Former Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse, given three to four months to live after a Stage 4 pancreatic cancer diagnosis last December, says his tumors have shrunk by more than 80%, and he's using his borrowed time to sound the alarm on China, failing schools, and a coming technological upheaval.
Sasse, 54, shared the health update and his outlook on the country's future in a pre-recorded interview for the Western Conservative Summit in Lakewood, Colorado, held on the campus of Colorado Christian University. Fox News Digital obtained the interview exclusively.
Nearly seven months after doctors told him he had weeks left, Sasse is still here, and still swinging. He credited a clinical trial drug called daraxonrasib, an oral therapy designed to block the defective gene that triggers uncontrolled cell growth, with buying him time few expected he would have.
Sasse announced his diagnosis publicly on December 23, 2025, telling the world in plain terms that metastasized Stage 4 pancreatic cancer had spread to multiple organs, including his liver and lungs. The New York Post reported at the time that Sasse, then 53, said bluntly that he was "gonna die."
He did not sugarcoat it. As the Washington Examiner noted, Sasse called advanced pancreatic cancer "a death sentence", but added that "death and dying aren't the same, the process of dying is still something to be lived."
At the same time, he refused to quit. National Review reported that Sasse expressed hope in recent advances in immunotherapy and science, saying he was "not going down without a fight."
That fight has gone better than anyone predicted. In his Western Conservative Summit interview, Sasse said his tumors have shrunk by over 80% in the six and a half months he has been on daraxonrasib.
Sasse told the summit audience:
"My tumors have shrunk by over 80% in the six and a half months I've been on this drug. The drug has been amazing, and I'm grateful for that common grace extension of time."
He added that he was "a couple days away from being seven months since my diagnosis at three to four months to live." For a man who was told to get his affairs in order, the reprieve has been dramatic, and he is not wasting it on small talk.
Sasse also invoked the words of Pastor Tim Keller, the late founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York, quoting him on the strange clarity that terminal illness can bring:
"Pancreatic cancer is nasty, and I would never wish it on my worst enemy, but I also would never want to go back to a stage of my life where I didn't know the power of pancreatic cancer prayer."
Sasse did not spend his interview time on personal reflection alone. He turned to what he called the defining geopolitical question of the next quarter century: whether the world order will be led by the United States or by the Chinese Communist Party.
His framing was direct. Sasse said he wants the U.S., through decentralized corporate structures, to lead the world, not what he described as a "CCP, tyrannical, Maoist" alternative. The other path, he warned, means Beijing controlling all global trade.
Sasse told the summit:
"I want the U.S. Via decentralized corporate structures to rule the world, not CCP, tyrannical, Maoist to rule of the world, and I think most middle powers, most countries in the world, know that somewhere between 25 years from now, we're going to say the world is Western/U.S. led."
The alternative, he said, is Beijing running the table, "them controlling all trade through Beijing." That is not a hypothetical for Sasse. It is a fork in the road, and he believes most nations around the world understand the stakes even if Washington's permanent class does not always act like it.
Sasse reserved some of his sharpest language for America's education system, which he called "just a complete disaster." He did not hedge.
The numbers back him up. The 2025 Nation's Report Card, issued by the National Assessment Governing Board, found that roughly one in three eighth graders cannot read at even a basic level. Nearly 40% of eighth graders fall below basic in math. Fewer than one-third are proficient in reading.
Those are not fringe statistics from a think tank with an agenda. The National Assessment Governing Board is the federal body that oversees the largest continuing national survey of student achievement. And the results describe a system that is failing millions of children on the most fundamental measures of literacy and numeracy.
Sasse argued that increasing government spending on education has not improved student outcomes, a point conservatives have made for decades, but one that lands harder when a third of American teenagers cannot manage basic reading comprehension. He pointed to the gap between what students are capable of and what the system delivers:
"The potential and the capacity of most souls and most brains is a lot more than that, and we've just got a disastrous system."
That is a damning indictment from a former senator who also served as president of the University of Florida before stepping down in July 2024. Sasse left that post to care for his wife Melissa after she was diagnosed with epilepsy, a decision that preceded his own cancer diagnosis by months.
Before entering politics, Sasse served as a Nebraska Republican senator from 2015 to 2023. He has three children with his wife.
Perhaps the most striking claim Sasse made at the summit had nothing to do with elections or party platforms. He argued that a hundred years from now, the current era will not be remembered for its politics at all.
"A hundred years from now, when we look back on our moment, we're not gonna talk about our politics very much. I think we're gonna talk about the fact that we are living through a technological revolution."
It is a bold claim from a man whose career was built in the Senate. But Sasse's point was not that politics is irrelevant, it was that the country's leaders are focused on the wrong scoreboard. If artificial intelligence reshapes the global economy and the labor market over the next generation, and America's schools are still producing eighth graders who cannot read, the consequences will dwarf any legislative fight happening today.
Sasse connected the threads: a technological revolution demands a workforce that can think, adapt, and compete. An education system that leaves 40% of its students below basic math proficiency is not producing that workforce. And a geopolitical rival in Beijing is not waiting for American schools to catch up.
The former senator did not lay out a specific policy agenda for fixing any of it. He did not name legislation or endorse candidates. He spoke like a man who knows his time is short and wants to make sure the right questions are on the table, even if the answers take longer than he has.
When a man who has outlived his own death sentence tells you the country is wasting its time on the wrong fights, it is worth at least pausing to consider whether he has a point.
