Here are new laws that go into effect July 1 in Connecticut
Some of the new laws were passed in this year's legislative session, which ended in early June. Others were passed in previous legislative sessions.
By far the most consequential measure passed during the 2025 legislative session was the two-year, $55.8 billion state budget, OK'd by lawmakers on a party-line vote.
Free and low-cost early childhood education
Included in that spending plan is the establishment of an 'Early Childhood Education Endowment' fund. That fund will be formally created on July 1, with up to $300 million in surplus state cash. The creation of the fund was a top priority for Gov. Ned Lamont (D-Conn.), who pitched it as a means to make early childhood education free for families earning less than $100,000 annually.
Cost-saving measures for electric ratepayers
The cost of electricity was also a major focus of the 2025 legislative session. In the waning hours of the session, lawmakers approved a sweeping, bipartisan bill that proponents say will lower the average annual costs by more than $100. Portions of that legislation that will shift the costs of some programs currently funded by the Combined Public Benefits Charge will take effect on July 1.
GUIDE: 2025 Fourth of July fireworks and parades in Connecticut
Election security
The 2023 absentee ballot scandal that upended the mayoral election in Bridgeport, the state's largest city, spurred lawmakers to make several changes to the state's voting rules.
Many of those changes, including adjustments to the absentee ballot process and the investigation of election-related crimes, have already taken effect. A section requiring all municipalities to install video recording devices around absentee ballot dropboxes has a deadline of July 1, meaning those cameras must be in place for this year's municipal elections. The law instructs that the footage must be made available to the public soon after every election.
Absentee ballot drop boxes were at the center of the 2023 scandal in Bridgeport. Leaked city surveillance footage showed multiple individuals approaching ballot drop boxes and placing multiple items inside. A judge ruled the actions recorded by those cameras showed individuals 'making multiple drops of multiple ballots' in the drop boxes. The judge stated that the scale of the apparent misconduct was such that the results of the entire election were brought into question. Since then, five Democratic campaign operatives have been charged with ballot crimes.
Spending controls at the state's university system
The 2023 Bridgeport absentee ballot saga wasn't the only scandal that spawned legislation going into effect on July 1.
Last year, an investigation by CT Insider revealed that the chancellor of the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities (CSCU) system had charged tens of thousands of dollars worth of meals and alcohol to his state-issued credit card.
Cheng has not been charged with any criminal wrongdoing, but a review conducted by State Comptroller Sean Scanlon described spending by him and other CSCU officials as 'in some cases, a shocking and tone-deaf display.'
In response to the revelations over the spending of taxpayer and tuition dollars at CSCU, legislators moved to enact a slate of reforms, including updates to policies and employee training on the use of state-issued credit cards.
Addressing deportation efforts
Connecticut's Democrat-controlled legislature spent much of this year's session discussing measures to respond to the policies of the second Trump administration.
Anxiety over the president's stepped-up efforts to deport those in the country illegally caused lawmakers to draft legislation, going into effect in July, which orders school districts to update their policies on how to interact with immigration authorities.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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Trump's aggressive push to take over DC policing may be a template for an approach in other cities
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Trump's aggressive push to take over DC policing may be a template for an approach in other cities
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'If our capital is dirty, our whole country is dirty, and they don't respect us.' He then upped the stakes by declaring federal control of the district's police department and naming an emergency chief. That set off alarms and prompted local officials to sue to stop the effort. 'I have never seen a single government action that would cause a greater threat to law and order than this dangerous directive,' Police Chief Pamela Smith said. On Friday, the Trump administration partially retreated from its effort to seize control of the Metropolitan Police Department when a judge, skeptical that the president had the authority to do what he tried to do, urged both sides to reach a compromise, which they did — at least for now. Trump's Justice Department agreed to leave Smith in control, while still intending to instruct her department on law enforcement practices. In a new memo, Attorney General Pam Bondi directed the force to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement regardless of any city law. In this heavily Democratic city, local officials and many citizens did not like the National Guard deployment. At the same time, they acknowledged the Republican president had the right to order it because of the federal government's unique powers in the district. But Trump's attempt to seize formal control of the police department, for the first time since D.C. gained a partial measure of autonomy in the Home Rule Act of 1973, was their red line. When the feds stepped in For sure, there have been times when the U.S. military has been deployed to American streets, but almost always in the face of a riot or a calamitous event like the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Trump's use of force was born of an emergency that he saw and city officials — and many others — did not. A stranger to nuance, Trump has used the language of emergency to justify much of what he's done: his deportations of foreigners, his tariffs, his short-term deployment of National Guard troops to Los Angeles, and now his aggressive intervention into Washington policing. Washington does have crime and endemic homelessness, like every city in the country. But there was nothing like an urban fire that the masses thought needed to be quelled. Violent crime is down, as it is in many U.S. cities. Washington is also a city about which most Americans feel ownership — or at least that they have a stake. More than 25 million of them visited in 2024, a record year, plus over 2 million people from abroad. It's where middle schoolers on field trips get to see what they learn about in class — and perhaps to dance to pop tunes with the man with the music player so often in front of the White House. Washington is part federal theme park, with its historic buildings and museums, and part downtown, where restaurants and lobbyists outnumber any corporate presence. Neighborhoods range from the places where Jeff Bezos set a record for a home purchase price to destitute streets in economically depressed areas that are also magnets for drugs and crime. In 1968, the capital was a city on fire with riots. Twenty years later, a murder spree and crack epidemic fed the sense of a place out of control. But over the last 30 years, the city's population and its collective wealth have swelled. A cooked-up emergency? Against that backdrop, Philadelphia's top prosecutor, District Attorney Larry Krasner, a Democrat, assailed Trump's moves in Washington. 'You're talking about an emergency, really?' Krasner said, as if speaking with the president. 'Or is it that you're talking about an emergency because you want to pretend everything is an emergency so that you can roll tanks?" 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WASHINGTON (AP) — The left sees President Donald Trump's attempted takeover of Washington law enforcement as part of a multifront march to autocracy — 'vindictive authoritarian rule,' as one activist put it — and as an extraordinary thing to do in rather ordinary times on the streets of the capital. To the right, it's a bold move to fracture the crust of Democratic urban bureaucracy and make D.C. a better place to live. Where that debate settles — if it ever does — may determine whether Washington, a symbol for America in all its granite glory, history, achievement, inequality and dysfunction, becomes a model under the imprint of Trump for how cities are policed, cleaned up and run, or ruined. Under the name of his Making D.C. Safe and Beautiful Task Force, Trump put some 800 National Guard troops on Washington streets this past week, declaring at the outset, 'Our capital city has been overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals.' Grunge was also on his mind. 'If our capital is dirty, our whole country is dirty, and they don't respect us.' He then upped the stakes by declaring federal control of the district's police department and naming an emergency chief. That set off alarms and prompted local officials to sue to stop the effort. 'I have never seen a single government action that would cause a greater threat to law and order than this dangerous directive,' Police Chief Pamela Smith said. On Friday, the Trump administration partially retreated from its effort to seize control of the Metropolitan Police Department when a judge, skeptical that the president had the authority to do what he tried to do, urged both sides to reach a compromise, which they did — at least for now. Trump's Justice Department agreed to leave Smith in control, while still intending to instruct her department on law enforcement practices. In a new memo, Attorney General Pam Bondi directed the force to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement regardless of any city law. In this heavily Democratic city, local officials and many citizens did not like the National Guard deployment. At the same time, they acknowledged the Republican president had the right to order it because of the federal government's unique powers in the district. But Trump's attempt to seize formal control of the police department, for the first time since D.C. gained a partial measure of autonomy in the Home Rule Act of 1973, was their red line. When the feds stepped in For sure, there have been times when the U.S. military has been deployed to American streets, but almost always in the face of a riot or a calamitous event like the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Trump's use of force was born of an emergency that he saw and city officials — and many others — did not. A stranger to nuance, Trump has used the language of emergency to justify much of what he's done: his deportations of foreigners, his tariffs, his short-term deployment of National Guard troops to Los Angeles, and now his aggressive intervention into Washington policing. Washington does have crime and endemic homelessness, like every city in the country. But there was nothing like an urban fire that the masses thought needed to be quelled. Violent crime is down, as it is in many U.S. cities. Washington is also a city about which most Americans feel ownership — or at least that they have a stake. More than 25 million of them visited in 2024, a record year, plus over 2 million people from abroad. It's where middle schoolers on field trips get to see what they learn about in class — and perhaps to dance to pop tunes with the man with the music player so often in front of the White House. Washington is part federal theme park, with its historic buildings and museums, and part downtown, where restaurants and lobbyists outnumber any corporate presence. Neighborhoods range from the places where Jeff Bezos set a record for a home purchase price to destitute streets in economically depressed areas that are also magnets for drugs and crime. In 1968, the capital was a city on fire with riots. Twenty years later, a murder spree and crack epidemic fed the sense of a place out of control. But over the last 30 years, the city's population and its collective wealth have swelled. A cooked-up emergency? Against that backdrop, Philadelphia's top prosecutor, District Attorney Larry Krasner, a Democrat, assailed Trump's moves in Washington. 'You're talking about an emergency, really?' Krasner said, as if speaking with the president. 'Or is it that you're talking about an emergency because you want to pretend everything is an emergency so that you can roll tanks?" In Washington, a coalition of activists called Not Above the Law denounced what they saw as just the latest step by Trump to seize levers of power he has no business grasping. 'The onslaught of lawlessness and autocratic activities has escalated,' said Lisa Gilbert, co-chair of the group and co-president of Public Citizen. 'The last two weeks should have crystallized for all Americans that Donald Trump will not stop until democracy is replaced by vindictive authoritarian rule.' Fifty miles northeast, in the nearest major city, Baltimore's Democratic mayor criticized what he saw as Trump's effort to distract the public from economic pain and 'America's falling standing in the world.' 'Every mayor and police chief in America works with our local federal agents to do great work — to go after gun traffickers, to go after violent organizations,' Brandon Scott said. 'How is taking them off of that job, sending them out to just patrol the street, making our country safer?' But the leader of the D.C. Police Union, Gregg Pemberton, endorsed Trump's intervention — while saying it should not become permanent. 'We stand with the president in recognizing that Washington, D.C., cannot continue on this trajectory,' Pemberton said. From his vantage point, 'Crime is out of control, and our officers are stretched beyond their limits.' The Home Rule Act lets a president invoke certain emergency powers over the police department for 30 days, after which Congress must decide whether to extend the period. Trump's attempt to use that provision stirred interest among some Republicans in Congress in giving him an even freer hand. Among them, Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee drafted a resolution that would eliminate the time limit on federal control. This, he told Fox News Digital, would 'give the president all the time and authority he needs to crush lawlessness, restore order, and reclaim our capital once and for all.' Which raises a question that Trump has robustly hinted at and others are wondering, too: If there is success in the district — at least, success in the president's eyes — what might that mean for other American cities he thinks need to be fixed? Where does — where could — the federal government go next?
