Construction worker Tim Davenport says Trump has restored ‘common sense’ to America © Ross Landenberger/FT
A little over a month into his second term, Donald Trump’s warp speed overhaul of US policy has already reverberated across the globe.
Thousands of federal employees have been sacked. Ukraine fears abandonment in its war with Russia. The population of Gaza faces potential resettlement. North America is on the brink of a trade war.
But for Corinne Wooten, a 30-year-old nurse in the Atlanta suburb of Roswell, Georgia, all of that seems a world away.
“It truly does not affect my life right now, which is maybe a little selfish to say, but it doesn’t,” said Wooten, who voted for Trump, but does not follow politics closely. “Life has been the same. Nothing’s changed for us.”
Her verdict on Trump’s first month back: “So far, so good.”
The pace and scale of Trump’s effort to upend the political status quo over the past six weeks has taken Washington by storm — leaving Democrats aghast and US allies scrambling to respond.
Town hall meetings across the country — including one in Roswell — have grown raucous as opponents push back against over-reach by the president. Warnings abound that by going too fast, the president risks alienating many of his own supporters.
But among the suburban voters who propelled Trump into a second term, there is little evidence of disquiet. Many, like Wooten, are nonplussed by the revamp. Others are revelling in it.
Dontaye Carter, chair of the North Fulton Democrats, said Trump’s actions were energising members of his party © Ross Landenberger/FT
Nurse Corinne Wooten said she did not feel as though Trump’s actions on tariffs and Ukraine had affected her © Ross Landenberger/FT
“Donald Trump is kicking ass,” said Clark Searles, a 64-year-old pharma worker and military veteran in the neighbouring suburb of Alpharetta.
“He’s actually doing what he promised he was going to do, particularly as it relates to getting the fraud out of our government.”
Democrats have been particularly dismayed by Trump’s cooling support for Kyiv — laid bare in Friday’s
fiery Oval Office clash with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy — and the dismantling of federal bureaucracy by the so-called
Department of Government Efficiency led by billionaire Elon Musk.
Yet
polling suggests neither policy has had a significant impact on Trump’s popularity as supporters continue to keep the faith.
While the president’s approval rating has slipped since he took office, it remained narrowly positive ahead of his State of the Union address on Tuesday night, according to the latest 538 poll of polls, and higher than at practically any point in his first term.
Some supporters expressed qualms over Trump’s courting of Russian President Vladimir Putin and the persistence of the high prices that he promised to curb by unleashing US oil production. But most were satisfied that in both cases, the president knew what he was doing.
“Putin’s evil, there’s no doubt about it. But sometimes you have to deal with evil if you want to save people,” said Tim Davenport, 58, who works in construction. “Trump just wants to end the war.”
He applauded the president’s sacking of “woke” generals and his crackdown on transgender athletes’ participation in women’s sports. “Government’s too big and the liberals are goofy,” said Davenport, who has voted for Trump three times. “Common sense, there’s just not enough of it.”
Georgia acts as an important bellwether for the national political mood. After narrowly losing the state in 2020 — which he falsely blamed on election interference — Trump flipped it in 2024. While urban areas backed Kamala Harris, suburban voters, frustrated by the
heightened cost of living, largely came out for Trump.
Chris Tark, a 66-year-old retiree, said the process of cutting prices “hasn't started yet” but blamed external factors such as avian flu and the lag period before oil output rises. He said supporters would be patient.
“I think it’s going to take a good year before we’ll see results from all that,” he said. “The ones that voted for him understand how it works. Everybody else will be ready to jump on him when next week the prices aren’t down.”
Many opponents concede that whatever steps Trump takes, wholesale abandonment by voters in the near term is unlikely. After a decade in politics, the president is no longer an unknown quantity and many of his policy actions were foreshadowed on the campaign trail.
Traditional Republicans who found him distasteful have either already turned their back on him, or made peace with his approach.
“The only buyer’s remorse that I’ve come across so far has been what I’m seeing in the media,” said Joe Carlson, 67, a former life-long Republican, who was turned off the party in 2016 by Trump’s initial rise to power.
“It’s tough because there’s an investment that people that have voted for him for a couple of cycles now have made,” said Carlson, a former businessman who remains an active member of the National Rifle Association. “Any good conman will tell you that it’s easier to con somebody than to convince them later they were conned.”
The response of Democrats, meanwhile, has been muted amid a barrage of executive orders designed to “flood the zone” and make it difficult to muster coherent opposition.
But there are signs the party is regrouping and beginning to co-ordinate a more organised grassroots resistance.
At the Roswell town hall, Republican congressman Rich McCormick was harangued by an angry crowd over Trump’s record, after local Democrats co-ordinated irate constituents to vent their discontent.
Dontaye Carter, chair of the North Fulton Democrats, said there was an anger brewing among Democratic voters that was re-engaging a base that in many cases did not show up to vote in November’s election.
“It’s time to take that passion from the streets and bring it into the suites,” said Carter, 38. “It’s time for us to mobilise, it’s time for us to fundraise . . . We’ve got a hell of a fight that’s coming in 2026.”
But bringing more moderate voters onside will be a challenge in the near term, Democratic operatives concede.
“We are welcoming anyone who’s like, ‘I made a huge mistake’,” said Jennifer Ambler, a Democratic activist in Forsyth county. “[But] it’s pretty quiet . . . They’re still willing to give [Trump] some time.”
Still, Democrats are banking that if Trump fails to curb prices soon, his voters will ultimately lose patience, triggering a backlash in next year’s midterm elections. A brewing trade war could work in their favour, they say, pushing up prices for consumers.
“I do not think people will be tolerant of those tariffs,” said Ambler. “Musk goes around saying there might need to be a little pain. [But] the American people are not very tolerant of pain.”
