2025 YIR: Jewish Atlanta Divided Over Trump After One Month

One month into his second term as president of the United States, Donald Trump had disrupted — to the delight of supporters and the distress of opponents in Jewish Atlanta — how the U.S. government functioned, at home and abroad.

Within the torrent of executive orders that Trump signed beginning almost immediately after taking office Jan. 20, and the policies executed at his direction were issues of intense interest to various segments of Atlanta’s Jewish community.

Trump’s backers lauded his expressions of support for Israel and his approach to confronting antisemitism in the United States, while his detractors feared that he would tear apart the social safety net and denounced as indiscriminate the layoffs and budget cuts at federal agencies engineered by billionaire Elon Musk through a newly-created Department of Government Efficiency. All of this left both individuals and organizations nervous.

Depending by their party affiliation, political partisans had differing views of the world.

“I feel the divisiveness has decreased,” said Renee Evans, a representative of the World Jewish Congress, who has served on the boards of Jewish and Israeli support organizations. “The president’s logical approach is working and getting things better. I also think we as Georgians and Americans are seeing where our tax dollars are going, and for what. We are saying, ‘No, not acceptable.’ This is especially true with the U.S. money going toward terrorism. I think we are swinging more to the middle, thanks to President Trump.”

A distinctly different view of Trump’s performance was offered by Michael Rosenzweig, a Jewish community activist and board member of Democratic Majority For Israel.

“Trump’s first month in office has been an unmitigated disaster for our country and, frankly, the entire world …,” Rosenzweig said. Trump “campaigned as champion of the working class but has focused on pleasing his billionaire friends by reducing their taxes and regulations of their businesses while doing nothing for the working class. And his appointments of utterly incompetent, unqualified and downright dangerous people like RFK, Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, Kash Patel, and Pete Hegseth, based solely on their blind loyalty to him, threaten the fundamental well-being of our country.”