ATLANTA, Ga. — The battle for Georgia’s crucial U.S. Senate seat reached new ideological divides this week.
On Wednesday, the publisher of a leading metro Atlanta Jewish community news outlet openly challenged Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff’s commitment to Israel. Simultaneously, his GOP challenger this fall, U.S. Rep. Mike Collins, ignited a social media firestorm by appearing to back President Donald Trump’s highly controversial, $1.8 billion fund aimed at compensating individuals involved in the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.
In an Aug. 12, 2026, open letter to Ossoff, Atlanta Jewish Times publisher Michael Morris asked the senator to “please, stop lying to me and your constituents.”
“I hear you claim, over and over again, that you support Israel — that your support is ‘ironclad,’” Morris wrote. “It is not. You vote against Israel on the Senate floor in Washington, then come home to Georgia and make this untruthful claim.
“When a rhetorical bill reaches the floor — condemning Hamas after Oct. 7 or affirming Israel’s right to defend itself — you vote with heartfelt sympathy for Israel,” Morris wrote. “But when a bill offers Israel tangible strategic support — munitions, rifles, bombs, military and financial assistance — your record is abysmal, and you throw Israel under the bus.
“You are with Israel on the votes that cost you nothing, and against it on the votes that actually matter,” Morris wrote. “All that heartfelt sympathy is smoke and mirrors.”
Ossoff’s reelection campaign did not comment.
Ossoff, elected in 2021, is Georgia’s first Jewish U.S. senator in history and the first Jewish U.S. senator elected from any deep Southern state in more than a century.
National Republican leaders actively encouraged outgoing Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp to challenge Ossoff this fall, but Kemp declined, setting up a wide-open GOP Senate primary from which Collins emerged as the eventual winner.
But Collins’ campaign has been besieged with its own controversies. Two weeks ago, Collins responded to reports of antisemitic comments allegedly made by his son-in-law, David Scheer.
“I’ve repeatedly said nobody speaks for me; I only speak for myself,” Collins said, adding Scheer, an online influencer who has reportedly transitioned from fitness and motivational content to allegedly broadcasting white nationalist and antisemitic messages, “has had no role in my campaign whatsoever.
“I don’t believe or support those views and I have always condemned racism and antisemitism regardless of the source,” Collins said.
Collins’ statement came the same day Atlanta faith leaders from the Black community gathered outside the historic Beg Bethel AME Church in the Sweet Auburn neighborhood to press Collins for a full condemnation of Scheer’s content.
Collins’ campaign previously released a statement noting the congressman “has always condemned all forms of anti-Semitism, regardless of the source.”
Collins also recently removed a family photograph featuring his son-in-law from his official campaign website, calling it a “personal decision.”
But on Wednesday, during a campaign stop in Savannah, Collins was asked by Dominic Box, a former car salesman who was convicted of federal crimes related to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, if Washington should be held financially accountable “for Americans whose lives were destroyed by the federal government?”
“When the federal government harms you, then yes, they have a liability too,” Collins replied.
“Mike Collins fully supports holding the government accountable when federal agencies abuse their power and believes Americans who’ve been wronged by their government ought to have a path to seek justice,” said campaign spokesperson Meyer Siegfried. “He does not support a blank-check fund or automatic taxpayer-funded payouts to anyone simply because they were prosecuted for January 6.”
Box was arrested in December 2022 after identifying himself in Capitol surveillance and Facebook livestream videos. He waived his right to a jury trial and was convicted by a federal judge in October 2024 on two felony counts of civil disorder and four misdemeanors.
In January 2025, following President Trump’s executive clemency orders for Jan. 6 defendants, federal prosecutors dropped the case and U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly formally dismissed Box’s indictment.
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