Quinn Scanlan

producer @ThisWeekABC | past: @ABCPolitics | #SMPAproud | call me beep me if you wanna reach me: [email protected]

[Aaron Blake @AaronBlake]

Perpetually amazing how lawmakers suddenly have epiphanies and attacks of conscience when freed of reelection concerns.

[Nathaniel Rakich @baseballot]

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the Voting Rights Act. It wasn’t meant to protect the rights of minority *politicians.* It was meant to protect the rights of minority *voters.*

[Siobhán O'Grady @siobhan_ogrady]

Writing by me (laid off). Photos by @vanhoutenphoto (laid off). Editing by @PeterFinnProP (laid off). Audio editing by @BishopSand (laid off). Design editing by @JoeMoore1984 (laid off). Additional support from @reemakkad (laid off) and @PaulSchemm (laid off).

[Charlotte Lee @cljack]

no professional economist has ever been or will ever be again this funny on purpose

[Nathaniel Rakich @baseballot]

This event is being held at the Washington Hilton—the site of Reagan’s attempted assassination in 1981.

[Barak Ravid @BarakRavid]

🚨🚨President Trump is safe, US official tells me

[Quinn Scanlan @quinnscanlan]

Just when you get used to writing it as two words… 🥲

[APStylebook @APStylebook]

You've been asking for this one for years. We heard you.
We announced a change in AP style at the @ACESEditors conference today: It's now healthcare, one word, in all uses.
We also changed childcare and daycare, closing them up to one word rather than two.
This guidance is live on AP Stylebook Online now.

[Kristin Merrilees @kristnmerrilees]

whenever you tell someone at a party you’re a journalist and they clamor to clarify that they’re “off the record” it’s like. you just told me a story about your cat throwing up after eating funfetti cake batter. should we call the new york times? should we invite bella hadid ?

[Quinn Scanlan @quinnscanlan]

The Great American GLP-1 Experiment https://t.co/cz8xUSWt5n

[Jeremy Diamond @JDiamond1]

While covering the latest Israeli settler attack in the West Bank, Israeli soldiers assaulted my photojournalist @cyrilthps and detained my team.
But our 2-hour detention revealed a lot about the motives of these Israeli soldiers: acting in service of the settler movement.
W/ @AbeerSalmanCNN

[MLB @MLB]

The @Orioles had 109-year-old Arthur Green throw out the ceremonial first pitch on #OpeningDay 🥹

[Quinn Scanlan @quinnscanlan]

I’m guessing AI made this graphic…

Because I’ve met the mayor of New York and that is definitely NOT him pictured below.

Also, what the heck is “crogning”?

[Mike Lee @BasedMikeLee]

Pass the SAVE America Act

Bad things could happen if we don’t

Horrible things like this👇

[laura j. brown @laurjbrown]

the concept of debbie dingell hanging out with erika jayne

[Quinn Scanlan @quinnscanlan]

Even as U.S. Blows Up Boats, Coast Guard Captures Others at Sea https://t.co/YNE5RgimXY

[Ben Sasse @BenSasse]

Friends-

This is a tough note to write, but since a bunch of you have started to suspect something, I’ll cut to the chase: Last week I was diagnosed with metastasized, stage-four pancreatic cancer, and am gonna die.

Advanced pancreatic is nasty stuff; it’s a death sentence. But I already had a death sentence before last week too — we all do.

I’m blessed with amazing siblings and half-a-dozen buddies that are genuinely brothers. As one of them put it, “Sure, you’re on the clock, but we’re all on the clock.” Death is a wicked thief, and the bastard pursues us all.

Still, I’ve got less time than I’d prefer. This is hard for someone wired to work and build, but harder still as a husband and a dad. I can’t begin to describe how great my people are. During the past year, as we’d temporarily stepped back from public life and built new family rhythms, Melissa and I have grown even closer — and that on top of three decades of the best friend a man could ever have. Seven months ago, Corrie was commissioned into the Air Force and she’s off at instrument and multi-engine rounds of flight school. Last week, Alex kicked butt graduating from college a semester early even while teaching gen chem, organic, and physics (she’s a freak). This summer, 14-year-old Breck started learning to drive. (Okay, we’ve been driving off-book for six years — but now we’ve got paper to make it street-legal.) I couldn’t be more grateful to constantly get to bear-hug this motley crew of sinners and saints.

There’s not a good time to tell your peeps you’re now marching to the beat of a faster drummer — but the season of advent isn’t the worst. As a Christian, the weeks running up to Christmas are a time to orient our hearts toward the hope of what’s to come.

Not an abstract hope in fanciful human goodness; not hope in vague hallmark-sappy spirituality; not a bootstrapped hope in our own strength (what foolishness is the evaporating-muscle I once prided myself in). Nope — often we lazily say “hope” when what we mean is “optimism.” To be clear, optimism is great, and it’s absolutely necessary, but it’s insufficient. It’s not the kinda thing that holds up when you tell your daughters you’re not going to walk them down the aisle. Nor telling your mom and pops they’re gonna bury their son.

A well-lived life demands more reality — stiffer stuff. That’s why, during advent, even while still walking in darkness, we shout our hope — often properly with a gravelly voice soldiering through tears.

Such is the calling of the pilgrim. Those who know ourselves to need a Physician should dang well look forward to enduring beauty and eventual fulfillment. That is, we hope in a real Deliverer — a rescuing God, born at a real time, in a real place. But the eternal city — with foundations and without cancer — is not yet.

Remembering Isaiah’s prophecies of what’s to come doesn’t dull the pain of current sufferings. But it does put it in eternity’s perspective:
“When we've been there 10,000 years…We've no less days to sing God's praise.”

I’ll have more to say. I’m not going down without a fight. One sub-part of God’s grace is found in the jawdropping advances science has made the past few years in immunotherapy and more. Death and dying aren’t the same — the process of dying is still something to be lived. We’re zealously embracing a lot of gallows humor in our house, and I’ve pledged to do my part to run through the irreverent tape.

But for now, as our family faces the reality of treatments, but more importantly as we celebrate Christmas, we wish you peace: “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned….For to us a son is given” (Isaiah 9).

With great gratitude, and with gravelly-but-hopeful voices,
Ben — and the Sasses

[Quinn Scanlan @quinnscanlan]

It’s Just a Virus, the E.R. Told Him. Days Later, He Was Dead. https://t.co/4BHHdBaxNM via @NYTimes

[Quinn Scanlan @quinnscanlan]

THANK GOD
https://t.co/io3IhAHOjR

[Quinn Scanlan @quinnscanlan]

She’s Serving New Tennis Clothes at the U.S. Open https://t.co/uYjF43zXAL

[Quinn Scanlan @quinnscanlan]

Can confirm it’s been brutal…

[Capital Weather @capitalweather]

This has been the second most humid summer in DC on record (since 1945) based on the number of hours with dew points over 70 degrees or the level considered GROSS.

[Joe Biden @JoeBiden]

Cancer touches us all. Like so many of you, Jill and I have learned that we are strongest in the broken places. Thank you for lifting us up with love and support.