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March 28, 2024

Former U.S. Sen. Harry Reid undergoing cancer treatment

Harry Reid Named As Distinguished Fellow in Law and Policy At UNLV

Steve Marcus

Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev) is shown during an interview at UNLV’s Boyd School of Law Thursday, April 20, 2017. Reid was officially named as the first Distinguished Fellow in Law and Policy at UNLV’s Boyd School of Law.

Updated Monday, May 14, 2018 | 1:37 p.m.

Former U.S. Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada will undergo chemotherapy after doctors removed a tumor from his pancreas today.

Reid underwent surgery at the Johns Hopkins Hospital cancer center in Maryland after a routine screening detected the tumor, according to a family statement released by Reid’s former deputy chief of staff, Adam Jentleson.

“His surgeons are confident that the surgery was a success and that the prognosis for his recovery is good,” the statement said.

Reid, 78, was “in good spirits,” the family said.

Reid, a Democrat and former Senate majority leader, sponsored or signed onto more than 500 pieces of legislation that later became law and helped choke off funding for a proposed nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain.

Politicians took to Twitter to voice their support for Reid, including former U.S. House Speaker John Boehner and U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., who took Reid’s seat after he retired after more than 30 years in Congress.

“Sen. Reid is no stranger to a fight,” Cortez Masto said in a statement. “He beat his opponents in the boxing ring, took on the mob in Nevada and moved bills in the Senate that no one believed could be done. He’ll beat cancer too. I wish him a speedy and successful recovery.”

Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, who joined the Senate about the same time as Reid in the late 1980s and has been undergoing treatment for brain cancer, tweeted a statement wishing Reid well “from one cantankerous senator to another.”

Reid underwent surgery in 2015 after he fell and injured his eye while exercising at his home in Henderson. He lost vision in his right eye.