700-word-long message on X that cited Scripture.\u201cLast week I was diagnosed with metastasized, stage-four pancreatic cancer, and am gonna die.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Sasse was elected to the Senate in 2014 and became a high-profile figure in national politics during Mr. Trump\u2019s 2016 campaign and first term, when he personified the ambivalent posture that many conventionally conservative Republicans initially took toward Mr. Trump. He voted consistently with Mr. Trump in the Senate even as he regularly took him to task for the tone of his social-media postings and his coziness with autocrats abroad<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Mr. Trump and a chorus of allies began contesting Joseph R. Biden\u2019s victory in the days after the 2020 election, Mr. Sasse criticized Senator Josh Hawley<\/a>, a Republican from Missouri, for embracing Mr. Trump\u2019s false claims that the election had been stolen. …<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But as Republicans gradually coalesced around Mr. Trump and his claims, Mr. Sasse \u2014 who remained hawkish on foreign policy and staunchly conservative on social issues \u2014 appeared increasingly out of step with his party, and he left his Senate seat two years into his second term in 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Mr. Sasse, who has degrees from Harvard, St. John\u2019s College and Yale, has three children. His daughter Corrie was commissioned into the Air Force earlier this year and attends flight school, he wrote. Another daughter, Alex, graduated from college last week, and his son, Breck, is in high school, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cThis is hard for someone wired to work and build, but harder still as a husband and a dad,\u201d Mr. Sasse wrote on X.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He also wrote that he was \u201cnot going down without a fight,\u201d adding that he was optimistic about medical advances in recent years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDeath and dying aren\u2019t the same \u2014 the process of dying is still something to be lived.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ben Sasse, who I liked … a lot. Very solid, principled man who tangled with Trump. He is 53 and has 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics-and-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15057"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15057\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15059,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15057\/revisions\/15059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}