Late last year, former Sen. Ben Sasse was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and given three to four months to live. Now on “extended time,” he says he wants to spend some of that time talking about “bigger stuff.”
In an interview with “60 Minutes” correspondent Scott Pelley and a CBS News town hall, the Nebraska Republican said Congress is consumed by “reductionistic tribalism” and is failing to address large-scale challenges — especially the disruptions he believes artificial intelligence will bring. Sasse also credited “providence, prayer and a miracle drug” for his extra time and argued more patients should have access to experimental treatments.
Congress is not wrestling with big questions
A Nebraska native with a Ph.D. in history from Yale, Sasse won the Senate in 2014, clashed with President Trump, won reelection, then resigned two years later to lead the University of Florida. He told Pelley he left elective office because the Senate was “very, very unproductive.” He spent much of the week in Washington away from his wife and three kids while lawmakers accomplished little.
Sasse said Congress fails to discuss fundamental issues, chief among them how AI could reshape work and the economy. “Neither of these parties really have very big or good ideas about 2030 or 2050,” he said, citing national security, the future of work, and institution-building. He blamed political incentives and social media for encouraging narrow appeals over humility and learning. “There’s no audience” for a politician admitting they changed their mind, he said.
He proposed enlarging the House to about 2,000 members so representatives would serve fewer constituents and argued the Senate should be more deliberative and less performative. “The Senate needs to be less like Instagram. The Senate needs to be more deliberative. And that means less smack-down nonsense,” he said.
Sasse warned the republic faces an inflection point in coming decades. “In 2040, or 2050, or 2060 does the republic survive? I suspect yes… But it’s not a 90/10 bet.” He said a republic requires deliberative, long-form discourse, humility, and community building — qualities he believes are in short supply today. Still, he said he’s “optimistic and pessimistic about the complexities of human nature” and hopeful about what a free people can build starting from families, neighborhoods, workplaces, and places of worship.
AI is “glorious and horrific at the same time”
When asked what big issues Congress is missing, Sasse pointed to AI, calling it “both glorious and horrific.” He said the digital revolution accelerates much of human experience and that anything reducible to steps — most economic activity — will be routinized, becoming cheap and ubiquitous. That could produce “ubiquitous abundance” and high-quality, affordable goods, and he joked about everyone eventually having “a robot that builds robots for us.”
But he also warned of upheaval as jobs are replaced. “It’s pretty scary to not know what you’re going to do to add value for your neighbor 10 or 25 years from now,” he said. Young people can no longer assume the same long-term career stability past generations took for granted.
Sasse on “right to try” and experimental treatments
Sasse is contending with stage-four pancreatic cancer that has metastasized, leaving him with cancers in his lungs, liver, lymph system and blood vessels. He has been taking an experimental oral medication, daraxonrasib, which inhibits a protein involved in tumor growth. The drug’s maker, Revolution Medicines, reported strong results from a phase-three trial showing a median overall survival of 13.2 months for patients on daraxonrasib versus 6.7 months with chemotherapy.
At the town hall, Sasse met Mike Hugo, a glioblastoma patient who credited a clinical trial device with giving him extra years with his daughters. Hugo asked why more people can’t access such treatments despite the 2018 federal “right to try” law, which Sasse cosponsored. Critics have argued the law could weaken patient protections and that other programs already assist terminally ill patients in accessing investigational drugs.
Sasse said the law was amended to be stricter than intended and expressed a desire to decentralize decisions so patients and physicians — rather than one-size-fits-all FDA rules — have more say. With tens of thousands diagnosed annually and pancreatic cancer’s survival rate low, he said, “The best way to make a dent in that is more experiments.” He favors opening the dial to let more people access experimental therapies and accept more risk in pursuit of potential benefit.
“Providence, prayer and a miracle drug”
Sasse publicly revealed his diagnosis in late December, posting on social media that he was “gonna die.” In the weeks before diagnosis he endured severe pain, scalding showers to try to numb tumors pressing on his spine. He said morphine has eased much of that pain and credited daraxonrasib with shrinking his tumor volume by 76% over four months. Though initially given three to four months to live, he has outlived that prognosis and said he might live a year — a prospect he called a blessing.
He attributed his extended time to “providence, prayer and a miracle drug.” Deeply committed to his Christian faith, Sasse has prayed for a miracle but said his primary prayer is not for more time. He reflected on mortality and finitude, saying wisdom requires grappling with death early. “Death is wicked. Death is evil. Death is not how it’s supposed to be,” he said, but added it is a “touch of grace” because it forces honesty. Confronting mortality strips away the lie that one is at the center of everything or can atone for brokenness by accumulating more.
Leaving his family
Sasse and his wife Melissa have been married 31 years. They have two adult daughters, 24 and 22, and a 14-year-old son described as a “providential surprise.” He acknowledged they will “be apart for a time,” but said his wife is “tough and gritty and theologically rooted” and will be fine.
He lamented likely missing milestones: walking his daughters down the aisle is “not likely to be” within his remaining time. He is also saddened about not being present for key moments in his son’s late teens and early adulthood. “I want to give him more advice than he wants, and I want to put my arm on his shoulder,” he said.
A parting wish for the country
Asked for a parting wish for the nation, Sasse urged more deliberation about mortality and finitude to regain wisdom about gratitude and what makes a meaningful life. He called for more families to put devices away, share meals, and wrestle with grand questions about what they are building for future generations.