Republican Donald Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris Wednesday following a campaign that put immigration and reproductive health care in focus to voters across the country.
In Connecticut, advocates and legislative leaders were outspoken within hours of the Trump victory, vowing to protect individual rights and sounding off on issues ranging from health care and immigration to gun control and the opioid overdose crisis.
Here’s what they had to say.
Reproductive rights
The constitutional right to an abortion was overturned in 2022 by the U.S. Supreme Court, which included three Trump appointees – Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.
But pro-choice advocates said the majority of public opinion across the country remains pro-choice.
“Connecticut voters decisively cast their votes for reproductive freedom champions up and down the ballot,” said Amanda Skinner, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Southern New England. “We re-elected Planned Parenthood Action Fund endorsed candidates to all five of Connecticut's congressional seats.”
Under Trump’s first term, Planned Parenthood was removed from the federal grant program to provide family planning services, which is known as Title 10. Skinner did not expect a second Trump term to be much different.
“The attacks don’t stop with abortion,” she said. “There are plans to restrict funding for birth control and for other preventive care services, there are attacks on gender affirming care, there are attacks on sex education. There are so many levers that can be pulled to restrict access to care for people who need it.”
Trump maintains that overturning Roe v. Wade is enough on the federal level. He said last month on his social media platform Truth Social that he would veto a federal abortion ban if legislation reached his desk — a statement he made only after avoiding a firm position in his September debate against Democratic nominee Harris.
Across the U.S., 10 states had abortion on their ballot this election. Following Republicans winning control of the U.S. Senate, Connecticut Democrat Sen. Richard Blumenthal said he is bracing for a fight, but is cautiously optimistic of popular support.
“The strong, growing, powerful weight of public opinion in this country is for reproductive freedoms, and that is illustrated by votes in Missouri and Arizona for referenda that will protect a woman's right to choose and in Florida, even though it wasn’t 60%,” he said, speaking at the state Capitol the day after the elections.
Also at the state Capitol after Trump won the presidency, Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz said there were no plans to stockpile the pregnancy termination pill mifepristone in Connecticut, like some states have, because if the Food and Drug Administration bans the medications, she said doctors won’t prescribe it.
Immigration-related anxiety
Undocumented immigrants in Connecticut are once again confronting the fear and anxiety of deportation following the reelection of former President Trump, according to Carolina Bortoletto, a volunteer at the nonprofit HUSKY 4 Immigrants Coalition.
“Small kids were afraid to go to school because they didn't know if when they came back home, their parents would still be there,” she said. “And no child should live with that kind of trauma. We’ll be hearing the same things.”
Luis Luna, coalition manager of Husky 4 Immigrants, called in a statement for state representatives and senators to strengthen and implement the Trust Act, to protect people who are undocumented. Louis said the nonprofit coalition will “continue our fight to increase access to health care for all Connecticut residents, no matter their legal status.”
A hard-line stance on immigration was a centerpiece of the Republican Party candidate’s successful campaign for president. Trump repeatedly campaigned throughout 2024 promising that his administration would block the flow of immigrants on the southern border, and deport millions of people in his second term. He has not fully explained how such an operation would work.
Some Connecticut voters were in favor of tighter immigration policies, expressing concern over finances required to pay for the education and health care of undocumented immigrants.
“You know, you're hearing about crime, the cost of supporting immigrants,” said Andrew Draghi, a scientist in Glastonbury, after he cast his vote at Town Hall Tuesday morning. “We work hard enough as it is to support ourselves. Having open doors is a bad policy. It's unsustainable.”
Republicans in 2017 also attempted to repeal the Affordable Care Act, a key talking point by party members across the country.
“If their agenda is a repeal of the Affordable Care Act – stripping insurance from thousands of Connecticut residents – my mandate is to fight that agenda,” U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy said on Connecticut Public Radio’s Wheelhouse Wednesday.
Gun violence, a public health crisis
U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy made headlines in June when he declared gun violence a public health crisis.
Connecticut Sen. Murphy, a Democrat, was reelected Tuesday after touting gun control efforts as a centerpiece of his first two terms in Congress. But Murphy said he expected any kind of gun legislation to be an uphill battle in a Republican-majority Senate.
“They may be moving to an interpretation of the Second Amendment that essentially takes away from the state legislature the ability to keep our gun laws safer than the rest of our country. Time will tell,” he said, speaking on Connecticut Public Radio’s Wheelhouse Wednesday.
Murphy pushed through a major piece of gun legislation – the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act – with support from Republicans. Now, he said he was concerned that no further ground would be gained under a pro-gun lobby in a second Trump term.
Connecticut advocates have had a history of passing legislation under multiple administrations. Sandy Hook Promise, founded by parents of children killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012, helped pass legislation under President Barack Obama to address mental health; an act to prevent school violence under President Trump; and under President Biden, an act to prevent suicide.
The Sandy Hook Promise Action Fund is currently supporting the Kid PROOF Act, introduced in Dec. 2023.
Opioid epidemic
Trump in 2017 declared opioid overdose deaths a public health crisis.
But the issue of opioids was not a centerpiece of either candidate’s run for office in 2024, which left some voters in New England frustrated by a lack of clarity from both campaigns about how they would tackle the ongoing public health crisis.
Christine Gagnon, who is on Connecticut’s Opioid Settlement Advisory Committee, said she was optimistic Trump would return to the issue of opioids in a second term.
Gagnon’s son, Michael, died of an opioid overdose in 2017.
“I am confident that President elect Donald J. Trump will combat the scourge of illicit drugs coming into our country by protecting our border and giving the border agents the resources necessary at our legal and illegal points of entry,” Gagnon said. “Also, hold the peddlers of poison to account.”
Gagnon said she was her son Michael’s voice now, and the voice of “all the children who no longer have a voice.”
In 2018, Dita Bhargava’s son died of an overdose. Writing from Washington, D.C., where she was with Harris at the watch party in Howard University, she called attention to how more than 90% of interdicted fentanyl is stopped at legal ports on entry to the U.S.
“If we don’t concurrently focus on the supply side with the demand side by funding prevention, treatment, and recovery programs, people will continue to die of addiction disease,” Bhargava, of Stamford, said. “I hope the incoming president understands the drug epidemic needs a serious, multi-pronged approach.”
Connecticut Public’s Chris Polansky, Frankie Graziano, Chloe Wynne and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
