Tag: connecticut

Lamont Signs Legislation To Provide No-Excuse Absentee Voting For All, Restrict Federal Law Enforcement At Polling Locations

Governor Ned Lamont today announced that he has signed into law legislation providing no-excuse absentee ballots for all.

The legislation, Public Act 26-42, revises previously enacted state statutes that limited this option to voters who were unable to appear in-person at their polling place on election day for several specific reasons, which they were required to confirm when applying for an absentee ballot, including due to active service in the U.S. Armed Forces, absence from their town, sickness, physical disability, religious conflicts, or their service as an elections worker.

The change became effective immediately upon receiving Governor Lamont’s signature.

“This change puts us in line with the overwhelming majority of states that have allowed all voters to cast absentee ballots for many years,” Governor Lamont said. “We should be doing everything we can to encourage qualified voters to participate in elections and have their voices heard, and this is a responsible step forward in that direction. I appreciate Senator Mae Flexer and Representative Matt Blumenthal for leading this effort to get this bill passed so that I could sign it into law.”

“Ensuring that every eligible voter can cast their ballot to elect their representation is fundamental to a healthy democracy,” Lt. Governor Susan Bysiewicz said. “By expanding access to absentee ballots, we are removing unnecessary barriers and making it easier for people to participate in the process that shapes their communities. Thank you to the partnership of legislative leaders who worked to make this long overdue reform a reality.”

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Justice Department Files Complaint To Protect Law Enforcement, Challenging Connecticut Mask Ban, ID Requirements, And Use-Of-Force Policies For Federal Officers

Today, the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against Connecticut, Governor Ned Lamont, Attorney General William Tong, Chief State’s Attorney Patrick Griffin, and Deputy Chief State’s Attorney Eliot Prescott, challenging their unconstitutional attempt to regulate federal law enforcement officers through the so-called “Act Concerning Democracy and Government Accountability,” also known as Senate Bill 397. 

“Law enforcement officers risk their lives every day to keep Americans safe, and they do not deserve to be doxed or harassed simply for carrying out their duties,” said Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. “Connecticut’s anti-law enforcement policies regulate the federal government and are designed to create risk for our agents. These laws cannot stand.”

“This week — Police Week — we honor those who have paid the ultimate sacrifice to ensure the safety of our Nation’s communities,” said Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward. “This Department of Justice will not stand by idly in the face of lawless efforts that endanger our brothers and sisters in blue.”

“Connecticut’s attempt to regulate federal officers is dangerous and unconstitutional,” said Assistant Attorney General Brett A. Shumate of the Justice Department’s Civil Division. “State interference with federal operations is precisely what the Supremacy Clause was intended to prevent, as the Supreme Court has recognized for centuries.”

Among other things, the law prohibits federal officers from wearing facial coverings in the performance of their official duties, requires federal officers to clearly display their badge and name tag when performing official duties, and to adhere to Connecticut’s preferred use-of-force policies when performing official duties. Not only is the law an illegal attempt to regulate the federal government, but, as alleged in the complaint, the law threatens the safety of federal officers who have exhibited extreme bravery in enforcing our Nation’s laws despite an unprecedented wave of harassment, doxing, and even violence. Threatening officers with prosecution for simply protecting their identities and their families also chills the enforcement of federal law and compromises sensitive law enforcement operations. The danger is acute.

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Connecticut Dem Says ICE Is Jim Crow. DHS Replies With List of Illegal Alien Thugs

After the Democrat governor of Connecticut compared immigration enforcement to Jim Crow oppression — ironic considering Jim Crow was the Democrats’ regime — the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) replied with a disquieting list of illegal alien criminals arrested in Connecticut.

CT Mirror celebrated a gubernatorial bill signing May 4, claiming it would require federal agents to display their names or badge numbers — facilitating the already out-of-control doxxing against ICE — persecute ICE for defending themselves with lethal force, and prevent arrests at schools and churches. It appears that Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont might have made his disgusting accusations at his bill signing, when he claimed Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are “brutal,” criticized Trump for referring to criminal illegal aliens as “criminal aliens,” and compared immigration enforcement to the historical Know-Nothing party, anti-Catholic laws, and “Jim Crow laws.” “Never before…has it been led by the White House,” he pontificated, ignoring the numerous Democrat presidents who explicitly aligned themselves with the KKK and political violence.

DHS was quick to respond to Lamont’s propaganda with a list of the despicable illegal alien criminals who were living in — and quite possibly receiving taxpayer-funded benefits in — Connecticut before ICE arrested them. The aliens’ crimes include murder, pedophilic sexual assault, and child abuse.

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Conn. governor signs bill into law limiting ICE actions

Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont has signed Senate Bill 397 into law, limiting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents’ moves and permitting Connecticut residents access to new legal tools should they believe their rights were violated.

Just days before the legislative session concluded, the legislation passed the House and was sent to the governor’s desk.

Dozens of elected officials and advocates attended Monday’s ceremony in front of the state Supreme Court, across the street from the State Capitol, where the governor signed the bill.

“We are sovereign in this state, this is the sovereign state of Connecticut. That is why we have a Supreme Court. That is why we have state laws. That’s why we have a Capitol,” said Attorney General William Tong, gesturing over his shoulder.

“The bill is rooted in the concept that no one is above the law. Here in the Constitution State, the Constitution applies to everyone,” added Lt. Governor Susan Bysiewicz.

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Connecticut Democrats Move Bills To Force Vaccines On Unwilling Residents

he supermajority Democratic legislature of Connecticut has passed a radical “vaccine standards” bill in an apparent display of power directed at President Donald Trump and Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

“This legislation ensures that our state immunization standards are grounded in the consensus professional judgment of the nation’s leading medical and public health practitioners, not the ideological agenda of the Trump regime,” State Senate President Martin Looney, D-New Haven, and State Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff, D-Norwalk, said Thursday following passage of HB 5044, “An Act Establishing Connecticut Vaccine Standards.”

The fiercely debated bill now heads to Democratic Gov. Ned Lamont for signature.

While Democrats are insisting the bill does not mandate any vaccines — but will simply ensure all Connecticut residents have access to them — State Sen. Rob Sampson, R-Cheshire, called it out Thursday as an “anti-freedom vaccine mandate.”

“They’re trying to actually send a message to Connecticut residents, particularly Connecticut residents that value freedom: gun owners, homeschoolers, people concerned about religious freedom,” he explained on Newsmax. “And they’re sending a message to them that they’re just not welcome in our state, and that’s why we keep seeing these bills one after another, just empowering the government and basically making a threat to people that value liberty.”

Pushing Vaccines

According to Bill Track 50’s “AI Summary” of the legislation, its key provisions include expanding the power of the unelected commissioner of public health to “establish the standard of care for immunization for residents of this state;” requiring “health insurance policies to cover immunizations within the established standard of care;” updating “regulations for nursing homes to ensure residents are protected by adequate immunization against respiratory viral diseases;” establishing that “religious freedom protections do not apply to certain vaccine requirements;” and introducing a “’standing order’ provision allowing the commissioner to authorize medical interventions, including vaccinations, during public health emergencies.”

Additionally, the bill will expand the state’s power to buy and distribute vaccines, a provision that is apparently based on Democrats’ fears that the Trump administration will not make vaccines available to those Americans who want them.

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Connecticut House Passes Controversial Gun Control Bill

Glocks are the most popular handguns in the country. They’re preferred by law enforcement, and a lot of people expected them to beat out the Sig P320 to become the new military sidearm. That didn’t happen, but they’re all over the place.

However, a lot of states are trying to ban them, including Connecticut, and not because of anything Glock has done.

Oh no, you see, the problem isn’t that Glock did anything wrong, but that a third party developed something, different third parties make and/or sell them, and so Glock is somehow responsible for all of that.

I’m talking about the so-called Glock switch, or auto sear, full-auto switch, or whatever you want to call it.

And the House in Connecticut just passed a bill that would ban these popular handguns.

A controversial gun bill has passed the House.

It includes a ban on a pistol that can be converted to fire more than 1,000 rounds per minute, converting it into a fully automatic weapon.

However, some people argue most gun owners are not using it that way.

The pistol is a Glock.

It is not the gun itself that is the problem. It is a small switch that when installed can turn the gun into a fully automatic weapon.

Rep. Steve Stafstrom, D-Judiciary Committee chair, wants to ban the sale of the Glock style switches. They are going after the manufacturer to change the design so these switches cannot be used.

“We in Connecticut have shown over the last 15 years that we have been smart on crime, tough on guns. What that has done has cut our prison population in half, and also cut violent crime rate in half,” Stafstrom said.

This would only affect the sale of new guns starting Oct. 1. Anyone who already has one would be grandfathered in and allowed to keep it.

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National Parental Rights Group Founder: Homeschooling ‘One Of The Last Remaining Spaces Where Parents Maintain Full Autonomy Over Children’s Education

Connecticut Democrats’ attempt to gain control of homeschooling reveals a desire to “force homeschoolers into alignment with the same ideological materials and standardized assessments that have already sparked controversy in government schools,” Sheri Few, founder and president of United States Parents Involved in Education, wrote in an op-ed at The Hill last week.

The national parental rights leader observed that Connecticut’s HB 5468 represents “a troubling pattern emerging whereby government agencies fail in their most basic responsibilities and lawmakers find someone else to blame.”

Few referred to state Democrats’ attempt to regulate homeschooling after their own government systems failed to attend to “repeated warnings in tragic child-abuse cases.”

“It is hard not to see this as a political sleight of hand,” she asserted. “A crisis exposes government negligence, yet instead of holding those agencies accountable, lawmakers pivot to regulate an entirely unrelated group.”

Rather than celebrate the Connecticut parents who choose to homeschool, sacrificing, for their children, their time and perhaps an opportunity for additional employment income, Democrat lawmakers want to require them to notify the government of their curriculum and be subjected to screening by the Department of Children and Families (DCF) and the Department of Education.

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Home Education Must Be “Equivalent” to Public School: Lawmakers

Home educators in Connecticut are officially in the government’s crosshairs. In fact, under a new bill moving through the legislature, parents will need approval from child protection services to homeschool. And they will have to prove to bureaucrats that they are providing “equivalent instruction” to that offered by the government-school system.  Only about a third of children in the state’s public schools are even “proficient” in reading or math, federal data show. Suicide, mental problems, and other issues are off the charts and rising among government-educated children, too. So, it was not immediately clear why anyone would want homeschoolers to be subjected to “equivalent instruction.” 

The bill purports to require that every parent must send their child to a government school. The only exception is if the parent or guardian can “show that the child is elsewhere receiving equivalent instruction in the studies taught in the public schools,” the text of the Connecticut legislation declares. 

Lawmakers lambasted the provision. “What is equivalent instruction? Is it equivalent to Prospect’s education, Bridgeport, Waterbury, Greenwich, Darien, East Haddam? I don’t know,” argued Ranking Member Rep. Lezlye Zupkus, a Republican. Democrats on the committee dismissed the concerns.

To prove that parents are giving their children “equivalent instruction,” the statute purports to require that they keep records for three years. They are also required to provide a demonstration of their child’s work to government. Ultimately, the state Department of Education will provide “guidance” regarding what all of it means. 

Senator Heather Somers, also a Republican, warned this was a scheme to force homeschool families to do the same thing as government schools. “By homeschooling being evaluated and really being pushed to public school standards, this bill is pressuring families to mirror the public school system,” she explained, echoing other critics. 

The demands are especially ironic considering how well homeschoolers tend to do compared to their government-schooled peers. “Every single homeschooler that I’ve had the privilege of meeting, their kids are smarter,” Sen. Somers said. “They’re graduating early from high school. Some of them are taking college courses or actually getting two years of college before they even turn 18.”

The elephant in the room — the fact that the government is horrifically failing the children already in its school system — did not escape notice. “People are withdrawing their kids, they’re quitting their jobs, because they don’t feel their kids are safe in public school,” observed Representative Tina Courpas, a Republican. “To me, that is so basic.” 

Lawmakers should focus on fixing the government’s schools. “If this committee did nothing else for the next two years other than make our public school safe, that would be a big win,” the lawmaker continued. “But this bill doesn’t address that problem. Instead, it cuts off people’s options to solve a problem that this state has created for them.”

Under the new legislation that has already cleared several important hurdles, the homeschooling community in the state would also need to be cleared by Child Protective Services (CPS) to obtain permission to homeschool. The Home School Legal Defense Association says this is a major change.

“One of the most troubling aspects of the proposal is the idea that parents could need permission from a child welfare agency before teaching their own children at home,” noted Ralph Rodriguez, associate attorney for HSLDA. “That represents a significant shift in how homeschooling families are treated under the law.”

Lawmakers, too, were perplexed by the decision to get the CPS involved in approving homeschooling. “The child advocate … stated publicly yesterday to me in a hearing that she agrees the real cause of these tragic events is a catastrophic failure of the Department of Children and Families,” said Education Committee Ranking Member Sen. Eric Berthel, referring to two tragic cases in which children died despite child-welfare officials being involved.

“All of this begs the question: Why would we want DCF to be involved at all in the monitoring or regulation of homeschoolers when the agency has demonstrated they cannot handle the cases they are already monitoring?” added Sen. Berthel. Other critics suggested the bill against homeschoolers was an effort to blame innocent people for the failures of government.  

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Ghost Funding Scandal: Connecticut Homeschoolers Push Audit Before Regulatory Showdown

Connecticut’s children’s agency failed to protect 11 year old Jacqueline “Mimi” Torres García, then helped turn her death into the emotional engine for a bill to regulate families who homeschool instead of fixing its own system.

AbleChild submitted emergency testimony to defeat the bill based on Mimi.  It laid out that DCF already had extensive involvement with Mimi’s family, the courts, and mandated reporters, and still allowed a faked Zoom “welfare check” to stand in for real protection. Now, as lawmakers head into a Thursday floor debate on HB 5468, homeschoolers have gone on offense, backed by a formal legal demand to follow the money.

Attorney Deborah G. Stevenson, on behalf of National Home Education Legal Defense, LLC (NHELD) and Connecticut taxpayers, has filed a complaint and request for an immediate investigation and audit of the State’s “School Fund” and Education Cost Sharing (ECS) monies. She explains that NHELD has “reason to believe that certain monies in the ‘School Fund’ have been used to pay public school districts per pupil funding for students who are no longer enrolled in the public school system,” a practice “euphemistically called ‘double funding’.” In plain language, districts may be receiving ghost per pupil funding, money for children who have already left public school, at the same time the state is trying to build a system to track and report those very families once they’re gone.

Stevenson’s filing links this practice directly to the pending legislation. She notes that double funding has been happening in the past, “is going on currently, and is planned to continue in the future, as well, due to pending legislation in at least two bills about which we are aware – SB6 and HB5468.” Fiscal notes on those bills show that hundreds of thousands of dollars per year would not go to classroom instruction, but to hiring new staff and building a regulatory framework to process withdrawal forms, contact families no longer enrolled in public schools, report them to various state agencies, track their data, and run records checks on them with DCF. The audit request asks a simple question, how much of that money is coming from funds that, under the Connecticut Constitution, are supposed to be “inviolably” used only to support public schools, not to finance a tracking regime aimed at families who have left.

The constitutional stakes are explicit. The Connecticut Constitution’s “School Fund” provisions say that the fund must remain perpetual, that its interest “shall be inviolably appropriated to the support and encouragement of the public schools,” and that “no law shall ever be made” that diverts that fund to any other use. Stevenson’s complaint asks the State Auditors to determine, among other things, whether there is a clearly identifiable School Fund, how much is in it, how its interest is handled, whether ECS per pupil payments come from that interest, whether public schools are being paid for students who are no longer enrolled “in case” they return, and whether money from that fund or ECS is being used to hire staff and build systems that identify, process, report to DCF, correspond with, and data track families who are no longer in the public school system. If misuse is found, the filing calls for all responsible parties to be held fully accountable, civilly or criminally, so that public funds are truly safeguarded.

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DOJ Sues Connecticut, City of New Haven Over Sanctuary Policies

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) sued Connecticut and the City of New Haven on April 13 over policies limiting cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.

The DOJ challenged Connecticut’s Trust Act and an executive order issued by New Haven’s mayor, arguing that they conflicted with federal immigration law and the Constitution. Specifically, the DOJ alleged violations of the U.S. Constitution’s Supremacy Clause, which says federal law takes precedence over state and local laws.

“For years, Connecticut communities have paid the price of these misguided sanctuary policies,” Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate of the DOJ’s Civil Division said in an emailed statement. “This lawsuit seeks to end such open defiance of federal law.”

The department named Connecticut, Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, Connecticut Attorney General Tong, the City of New Haven, and New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker as defendants.

The Trust Act, which was amended in 2025, limits when law enforcement officers can detain individuals based on civil immigration detainers. It directs officers not to hold someone solely on such a detainer unless certain conditions are met, such as the existence of a judicial warrant or a prior conviction for specific serious offenses, including certain crimes including murder, manslaughter, burglary, or sexual assault. The law also applies in cases where an individual has been flagged in federal security databases.

That has hindered cooperation between state and local law enforcement and federal immigration authorities in enforcing immigration laws, the DOJ argued.The DOJ also stated that the law prohibits law enforcement officers from using resources to communicate with federal immigration authorities regarding the custody or release of an individual targeted by a civil immigration detainer.

The law also forbids law enforcement officers from arresting or detaining an individual based on an administrative warrant, according to the lawsuit.

Another issue that the DOJ raised was a 2020 executive order issued by New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker. That order limited the disclosure of personal information—including immigration status—without an individual’s consent and restricts local officials from inquiring about a person’s immigration status in most situations. The DOJ claimed those provisions obstruct federal enforcement efforts.Connecticut and New Haven’s sanctuary policies “threaten and harm the United States’ sovereign interest in the supremacy and enforcement of federal law,” especially the Immigration and Nationality Act, according to the Justice Department.

The lawsuit stated that the sanctuary policies are “an active and deliberate effort to obstruct federal immigration enforcement by, among other things, impeding the communication between federal, state, and local law enforcement officials, and the safe apprehension and detention of [those] unlawfully present.”

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