Dan Patrick, Texas Lieutenant Governor and Chair of President Donald Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission, made headlines on Wednesday with an announcement on the social media platform X. He revealed the dismissal of a commission member following an unexpected and controversial outburst on “Zionism” during a session that was meant to address antisemitism in the United States.
This incident raised eyebrows, particularly given the timing and subject matter of the hearing. So, who exactly is Carrie Prejean Boller, and why is her removal significant? Many may remember her as the former Miss California who lost her crown due to her outspoken stance against gay marriage—a stance that didn’t sit well in the progressive corridors of California. Prejean Boller claimed her views led to religious persecution, quickly endearing her to conservative circles. Over the past decade, she has leveraged this notoriety into a career of public speaking, book deals, and media appearances. Her influential presence eventually caught the attention of Trump, who appointed her to the Religious Liberty Commission.
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Despite being entrusted with a role on the commission, Prejean Boller deviated from its intended mission, choosing instead to spotlight her own beliefs. During the third of five scheduled hearings, she took the opportunity to present her personal agenda rather than align with the commission’s focus. This particular hearing, centered on combating antisemitism in America, was overshadowed by her divisive remarks.
Prejean Boller’s comments involved a strategic conflation of “Zionism” and “antisemitism,” questioning Israel’s right to defend itself and suggesting an undermining of its legitimacy. This approach not only distracted from the commission’s goal but also sparked significant controversy, ultimately leading to her removal from the commission.
This is clearly, without question, what happened Monday in our hearing on antisemitism in America. This was my decision.
You may be asking, Who is Carrie Prejean Boller, and why does it matter? In the wayback years, Carrie Prejean was a former Miss California who was stripped of her crown because she was critical of gay marriage. This is California, after all. Prejean claimed she was persecuted because of her faith, and subsequently became a darling of the Right. She has spent the past decade or so marketing that attention into books, speaking engagements, and other media appearances. Prejean Boller was hand-picked by Trump for this spot on the religious liberty commission.
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However, instead of acting in concert with the commission and its aims, Prejean Boller chose to act in furtherance of her own agenda. This was the third of five hearings, but Prejean Boller chose the hearing surrounding antisemitism in America to show out.
At this hearing, she strategically conflated “Zionism” and “antisemitism” in order to deny that Israel and its people are under attack, choosing to question their right to defense or existence.
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.”
While Prejean Boller chose to drape her criticisms in the cloak of her Catholic faith, she was instead roundly condemned not only by the Wall Street Journal and Jewish groups but by those who professed the same Christian faith.
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.”
Bingo. But outrage seems to be Prejean Boller’s fuel. After the Monday hearing, she took to X to double down on her viewpoints, her questions, and her right to disagree. She vociferously attacked evangelical Christians, as well as those she claims are controlled by “money, donors,” and “access.”
Right.
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…
— Carrie Prejean Boller (@CarriePrejean1) February 11, 2026
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.
It is no surprise that Prejean Boller gave a shoutout to podcaster Candace Owens. Along with cyber stalking Charlie Kirk’s widow and TPUSA CEO Erika Kirk, Owens spouts this same “Zionist!” garbage on a regular basis. So does the once-respected Tucker Carlson. During the Monday hearing, Boller name-checked them both as she lodged her criticism against Christians who align with Israel and stand with their defense.
“I’m a Catholic, and Catholics do not embrace Zionism, just so you know, so are all Catholics antisemites?” Prejean Boller, who wore a pin depicting the American and Palestinian flags, asked Yeshiva University President Ari Berman, who had been invited to testify.
To Shabbos Kestenbaum, who emerged as an antisemitism activist in the aftermath of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, she asked, “Since we’ve mentioned Israel a total of 17 times, are you willing to condemn what Israel has done in Gaza?”
Prejean Boller also criticized Seth Dillon, the Christian CEO of the conservative satire site The Babylon Bee, for calling conservative influencers Owens and Carlson antisemitic.
“I would really appreciate it if you would stop calling Candace Owens an antisemite. She’s not an antisemite. She just doesn’t support Zionism, and that really has to stop,” she said. “I don’t know why you keep bringing her up and Tucker.”
Both Owens and Carlson have used their massive platforms to promote pro-“Palestine” viewpoints and push their negative assessments of what they deem to be the Jewish influence on American foreign policy. They have particular animus against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, among a host of other whackadoo philosophies which used to be squarely in the camp of the Fringe Right, but thanks to these two, have been mainstreamed into certain conservative and right-of-center thought.
These viewpoints clearly fly in the face of the United States’ alliance with Israel and support and defense of the Jewish religion against antisemitic forces and elements — especially those that have become embedded in our country. Anyone on a commission focused on religious liberty should recognize and understand this.
Patrick’s X post continued to point out the goals of the commission and the work they seek to do.
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.
Like all skilled drama queens, Prejean Boller is not letting things lie, milking this drama for all its worth. In response to Patrick’s X post announcing her dismissal, Prejean Boller quoted his X post and responded, claiming that Patrick has no right to remove her and that he is acting in concert with the “Zionist political framework that hijacked the hearing.”
The mind boggles.
Here lies the tragedy: One assumes that Prejean Boller was selected not just because of her religious faith, but because she was a supposed thought leader. So, you would think she would be able to make a nuanced argument on how to morally support Israel and the Jewish people’s right to practice their faith free of fear or retribution, without conflating it with her opinions on the Jewish state and U.S. foreign policy agendas. One is distinctly different from the other, but Prejean Boller’s spurious and ungrounded arguments, as well as criticisms and attacks on other Christians, lack any cogent thought or common sense. They are rife with prejudice, spoken in arrogance, and are not even one step away from the mobs of students and others protesting and spouting from the River to the Sea.
Prejean Boller has proven herself no better than those mobs and their demands that everyone bend the knee to them. As for Owens and Carlson, her friends whom she feels the need to defend, it has little to do with faith, moral high ground, or any grounded belief, and lots to do with clicks, market share, and attention. On its face, it is disturbing, as well as toxic and well beneath the dignity of a religious liberty commission.
Patrick made the correct move to cut Prejean Boller out, before she thoroughly poisoned what is a worthy commitment to secure the blessings of liberty for people of all faiths.
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