Ben Sasse officially resigns from Senate to become University of Florida president

Republican Sen. Ben Sasse has officially resigned from the Senate as he heads into his new role as president of the University of Florida. Nebraska's Republican Governor Jim Pillen will appoint someone to fill Sasse's vacant seat.

Sasse is leaving the Senate just two years into his second term after the University of Florida Board of Trustees voted unanimously in November to appoint him president.

Sasse has had a complicated relationship with Republicans in both nationally and in Nebraska after his outspoken criticism of former President Donald Trump. He was one of seven Republican senators to vote to convict the former president of incitement of insurrection in his second impeachment trial stemming from the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.