Monday 2 November 2026
Senator Chris Murphy is at Johns Hopkins after a stroke at his son's hockey game, and his office expects a full recovery
Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, 53, suffered a stroke on Saturday afternoon while watching his son play hockey, his office said on Sunday. He felt numbness in his arm, was taken to a local hospital, and was transferred to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore for monitoring. His chief of staff, Allison Herwitt, said he is awake and alert, responding well to treatment, and that his doctors are optimistic he will make a full recovery. Murphy is not on the ballot this year. His office has not said what type of stroke it was or when he will be discharged.
Murphy felt the numbness come on during the game on Saturday and was taken to a hospital nearby, where doctors determined he had suffered a stroke. He was then moved to Johns Hopkins for further monitoring. “The doctors are encouraged by his progress, he is awake and alert, and we are optimistic he will make a full recovery,” Herwitt said in the statement his office released on Sunday.
Murphy has held Connecticut's Senate seat since 2013, after six years in the House. He sits on the Appropriations Committee and built his national profile on gun legislation after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings in Newtown, in the district he then represented. He has been one of the Senate's loudest critics of the war with Iran and is regularly named among the Democrats who could run for president in 2028. His term runs to 2030, so the hospitalization does not touch Tuesday's ballot in Connecticut or the Senate's current 53 to 47 split.
His office released no detail on the kind of stroke, its severity, or a timetable for his return to Washington. Those facts will come from his doctors and his family, and they have not been given yet.
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