Jewish Atlanta’s Views on Trump at 100 Days

Opinions in Jewish Atlanta about the first 100 days of Donald Trump’s second presidency — a milestone marked on April 30 — tend to mirror those the AJT reported on after he had been in office for 30 days.

The torrent of executive orders and policy changes may have eased somewhat, but almost daily there is news that either delights or disgusts, the reaction depending on one’s political persuasion.

On one hand, a poll of 800 registered Jewish American voters, conducted in April by The Mellman Group for the Jewish Electorate Institute (JEI), reported a 71 percent disapproval of Trump’s job performance. [Several JEI board members have ties to the Democratic Party. Veteran pollster Mark Mellman recently stepped down as president of the Democratic Majority for Israel, which he formed in 2019.]

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On the other, “I give President Trump credit for having the courage to tackle critical issues that have been ignored for years by both Republicans and Democrats. People are upset with the ‘chaos’ he has caused, but you have to break some eggs to build an omelet,” said Chuck Berk, co-chair of the Atlanta chapter of the Republican Jewish Coalition.

Berk passed along a 19-item “Dayenu” (“it would have been enough”), modeled on the 14-verse song from the Passover Seder, thanking Trump for actions that included ordering a government strategy to combat antisemitism, slashing billions of dollars in federal grants to universities deemed as failing to protect Jewish students, and helping to rescue hostages held in Gaza. The list originated with RJC’s national chairman, former Minnesota U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman.

Another endorsement came from Betsy Kramer, a Republican party activist in Fulton County and an at-large delegate to the 2024 Republican National Convention. “In just his first 100 days, President Trump reignited American strength at home and abroad — slashing job-killing regulations, restoring border security, and jumpstarting economic confidence like we hadn’t seen in years. He put America First every single day, standing up to China, revitalizing American manufacturing, and keeping his promises to the forgotten men and women of this country,” she said.

Michael Rosenzweig, a Jewish community activist and board member of Democratic Majority For Israel, offered a diametrically opposed viewpoint, contending that Trump’s first 100 days “have more than confirmed our worst fears about him . . . He has displayed breathtaking lawlessness, demonstrating that constitutional and legal constraints and traditional norms are meaningless to him.”

Trump “has demonstrated clearly that he is no true friend of either American Jews or Israel. He cynically claims that his attacks on colleges, universities, and law firms are all part of a virtuous effort to root out antisemitism, callously ignoring the backlash against Jews he thereby fosters,” he said.

“Trump has bypassed the government of Israel and displayed frightening disregard for Israel’s security by excluding it from negotiations with Iran and Hamas — respectively, the world’s most dangerous sponsor of terrorism and the most bloodthirsty terror group on the planet, both sworn to Israel’s destruction — and striking a deal with the Houthis protecting American targets but leaving them free to continue their attacks on Israel. One wonders what Jewish voters who supported Trump as a self-proclaimed friend to American Jews and Israel are thinking now,” Rosenzweig said.

U.S. President Donald Trump (right) shaking hands with Syria’s interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa in Riyadh on May 14, 2025 // Photo Credit: Bandar Al-Jaloud/Saudi Royal Palace/AFP/Times of Israel

One of Trump’s Jewish supporters is Renee Evans, a representative of the World Jewish Congress and a representative to the White House Faith Office, who pronounced herself to be more than satisfied with his job performance. “First, this has been the most pro-Israel administration from day one. The president has tackled the problems with supplying Israel with weapons, moral support, met with the prime minister, [and] coordinated military support as well,” she said.

“He has assigned multiple task forces, and gone after the antisemitism problem, not only on our primary and college campuses, and has stood firm on what is and is not acceptable,” Evans continued. “I believe he will have the deportation of these anti-American, domestic terrorists going more smoothly, soon, as well as those punished who are protesting against our community. These policies will not only make the punishment so severe, protesters will think twice before putting their futures and freedom on the line.”

Court challenges and debates on Capitol Hill have slowed progress on some of the administration’s domestic objectives. At 100 days, the weave of programs that form the social safety net — such as Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) — remains at risk of being pulled apart.

“We’ve never had an administration, an entire administration, that feeds itself on chaos and when you feed yourself on chaos you can’t plan for anything, and they know that. So that when anything comes down, you’re just happy that there’s a resolution,” said Abbie Fuksman, a board member of Georgians for a Healthy Future and of MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger.

The uncertainty makes it difficult to predict the impact on agencies that provide a myriad of services in the Jewish community. “I think you’re going to get the answers a year out and not this quickly,” Fuksman cautioned.

Much of the attention is focused on the future of Medicaid, the $880 billion per year program (in fiscal year 2023: 69 percent federal funding, 31 percent from the states) that provides health care and long-term care coverage for some 80 million seniors, low-income children and adults, and disabled Americans.

At the end of April, Trump told a NewsNation town hall, “We’re not doing anything with entitlements” (Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security). House Republicans remain fractured over making significant cuts to Medicaid, by as much as that same $880 billion spread over a decade, to help pay for tax cuts that would cost an estimated $3.7 trillion. Some Senate Republicans have voiced opposition to broad-based cuts.

Medicaid is a critical funding source for Jewish Family & Career Services of Atlanta (JF&CS) and Jewish HomeLife.

Jeff Gopen, President and CEO of Jewish HomeLife, warned: “As part of our mission, Jewish HomeLife reserves about half the beds at The William Breman Jewish Home for those on Medicaid. The waiting list is long, and the need is only increasing as people live far beyond their savings thanks to advances in medicine and technology. If the government truly guts Medicaid, we could lose funding for our most vulnerable seniors we care for at The Home.”

Terri Bonoff, Chief Executive Officer of JF&CS, acknowledged that “some people are cynical” about Trump’s pledge. “I’m not hitting the panic button,” she said, “because I do think the constituencies of those three programs are so strong . . . that he really is going to try his very best not to sign this, because it’s political suicide.”

Medicaid is an important funding source for the agency’s intellectual and development disabilities services. Two JF&CS initiatives already have been directly impacted by Trump administration policies.

“We had a wonderful program, a vaping prevention program in high schools,” a pilot program that the agency had hoped to continue and bring to a larger scale, but federal funds routed through the state will not be available, Bonoff said. The second was a program to assist low-income residents of DeKalb County with housing, funded through a $1.3 million grant, federal money routed through the county, that will not be there next year.

“We have made a strategic decision not to be as beholden on federal funding,” Bonoff said. “Most of our sister agencies of our size get way more federal dollars than we do.”

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office of the White House, May 20, 2025, in Washington // Photo Credit: AP Photo/Alex Brandon/Times of Israel

That decision comes with a challenge. “Because we’ve done that, our need for philanthropy is greater than ever and that is a huge lift for the agency,” Bonoff said.

Rebecca Stapel-Wax, Director of the Southern Jewish Resource Network for Gender and Sexual Diversity (SOJOURN), says that in more than two decades as an advocate for the LGBTQ+ community she has not seen this level of fear.

Stapel-Wax pointed to a Trump budget that could defund the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, whose counselors are training to deal with high-risk groups such as veterans and LGBTQ+ youth. Ironically, it was Trump in 2020 who signed the law establishing the hotline number.

She also cited Trump’s executive orders banning transgender women from participating in sports at the school level and halting any federal funding for “gender-affirming” care.

“Fear is a direct impact” when such services are threatened, Stapel-Wax said.

Rabbi Daniel Dorsch, Senior Rabbi at Congregation Etz Chaim, has seen the impact of Trump administration policies in his congregation, including layoffs at the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which were widely felt in the Jewish community.

“I’ve absolutely had federal employees in my synagogue who were career government civil servants lose their positions over the past several months. No doubt, giving these members of our communities our love and pastoral support continues to be the top priority for Atlanta’s rabbinic community in these uncertain times,” said Dorsch, the immediate past-president of the Atlanta Rabbinical Association.

A statement in April issued by a coalition of 10 Jewish organizations — including the Conservative, Reform, and Reconstructionist movements — accused Trump of acting “under the guise of fighting antisemitism to justify stripping students of due process rights when they face arrest and/or deportation, as well as to threaten billions in academic research and education funding . . . These actions do not make Jews — or any community — safer. Rather, they only make us less safe.”

Evans praised Trump’s stance on faith issues. “He has been amazing from day one, establishing an official White House Faith Office. He has been very open to our Jewish community, and other faith-based groups, to express our religious freedom and beliefs at the White House and events. It’s a new day for those of faith in this country.

Ticking off a list of offenses committed by the president, Rosenzweig said that Trump has “ignored multiple court orders . . . illegally refused to spend funds appropriated by Congress and has otherwise made clear his disregard for that co-equal branch of government . . .  issued one executive order after another defying the Constitution . . . launched an unprecedented attack on the First Amendment . . . the courts have ruled against him in virtually every challenge and legal scholars are essentially united in the view that he is, by far, the most lawless president in our country’s history.”