Late last year former Sen. Ben Sasse announced a diagnosis of stage‑four pancreatic cancer and was initially given three to four months to live. Having outlived that prognosis, he says he now has ‘extended time’ and wants to spend part of it talking about larger questions facing the country.
In interviews with 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley and at a CBS News town hall, the Nebraska Republican argued that Congress is trapped in what he called ‘reductionistic tribalism’ and is neglecting big, long‑term issues such as how artificial intelligence will reshape the economy and national security. A Yale‑trained historian and former senator who left elective office to lead the University of Florida, Sasse told Pelley he departed Washington because the Senate had become ‘very, very unproductive.’ He described spending time in the capital while lawmaking produced little of consequence.
Sasse said neither major party is offering robust visions for 2030, 2050 or beyond. He warned that political incentives and social media reward narrow, attention‑grabbing appeals instead of humility, learning and sustained debate. There is, he said, ‘no audience’ for politicians who acknowledge changing their minds.
To counteract that dynamic he proposed structural changes: enlarging the House to roughly 2,000 members so representatives would answer to fewer constituents and making the Senate more deliberative and less performative. ‘The Senate needs to be less like Instagram,’ he said, urging an end to what he called ‘smack‑down nonsense.’
Sasse warned the republic faces an inflection point in coming decades. While he expects the republic to survive, he cautioned it is not a foregone conclusion and urged renewed emphasis on long‑form discourse, humility and community building. He expressed mixed feelings — both guarded optimism and concern — about what free people can build starting from families, neighborhoods, workplaces and places of worship.
On artificial intelligence, Sasse described the technology as ‘glorious and horrific at the same time.’ He argued that anything reducible to stepwise procedures — which describes much economic activity — is likely to be routinized, lowered in cost and widely available. That could yield abundant, affordable goods and services, he said, but it will also disrupt jobs and create uncertainty about how people will add value over the next 10 to 25 years. Young people can no longer assume the same career stability past generations expected.
Sasse is being treated with an experimental oral drug called daraxonrasib, which targets a protein involved in tumor growth. The medication’s developer, Revolution Medicines, reported positive phase‑three results showing median overall survival of 13.2 months for patients on daraxonrasib versus 6.7 months with chemotherapy. Sasse credited a combination of ‘providence, prayer and a miracle drug’ with his additional time, saying the drug has produced a marked reduction in tumor volume.
At the town hall he met Mike Hugo, a glioblastoma patient who had benefited from a clinical‑trial device and questioned why more terminally ill people can’t access investigational therapies. Sasse, who co‑sponsored the 2018 federal ‘right to try’ law, said the legislation had been tightened beyond its original intent and argued for decentralizing decisions so patients and physicians, rather than a one‑size‑fits‑all FDA approach, can take more risks in pursuit of potential benefit. With pancreatic cancer’s survival rates low and tens of thousands diagnosed annually, he urged expanding experimental options to accelerate learning.
A devout Christian, Sasse has spoken openly about confronting mortality. He described severe pain before his diagnosis, relief from morphine and gratitude for the extra months he has gained. He said that facing death strips away illusions of centrality and forces honesty about what matters. While he prays for a miracle, his primary focus is on the spiritual work that comes with recognizing human finitude.
Sasse and his wife Melissa have been married 31 years and have three children: two adult daughters and a 14‑year‑old son. He acknowledged the heartbreak of likely missing future milestones — walking his daughters down the aisle and being present for his son’s late‑teens and early‑adult moments — and expressed a desire to offer guidance and affection while he can.
When asked for a final wish for the nation, Sasse urged families and communities to reclaim habits that foster wisdom: put devices away, share meals, wrestle with big questions about purpose and the legacy being built for future generations, and cultivate the deliberative virtues that sustain republican life.