Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy discharged from the hospital after stroke

Livi Stanford, Hartford Courant on Nov 6, 2026

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U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy has been discharged from John Hopkins Hospital following treatment after having a stroke, according to information from Murphy’s office.

“Thank you for the outpouring of support my family and I have received over the last few days,” Murphy said in a statement.

Murphy said further in his statement that he wanted to be direct on his diagnosis.

“Last Saturday afternoon I felt something was not right with my body and called 911 out of an abundance of caution and I am glad I did,” he said. “I was diagnosed with a small bleed in the thalamus region of the brain. The doctors are very encouraged by the progress I’ve made so far. In order to take my recovery seriously and get back to work on the quickest timeline possible, I will be spending several weeks at a rehabilitation center after being discharged from the hospital today.”

Dr Jose Suarez, chief of neurosciences critical care at John Hopkins Hospital said in a statement that Murphy experienced “a small hemorrhagic stroke.

“He has shown tremendous progress and at the current rate of improvement, we expect that he will make a full recovery following rehabilitation,” he said.

Murphy described the experience as scary for him and his family and that he would appreciate the “continued respect for our privacy.”

“As I’m working towards a full recovery, I am staying engaged with my team and colleagues remotely, and my staff continues to carry out our legislative priorities, serve constituents, and ensure the work of my office continues uninterrupted,” Murphy said. “I want to extend my deepest thanks to the excellent doctors and staff at Johns Hopkins who have treated me and cared for my family.”

The 53-year-old senator experienced numbness in his arm Saturday afternoon while at his son’s hockey game, according to Allison Herwitt, the senator’s chief of staff in a statement Sunday.

Murphy is the fourth U.S. senator to suffer from a stroke in the past few years.

Sen. Ben Ray Lujan, Democrat of New Mexico experienced a stroke in 2022 along with Sen. John Fetterman, a Pennsylvania Democrat who, according to the Associated Press, attributed his stroke the same year to a blood clot triggered by atrial fibrillation. And Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat, suffered a minor stroke in the same year.

A staunch critic of President Donald Trump’s administration and the Iran War, Murphy recently traveled overseas to receive a firsthand account of damage from the war that he has said the administration is covering up. He said he was blocked from seeing a key American air base in the Middle East during that official Congressional trip.

In a recent statement about a briefing on potential U.S. military plans for the Iran War, Murphy expressed deep worries about what the war plan would entail if the U.S. restarted military operations.

“I will just say this: their plan is insane,” he said. “It will lead to devastating escalation and the likely destruction of our commitment to the rule of law.”

Several neurologists in the Hartford region, who are not overseeing the senator’s care, said more younger people below the age of 54 are having strokes, due in large part to the increase of risk factors tied to the condition, including high blood pressure, high cholesterol, atrial fibrillation (irregular heartbeat), diabetes and obesity.

Strokes among adults ages 20 to 54 nearly doubled over three decades, “even as short-term survival after stroke improved,” according to a large U.S. population study released last month in the American Academy of Neurology.

A stroke is a blockage of the blood vessel in the brain or when a blood vessel bleeds in the brain, causing damage.

Stroke is the fifth leading cause of death in the U.S., with 795,000 cases every year, and a major cause of long-term disability for adults, according to the American Medical Association. Based on Connecticut hospital emergency department visits and hospital discharge data from 29 participating stroke centers there were 8,914 stroke/transient ischemic attacks in 2025, according to the Connecticut Department of Health.

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