Michael Shumway Lee was born on June 4,1971 and is an American lawyer and politician serving as the senior United States senator from Utah, a seat he has held since 2011.
70 Facts About Mike Lee
2.
Mike Lee began his career as a clerk for the US District Court for the District of Utah before clerking for Samuel Alito, who was then a judge on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.
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From 2002 to 2005, Mike Lee was an assistant United States attorney for the District of Utah.
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Mike Lee joined the administration of Utah Governor Jon Huntsman, serving as the general counsel in the governor's office from 2005 to 2006.
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Mike Lee again clerked for Alito after he was appointed to the US Supreme Court.
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In 2010, during the Tea Party movement, Mike Lee entered the party caucus process to challenge incumbent three-term Republican senator Bob Bennett.
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Mike Lee defeated Bennett and business owner Tim Bridgewater during the nominating process at the Utah Republican Party convention.
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Mike Lee won the Republican primary, and defeated Democratic nominee Sam Granato in the general election.
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Mike Lee was reelected in 2016 and became the dean of Utah's congressional delegation when Representative Rob Bishop retired in January 2021.
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Mike Lee chaired the Joint Economic Committee from 2019 to 2021.
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Mike Lee coordinated with and supported the Trump administration in its efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, but ultimately voted to certify the election.
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Mike Lee's older brother Thomas Rex Mike Lee is a justice of the Utah Supreme Court.
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Mike Lee served as the president of BYUSA, serving together with his father, who was then president of BYU.
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Mike Lee graduated in 1994 with a bachelor of arts in political science.
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Mike Lee then entered private practice at the Washington, DC, office of the law firm Sidley Austin, specializing in appellate and Supreme Court litigation.
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In 2002, Mike Lee left Sidley and returned to Utah to serve as an assistant US attorney in Salt Lake City, preparing briefs and arguing cases before the US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.
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Mike Lee served as general counsel to Utah Governor Jon M Huntsman, Jr.
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From 2006 to 2007, Mike Lee again clerked for Alito, who had recently been appointed to the US Supreme Court.
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Mike Lee argued that the Commerce Clause of the US Constitution allowed the company to accept foreign waste and that the waste could be reduced in grade by mixing it with lower-grade materials, while the state government sought to ban the importation of foreign waste using an interstate radioactive waste compact.
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Mike Lee said the US Constitution needed to be amended to create a flat-tax system and impose term limits on members of Congress.
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Mike Lee was endorsed by the Club for Growth, the Senate Conservatives Fund, and the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
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Mike Lee defeated Becky Edwards and Ally Isom in the Republican primary election.
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Isom criticized Mike Lee for seeking a third term after he had supported legislation to limit senators to two terms.
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In March 2016, Mike Lee endorsed Ted Cruz over Donald Trump in the 2016 Republican primary.
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On October 16,2017, Mike Lee endorsed Roy Moore in the 2017 Alabama special election runoff to fill the seat of US Attorney General and former senator Jeff Sessions.
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Nevertheless, Mike Lee praised Moore for his "reputation of integrity" and said he was essential to getting conservative legislation through the Senate.
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Mike Lee ultimately voted to certify the election, saying that the effort to block the certification "could all backfire badly".
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The New York Times used the NOMINATE system to rank Senate members by ideology; Mike Lee ranked as the Senate's most conservative member.
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Mike Lee had placed such a hold on the measure, despite its 73 Senate co-sponsors.
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In November 2018, Mike Lee criticized Senator Tom Cotton for his stance on the proposed First Step Act, a criminal justice reform bill Mike Lee supported.
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In September 2020, during a Senate hearing, Lee took out and waved a pocket-size Constitution published by an anti-government Mormon group founded by conspiracy theorist W Cleon Skousen.
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In March 2021, Mike Lee said on Fox News that the For the People Act was "rotten to the core" and was "as if written in Hell by the devil himself".
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Mike Lee has worked with Senator Amy Klobuchar to use antitrust laws against large technology companies like Facebook, Apple, and Amazon.
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In 2017, Mike Lee was one of 22 Republican senators to sign a letter to President Trump urging him to withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement.
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At a May 2016 event, Mike Lee rejected the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change, calling it "little more than a cheap public-relations ploy" by the Democratic Party.
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Mike Lee opposes a carbon tax to deal with climate change.
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In 2018, Mike Lee defended Jim Bridenstine's nomination to head NASA.
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In defending Bridenstine, Mike Lee falsely claimed that NASA disputed that there was a scientific consensus on climate change.
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When Mike Lee took the floor, he called the plan absurd, comparing it to an image of Ronald Reagan riding a velociraptor, and argued that having more babies was the real solution.
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Mike Lee said that "the authors of the Green New Deal proposal are trying to suggest people should not have babies and I think that's atrocious".
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Mike Lee criticized Trump for ordering the 2018 missile strikes against Syria in response to the Douma chemical attack, stating that he lacked the constitutional authority to do so without Congress's permission because the US was not in imminent danger.
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Mike Lee supported Trump's decision to withdraw American troops from Syria in December 2018, saying that American forces should not have been in the country anyway without Congressional authorization.
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Mike Lee said that the Obama administration had not made clear American objectives in Syria surrounding Assad's future, and that he believed Trump's claim that the Islamic State had been defeated.
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Mike Lee has long been in favor of ending American involvement in Afghanistan.
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Mike Lee signed a letter in 2011 urging Obama to withdraw troops from the country.
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In May 2017, he called into question a proposal from military leaders to send additional troops there, calling to mind previous times when more soldiers were sent to the country but which, according to Mike Lee, failed to make a significant difference.
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Mike Lee maintained that American involvement in the war has wasted thousands of lives and trillions of dollars.
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At a virtual meeting later that month, Mike Lee stated his support of Biden's plan.
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In June 2019, Mike Lee was one of seven Republicans who voted to block Trump's Saudi arms deal providing weapons to Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Jordan.
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In February 2023, Mike Lee issued a 24-hour deadline on Twitter to Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida to hand Alkonis over and threatened to cut off military aid to Japan over the incident.
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Mike Lee was part of the group of 13 senators drafting the Senate version of the AHCA behind closed doors.
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Mike Lee eventually came out against the bill, along with Senator Jerry Moran, bringing the "no" vote total among Republicans to four.
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In February 2019, Mike Lee was one of 16 senators to vote against legislation preventing a partial government shutdown and containing $1.375 billion in funding for barriers along the US-Mexico border that included 55 miles of fencing.
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In March 2019, Mike Lee was one of 12 Republican senators to vote to block Trump's national emergency declaration that would have granted him access to $3.6 billion in military construction funding to build border barriers.
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In 2015, Lee condemned the Supreme Court's decision in Obergefell v Hodges, which held that same-sex marriage bans violated the constitution.
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In 2018, Mike Lee condemned the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which is part of the Organization of American States, for recommending that Costa Rica legalize same-sex marriage.
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Mike Lee suggested that the US, a primary funder of the OAS, should use its money more wisely and do more to safeguard religious liberties worldwide.
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In May 2019, Mike Lee called the Equality Act "counterproductive" and argued it "unnecessarily pits communities against each other".
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On November 29,2022, Mike Lee voted against the Respect for Marriage Act, which requires the US federal government to recognize the validity of same-sex and interracial marriages in the United States.
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In February 2011, Mike Lee was one of two Republicans to vote against extending the three provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act that deal with roving wiretaps, "lone wolf" terrorism suspects, and the government's ability to seize "any tangible items" in the course of surveillance.
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In December 2020, Mike Lee was the sole vote in the Senate against the ALS Disability Insurance Access Act of 2019, which eliminated the five-month waiting period for those with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis to receive Social Security benefits.
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In September 2018, Mike Lee was among six senators, including Jeff Flake, Pat Toomey, Rand Paul, David Perdue, Ben Sasse, and Bernie Sanders, to vote against a $854 billion spending bill that would avert another government shutdown.
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In March 2019, Mike Lee was one of 12 senators to cosponsor a resolution that would impose a constitutional amendment limiting the Supreme Court to nine justices.
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In September 2020, less than two months before that year's presidential election, Mike Lee supported an immediate Senate vote to confirm Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, Trump's nominee to fill the Supreme Court vacancy caused by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death.
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In March 2016, eight months before the 2016 election, Mike Lee took the opposite position, declining to consider Obama's Supreme Court nominee during a presidential election year, citing "the contentious presidential election already well underway".
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In January 2018, Mike Lee was one of 36 Republican senators to sign a letter to Trump requesting that he preserve the North American Free Trade Agreement by modernizing it for the economy of the 21st century.
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In November 2018, Mike Lee was one of 12 Republican senators to sign a letter to Trump requesting the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement be submitted to Congress by the end of that month to allow a vote on it before the end of the year as they were concerned "passage of the USMCA as negotiated will become significantly more difficult" if it had to be approved by the incoming 116th United States Congress.
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On October 2,2020, Mike Lee announced he had tested positive for COVID-19.
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Mike Lee did not wear a mask and video footage showed him hugging others at the event.
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Mike Lee earned the Eagle Scout award from Boy Scouts of America in 1989 and was selected to receive the National Eagle Scout Association Outstanding Eagle Scout Award in 2011.