Gold Dome Nuggets: ‘Defender’ of women, 2026 ambitions and GOP infighting over trans care

Caption

The 2025 legislative session is well underway now.

Credit: Georgia Recorder

Break out the honey mustard, it’s time for nuggets.

Introducing the Georgia Recorder’s Gold Dome Nuggets, part of a balanced news diet featuring your weekly recommended allowance of state Capitol happenings that didn’t quite generate headlines but gave us all plenty to talk about.

For your first helping of Gold Dome nuggets, we present to you this three-piece special looking at reaction to Trump’s transgender sports ban, the nascent field of 2026 gubernatorial candidates and a weird callout from an outspoken state senator.

Trump’s record on women? 

A House Republican lawmaker’s praise of President Donald Trump’s national ban on transgender athletes in girls’ sports triggered a spirited response from Democrats.

“Mr. Speaker, last week, our great President Donald Trump signed no men in women’s sports executive order into law,” said Rep. Reynaldo “Rey” Martinez, a Loganville Republican, with freshman GOP state Rep. Sandy Donatucci at his side. 

“You were there, Mr. Speaker, to witness this historic event, surrounded by girls and women athletes from all walks of life. President Trump said the war on women’s sports is over,” Martinez said. 

Martinez made his comments Wednesday in the House chamber during a time that is set aside each day for condolences, hat-tips and other speeches from what is called the well. The next day, a group of Democratic women took to the mic in response. 

“You know yesterday from the well, the president was portrayed as a defender of women and girls,” said Rep. Anne Allen Westbrook, a Savannah Democrat. “I was wondering if this was the same president whose record on women and girls I had thought was well known, so I felt it necessary to remind folks of the fuller story.”

Westbrook then read aloud the transcript from the infamous Access Hollywood tape where Trump can be heard talking so explicitly about his sexual advances of women that Westbrook bleeped out several words.

Rep. James Burchett, who is the majority whip and a Waycross Republican, attempted to “deescalate the situation.”

“I’m asking you to please, please, please, let’s not escalate this chamber into a fight from the right or the left. Let’s work together. Let’s continue to do the good work of the state of Georgia and push the D.C. politics and national politics aside, and let’s just concentrate on Georgia politics,” Burchett said.

The House GOP leadership has proposed its own ban on transgender athletes in girls’ sports. In the Senate, that chamber has already passed its version as well as a bill that would cut off gender-affirming care for state employees, teachers and others covered by the state health benefit plan. 

HAPPY 2026

Sen. Jason Esteves, an Atlanta Democrat, addressed rumors that he will run for the governor’s office in 2026 — kind of.

Esteves was elected to the Senate in 2022 after serving on the Atlanta Public Schools Board of Education since 2013. The AJC reported Monday that he has been talking with activists and donors in preparation for a potential run.

A reporter asked Esteves about his plans Monday at a Capitol press conference on a proposal to update Georgia’s 40-year-old school funding plan to send more dollars to kids living in poverty, but the senator was demure.

“Right now, I’m focused on, like I said, on the session; I’m focused on addressing the issues that we have before us. And like I said, the fact that we have a literacy crisis in the state that has gone unaddressed; I think we need to move on that now.”

Esteves has been called a rising star in the party and an expert on education policy.

Gov. Brian Kemp will not be eligible to run next year because of term limits, so the open seat could attract a lot of attention, and prominent Democrats like former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, Congresswoman Lucy McBath and DeKalb County CEO Michael Thurmond could throw their hats in the ring.

On the Republican side, Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr got in the race early, announcing his intentions back in November, but Lt. Gov. Burt Jones is widely expected to take a shot at the top spot.

Busting Carr’s chops

Carr got a weird shout-out Tuesday from Trenton Republican Sen. Colton Moore, a conservative gadfly whose antics have sometimes vexed members of his own caucus.

In a Senate debate over a bill that would cut funding for gender-affirming care for state employees from the state health care plan, Moore blamed Carr for settling a 2023 court case brought by transgender workers who had been barred from receiving care.

“I was talking to some folks in Northwest Georgia last night about this issue, and I tell you what, they are red mad that a Republican attorney general named Chris Carr could sign this consent agreement and allow their taxpayer dollars to fund transgender surgeries, not only on adults, but also on minors.”

“We hear the Attorney General say, ‘Keep choppin’,’ well, I’m tired of chopping children’s genitals with taxpayer money,” Moore added in a crude and inaccurate reference to gender-affirming care.

The underlying bill, sponsored by Sen. Blake Tillery, a Vidalia Republican and Jones ally, also puts the blame on the AG for settling the case “without prior notice to or approval by the General Assembly.”

Carr has pushed back against accusations that he wants the state to help transgender people.

In January, Carr’s office announced that he and 23 other state attorneys general signed onto a court brief opposing taxpayer-funded gender-affirming care and that he had “taken roughly 50 legal actions to prevent taxpayer-funded gender reassignment surgeries and the chemical and surgical mutilation of Georgia’s children.” 

This story comes to GPB through a reporting partnership with Georgia Recorder.