Mike Kennedy has represented Utah in Congress since January 2025. Here's the thing that makes his record stand out: he's a family physician. A doctor. Someone who took an oath to care for people's health. That makes some of his votes especially hard to explain.

Here are 3 things to know.

1. He's a doctor who voted to take away people's health care

Mike Kennedy is a practicing family physician. He's spent his career caring for patients. Then he voted for Trump's budget bill that will cause an estimated 80,000 Utahns to lose their health insurance.

And he didn't do it quietly. He defended the Medicaid cuts in a published op-ed, writing that they "cut waste while preserving resources for the people it was intended to serve." Tell that to the families who are about to lose their doctor. Kennedy has eight children of his own — presumably he'd want every one of them to be able to see a physician when they're sick. He just voted to take that away from a lot of other people's kids.

2. He embraced the gun fringe after a school shooting

After the 2018 Parkland school massacre, Kennedy — then a Utah state legislator — spearheaded the state's School Safety Commission. Sounds good, right?

Here's what happened next. Just days later, he publicly touted a meeting with the founders of the Utah Gun Exchange — the group that rallied roughly 1,000 counter-protesters and a turret-topped, military-style vehicle against the 8,000 students who marched for gun control at March For Our Lives. The man in charge of Utah's school safety effort was buddying up with the people mocking kids who just wanted to stop getting shot. As the Salt Lake Tribune's columnist put it, the guy behind Utah's school safety push "embraces the gun fringe."

3. He put the government in charge of families' medical decisions

Kennedy talks a lot about freedom and getting government out of your life. But as a Utah state senator, he sponsored SB16, the 2023 law that bans gender-affirming surgery and hormone therapy for transgender minors.

Think about what that means. A family, working with their own doctor, makes a private medical decision for their child — and Mike Kennedy's law overrides them. Kennedy, himself a physician, called that kind of care "a radical and dangerous push for children." This from a man who otherwise insists the government should stay out of your business. The bill passed and became law.

The bottom line

That's 3 things to know about Mike Kennedy. A doctor who voted to strip health coverage from 80,000 Utahns, who cozied up to the gun fringe after a school shooting, and who used the government to override families' medical decisions.

We deserve better.