President Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission lost a member after Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick removed Carrie Prejean Boller following a heated hearing on antisemitism that she used to critique Zionism and attack pro-Israel Christians; the dismissal has sparked predictable outrage, defenses, and a debate about the commission’s mission and the line between foreign policy views and protecting religious freedom.
Dan Patrick publicly announced the removal after what he described as an unsolicited and politicized turn during a hearing meant to address antisemitism in America. The episode centers on Carrie Prejean Boller, a former Miss California turned conservative commentator, whose comments about Zionism overtook the session. That distraction undercut the commission’s work and prompted a swift response from its chair.
Carrie Prejean Boller has been removed from President Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission. No member of the Commission has the right to hijack a hearing for their own personal and political agenda on any issue.
This is clearly, without question, what happened Monday in our hearing on antisemitism in America. This was my decision.
Prejean Boller’s public profile is well known on the right: she built a career on culture-war moments and leveraged that notoriety into a platform. That background made her selection predictable and, to some, problematic when the goal was to confront antisemitism, not reopen foreign policy disputes. The hearing’s focus was specific and serious, and many felt her intervention shifted attention away from victims and evidence toward ideology and grievance.
At the hearing, Prejean Boller pressed whether anti-Zionism equals antisemitism and argued theological points about Catholics and the modern state of Israel. Her lines of questioning antagonized witnesses and panelists and quickly became the story instead of testimony about hate and threats. For many observers, the timing and tone were both ill-judged and harmful to the commission’s credibility.
During the commission’s fifth hearing on Monday, Carrie Prejean Boller — a recent convert to Catholicism who was stripped of her Miss California USA Crown in 2009 after criticizing gay “marriage” — repeatedly asked whether anti-Zionism is necessarily anti-Semitic; stated that “Catholics don’t embrace Zionism”; asked a panelist whether he would “condemn what Israel has done in Gaza”; and questioned whether the modern state of Israel is one and the same as the biblical Israel.
Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who chairs the commission, desperately attempted to manage flaring tempers on the stage, at one point recommending Boller have a coffee with one of her interlocutors.
Following the hearing, one of the witnesses, Shabbos Kestenbaum, criticized Boller, expressing disappointment about her decision to “focus exclusively on Israel.”
Criticism of Prejean Boller didn’t stop at ideological opponents; she drew rebukes from fellow Christians and Catholic leaders who said her approach muddied theology and morality with politics. Some warned that equating anti-Zionist activism with principled disagreement ignored the line between political critique and hostility toward Jews. The reaction demonstrated that arguments about Israel can fracture alliances that otherwise stand united against religious persecution.
While Boller made appeals in her messaging to the Catholic Church’s teaching that the new Israel “is called the Church of Christ,” she found critics among those Catholics she claimed to speak for, including Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights.
Donohue noted that while “it is possible for someone to oppose Zionism yet not be anti-Semitic,” those “who are activists for the anti-Zionist cause invariably harbor an animus against Jews.”
Unsurprisingly, Prejean Boller doubled down on social media, framing her stance as a principled rejection of what she called a political fusion of faith and geopolitics. Her remarks included harsh language aimed at Israeli policy and criticism of evangelical leaders who equate biblical prophecy with modern state actions. That rhetoric only hardened the decision to remove her from a commission tasked with defending religious liberty for all faiths.
I will never bend the knee to the state of Israel. Ever.
I am more determined than ever to speak plainly about political Zionism and the lies we’ve been sold to justify endless war, dead children, and blank checks. My conversion to the fullness of the Catholic faith exposed what I was taught in American evangelicalism, a version of Christianity that fused Jesus with a political agenda and called it “God’s prophecy being fulfilled.” It isn’t.
No nation speaks for God. No ideology gets a free pass to kill innocent human life. The Church is clear that every human life bears the image of God, including Palestinian life. Pretending otherwise is not “complicated.” It’s sin.
The Catholic Church teaches that the Church, not a modern nation-state, is the New Israel. As Vatican II states:
“The Church is the new People of God… the new Israel.” (Lumen Gentium, 9)
Christians have been manipulated into believing that God blesses bombing, starvation, and mass killing. That is the opposite of Christ, who came to stand with the suffering and confront power. I reject that lie completely.
I am not owned by money, donors, or access. I belong to Christ alone who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
I would rather die than bend the knee to Israel.
Thank you for the shoutout tonight, @RealCandaceO.
Christ is King.
Her public endorsements and associations with high-profile conservative figures who have drifted toward anti-Zionist takes only fueled the controversy. When members of a commission are meant to defend religious freedom broadly, turning a hearing into a platform for contested foreign-policy views risks alienating the communities the commission aims to protect. That was the core complaint of those who supported Patrick’s quick action.
Patrick framed the commission’s work as essential, emphasizing hearings that exposed discrimination and the loss of religious liberty under the previous administration. He also committed to producing a major report for the White House, framing the mission as defending the First Amendment inheritance. Those aims matter because protecting religious practice from hostility should remain the commission’s north star.
The Commission has done outstanding work through five hearings. Two more are scheduled. The testimony has been both illuminating and heartbreaking. Under the Biden Administration, Americans of all faiths had their religious liberty not only stolen from them but were often punished for standing up for their faith, in education, the military, the private sector, and even the ministry.
This spring, the Commission will deliver one of the most important reports in American history directly to the President.
The President respects all faiths. He believes that all Americans have a right to receive the great inheritance given to them by our founding fathers in the First Amendment.
I am grateful to President Trump for having the vision and boldness to create this Commission. Fighting for the Word of God and religious freedom is what this nation was founded upon. Leading this fight will be one of his greatest legacies.
Prejean Boller has kept the conflict alive, calling Patrick’s decision part of a broader political frame she rejects and accusing the commission of being hijacked. That response keeps the focus on personality and spectacle, not the concrete threats the commission was created to address. For a body charged with protecting religious liberty, maintaining clear boundaries between personal politics and the commission’s mandate matters more than ever.
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