Adjourned: Here's what the 2025 legislative session illuminated about Georgia politics

The House did not vote on several controversial Senate priority bills, including measures to restrict puberty blockers for minors experiencing gender dysphoria, remove Georgia from a multi-state collaborative to keep voter lists accurate and punish localities that do not help with immigration enforcement.

As those priorities appeared to be stalled, Lt. Gov. Burt Jones adjourned the Senate early. Lawmakers had yet to begin tearing their papers to toss in the air when Jones declared “Sine Die.”

“It was a good session. We got a lot of things done. No need to stay here until midnight,” Lt. Gov. Burt Jones told reporters. “No bad blood here. I don’t tell the House how to run their chamber and they don’t tell me how to run mine.”

Lawmakers on both sides of the Capitol were taken aback. House Speaker Jon Burns scrambled to figure out what the House could take up and finalize without the Senate around to give final approval. A bill to reform policy around school zone cameras was ultimately left dangling. 

“It appears that the Senate has checked all their priorities and decided to end their night early,” House Speaker Jon Burns told his House colleagues. “Of course they’re free to do as they please, but this chamber puts policy over politics.”

Speaking to reporters later, Burns nodded at the fact that a handful of top Republicans in the Senate are seeking higher office next year, including Jones who is planning a run for governor. Burns told reporters he had never seen a session end like this, but he said he was satisfied that he had been able to secure his top priority, a landmark school safety law.

“It’s a two-year cycle,” Jones told reporters. “That means whatever doesn’t get done this year will be available exactly where it sits for next year.”

Here are four takeaways and themes from the 2026 Georgia General Assembly:

THEME 1: Georgia Republicans make a point of mirroring Trump

When Trump signed an executive order banning transgender girls from playing on girls’ school sports teams, in the audience at the White House was Georgia House Speaker Jon Burns and Lt. Gov. Burt Jones. 

The day before, Burns held a press conference in the rotunda of the Georgia Capitol to roll out his own push to restrict transgender student-athletes. And the day after returning from the White House, Jones led the Georgia Senate in advancing a similar bill. 

This is just one example of Georgia Republicans mirroring policy priorities of the president.

Jones has promoted a “Red Tape Rollback Act,” which he has said is inspired by billionaire Elon Musk’s push to shrink the footprint of the federal government by slashing workers, funding and programs.

Trump has also been pledging to eliminate the federal income tax on tips. This session, Republican Sen. Greg Dolezal introduced a bill to exempt tips from Georgia’s state income tax.

And as Trump pledges to investigate and prosecute his enemies, Republicans in the Georgia Senate have doubled down on efforts to investigate political opponents, renewing a Senate panel to investigate Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and now Democrat Stacey Abrams.

Georgia Democrats could often be heard in the last four years linking their priorities to those of President Joe Biden, like voting and abortion rights. But Democrats say Georgia Republicans are going out of their way to mirror and praise Trump, even passing a Senate resolution to commend him. 

Republican lawmakers sent a bill to the governor’s desk creating an “America First” specialty license plate, with sponsors saying it is simply a show of patriotism and Democrats recounting the troubling history of the slogan and its later use by Trump. 

Lawmakers also voted on legislation that would make more changes to Georgia election law, including a measure to leave ERIC, a multi-state collaborative to keep voter lists updated that has been criticized by Trump’s allies, including on the State Election Board.

Republicans in both chambers advanced a measure that could result in Fulton County taxpayers compensating Trump and his co-defendants in the Georgia election interference case for their legal fees.

That measure, SB 244, was combined with a bipartisan plan to formalize a process for compensating wrongfully convicted Georgians. Democratic Rep. Shea Roberts said the choice made her physically sick.

“Attaching these two policies together isn’t just bad policy, it’s cynical politics at its worst,” Roberts said. “It puts legislators and voters in a moral straitjacket. If you want to support justice for the wrongfully convicted, you also have to support protecting powerful politicians from accountability.”

THEME 2: GOP emphasizes culture battles as Democrats weigh how to respond

It is not a surprise that lawmakers spent time debating several bills focused on transgender Georgians. The issue has become perennial in the Georgia legislature since 2022. 

Beyond the successful push focused on school sports, Republicans introduced bills to prevent the state health insurance plan from covering gender-affirming care and ban taxpayer dollars from covering these treatments for state prison inmates. Legislation was also proposed to ban the prescription of puberty blockers for minors experiencing gender dysphoria. 

Democrats have historically voted against these types of bills, mostly unanimously – and they have continued to oppose them in overwhelming numbers. But when the Senate advanced the bill focused on state prison inmates, something surprising happened. Several Democrats voted yes.

“There is no policy urgency on this issue,” Sen. Sonya Halpern said. “But I am also a pragmatist.”

Halpern joined Republicans and a handful of Democrats in voting for the ban. Among them, Democrat Elena Parent, who has forcefully opposed other bills focused on transgender Georgians and has received pushback on social media for her yes vote.

Some of these Democrats say they are reflecting the will of their constituents or draw distinctions between this bill and others focused on trans Georgians. But the votes also come as Republicans have been using the issue to attack Democrats, including during the 2024 election. 

“If you support sex change drugs and surgeries with taxpayer dollars for convicted criminals, I believe you’ve lost touch with constituents and your grip on reality,” Republican Sen. John Albers said.

But when the measure came up this week in the House, Democrats took another approach. Almost all of them walked out of the chamber shouting, “Take a walk! Take a walk!”

“People sent us here to do great work,” said House Minority Leader Carolyn Hugley. “They did not send us here to bully people, to ostracize people, to discriminate against people. Many of us are descendants of people who have felt the same thing.”

Republicans like House Majority Leader Chuck Efstration deemed the stunt a convenient way for Democrats to avoid a politically precarious vote.

“To see members flee the chamber because they are unwilling to actually represent their constituencies, put the vote on the board and let it be known to all Georgians where they stand is incredibly disappointing,” Efstration told reporters.

Later, the House voted for final passage of a controversial “religious liberty” bill that Democrats argued could sanction discrimination against the LGBTQ community.

With limited ability to offer amendments, negotiate or block legislation, Democrats have tried to look at new ways of pushing back. At recent events hosted by U.S. Senators Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, some attendees pressed their senators to fight. This week, U.S. Senator Cory Booker held the Senate floor for a record-breaking 25 hour-plus speech, quoting the late Georgia U.S. Rep. John Lewis’ mantra about engaging in good trouble. 

A few hours after Georgia House Democrats walked out, Democrats in the Georgia Senate put up a marathon of 20 amendments trying to block a bill restricting diversity, equity and inclusion in schools. The effort was ultimately unsuccessful. 

“Our tool is to make sure we push the envelope and stand up for the people of Georgia,” said Senate Minority Leader Harold Jones III, after the votes ended around midnight on Wednesday.

THEME 3: Some had high hopes for a law on school safety. Not everyone is satisfied.

A massive bill to address school safety in the aftermath of the deadly shooting at Apalachee High School now awaits Gov. Brian Kemp’s signature.

In the House, Speaker Burns called it the “most important legislation” lawmakers would consider this session. In the Senate, lawmakers stood in silence as Sen. Bill Cowsert read the names of the victims, two teachers and two students.

“There’s nothing like worrying about the safety of your children and your grandchildren,” Cowsert said. “Every parent ought to know when they drop their child off at school that they’re coming home safe.”

HB 268 provides grants for districts to hire staff focused on identifying and treating mental health issues, requires behavioral health training, the swift transfer of student records and an anonymous threat reporting system.  The legislation also provides mobile panic alert systems for teachers and stiffens criminal penalties for students who commit terroristic acts.

Republican Rep. Holt Persinger, who sponsored the bill, lives in the county that includes Apalachee High School, and he began to cry as he described how it felt to watch the bill pass.

“It’s been a long hard road,” he said. “From Sept. 4, we’ve been working on this every single day.”

Though the bill passed with overwhelming bipartisan support, many Democrats expressed disappointment that lawmakers did not tackle firearm access.

“Out of 65 pages, the number of times a gun or guns is mentioned is zero,” Democratic Rep. Lisa Campbell said on the floor.

The final votes came after weeks of negotiations. The final bill abandoned plans to set up a database for sharing information about student behavior between state agencies. 

Proponents argued that had officials been able to connect the dots better, they might have been able to intervene before the tragedy at Apalachee. But the plan drew concerns about privacy and profiling and was ultimately scrapped in favor of a central alert system designed to flag school safety threats.

“This was a must-do bill,” said Republican Rep. Chris Erwin, chair of the House Education Committee. “This wasn’t a ‘turn around and run away from it’ bill.” 

THEME 4: Kemp flexed his political muscles to curb civil lawsuits. The repercussions are ongoing.

At the onset of the session, Kemp declared overhauling Georgia’s civil litigation rules as his top legislative priority, threatening a possible special session if lawmakers did not send legislation to his desk.

In the end, it did not come to that. Georgia lawmakers narrowly passed sweeping changes designed to curb big payouts in civil lawsuits. The 19-page bill is very complex and full of legalese, but has the potential to impact every Georgian. 

Kemp argued the changes were needed to keep businesses and medical providers in Georgia, as well as stabilize insurance premiums for everyone. Democrats argued the changes were unlikely to result in lower insurance rates for consumers but would limit injured Georgians from accessing the civil justice system. Some Republicans, mostly trial lawyers themselves, were also skeptical. 

In the House, where the core measure passed with only one vote to spare, eight Republicans voted no and three Republicans voted yes. The final votes capped weeks of pressure, incentives and some concessions, helping deliver a legacy-defining achievement for Kemp – one on which he staked significant political capital. 

“This has been worked on for years now, to little avail, and we have a great bill here in my opinion. Political capital, all that other stuff, I don’t have time to worry about that,” Kemp told reporters. “This has been an issue that everybody has worked hard on, even the people that voted against it.”

Democratic Rep. Stacey Evans said members who voted for the bill, including members of her own party, should be held responsible at the ballot box. “This bill is bad for people,” she said. “Not only did they break a caucus position, they let down their voters.”

One Republican House member lost his job at the local Chamber of Commerce hours after his no vote. Others were left wondering about the possibility of primary challenges, which a top Kemp aide threatened in the days before the Senate vote. Ultimately, the key GOP holdouts came around. 

“We’re the voice of the everyday man trying to hold big powerful companies responsible when they decide to overlook your safety and health,” Republican Sen. Bo Hatchett told the chamber before voting in favor.  “I’m also a conservative constitutionalist that thinks constitutional rights should not be whittled down in exchange for elusive, uncommitted promises of lower premiums.”

“I still have some concerns about this draft of the bill, but I have yet to see a bill come across this floor that I thought was perfect,” Republican Sen. Brian Strickland said before also voting yes.

Kemp is expected to hold a high-profile ceremony to sign the bills in the coming weeks.